Week Two: Acquainting Myself with the Public History Center and with Interpretive Planning

The first week of my internship proved to be a crash course in the major themes in public history. Once I had some of the major works in the field under my belt, I turned my attention to interpretive planning. I first had to digest the meaning of interpretive planning. What is an interpretive plan? What is its purpose? How does one go about crafting an interpretive plan? Who goes about crafting it; is it a one-man job or a collaborative team effort?

I turned first to the edited collection Interpreting Historic House Museums. The book has an excellent chapter, appropriately titled “Interpretation Planning: Why and How,” which provides a nice introduction to interpretive planning. The essay was useful also because the scope of the plan covered was well suited to the goals of the Public History Center. Of course, the Public History Center is not a “House Museum,” per se, but its goals are more closely aligned to house museums than expansive, well-funded museums. Another work proved a useful starting place. The workmanlike Manual of Museum Exhibitions provided a clear and to-the-point essay on interpretive planning. I found other resources as well. Most helpful was the website for the Stenton House Museum, a museum located just outside of Philadelphia. The Stenton House had thoughtfully decided to post its interpretive plan to its website. Their plan was straightforward and easily comprehensible, providing the perfect example to the themes covered in the previous works. Lastly, for good measure, a quick Google search for “museum interpretive plans” elicited a few prizes of its own. I was able to find plans for museums in locations ranging from Alaska to Scotland. My conclusion: the more examples you can piece together, the better.

With all of the assorted materials digested, I gained a clearer understanding of an interpretive plan. Here it is in a nutshell: a thorough and sophisticated institutional interpretive plan will provide your museum with a clear and distinct identity and purpose. When done correctly, both the museum staff and the viewing audience will have a clear sense of the intended narratives of the museum. With this in mind, an interpretive plan seeks to clarify a mere handful of important themes (not more, lest you want to bewilder your audience and muddle your message!) of which the various exhibits in the museum serve to reinforce. Moreover, an interpretive plan will help clarify how each exhibit serves to strengthen the interpretive narratives woven through the museum. In the process, a plan serves to articulate a museum’s mission statement and clarify the museum’s role in the community. Not least of all, a well-crafted interpretive plan will provide you with a ready-made “elevator speech” to expound on the purposes and virtues of your site when asked “what is your museum about?”

I therefore spent two full days of my second week tucked away in the Public History Center. I was tasked with developing a preliminary inventory report – a lengthy summary of the museum’s collections, exhibits, educational materials, and supplementary tools for guests – with the intent of surveying the strengths and weaknesses of the museum. This requisite stage is needed for establishing which themes are most viable for the museum to direct its focus and energy toward. As I quickly discovered, the museum does not possess a single, tidy report of the museum’s inventory. So, with help from Cyndi, Shirley, and Kelli, all helpful contributors to the museum, I scavenged for any list or report that offered relevant information. All told, by the end of week two, I had a (very) rough sketch of the museum’s holdings. My goal for week three was to develop a project team, comprised of relevant staff and scholarly consultants, to collaborate on the forthcoming interpretive plan.