Over the past few decades, attendance at many historic sites and house museums has declined steadily. It is arguable that cultural institutions and practices undergo lifecycles and eventually die out, and that history museums may be about to do the same. The Virginia Historical Society (VHS) faces the same challenging environment. Cary Carson discusses the culprits for this trend and attempts to offer solutions in his article “The End of History Museums: What’s Plan B?” Carson, the vice president for research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, has much first-hand knowledge of the effectiveness of marketing and immersion with respects to generating revenue for historic sites. The VHS has compiled a list of strategic objectives, its plan B, in order to escape the attendance troubles that have plagued the field. Can history museums, like the VHS, survive, develop their educational missions, and remain financially viable? Continue reading
Author Archives: Sean Wang
The Implications of Digital Research for Historians
No one can deny the rapid progress of information technology over the last few decades. We have seen these changes in all aspects of our lives, from the workplace, to consumerism, and transportation. These changes have had major implications on historicism as well. Cameron Blevins provides an explanation about the production of space and place in America during the late nineteenth century in “Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston.” Similarly, Matthew Wilkens’ article, “The Geographic Imagination of Civil War-Era American Fiction,” details how he was able to use documents in the nineteenth century to draw an imaginative geography of America. So how have these modernized changes, discussed in these two articles, affected the capabilities of researching and documentation of history? Continue reading