history museums pragmatic historian

Saving a Country’s Cuisine with History

A visitor to my museum suggested I watch “Chef’s Table,” a beautifully filmed Netflix documentary series that follows world-renowned chefs. It’s the sort of series where you can jump in anywhere because each episode focuses on a single chef and is a self-contained story. When I started the series, I seem to have jumped in on *Volume 4, the pastry chefs, but have been making my way back to earlier episodes. (*Netflix calls the seasons…

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challenge history museums pragmatic historian

Who Is Your Audience? (It’s Not Everyone)

In nonprofit organizations that create cultural events, particularly museums and historic sites, we like to think that everyone in the general public is our audience. That’s the great potential — that every soul who lives on earth will wander through our doors and be enamored with what we have to offer. That’s not true, of course. Challenges in Reaching an Audience People have to know we exist, be able to find us, have time to…

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history museums pragmatic historian

Nostalgia Trips Revisited – The Dark Side

After writing my post on planning and taking nostalgia trips, I was discussing it with my eldest son, Ian, who is very involved with the gaming scene, both tabletop and video, particularly role-playing games. He is also hugely into Nordic history and wants to design concept art for games that is based on history. Suffice it to say, he has paid attention to the history of gaming since becoming involved with it when he was…

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