Martha Kohl, Historical Specialist, Montana Historical Society
Proposal Type: Roundtable
Seeking: Additional Presenters
Abstract: The Montana Historical Society spent two years developing and implementing a multifaceted women’s history project, which harnessed enthusiasm for Montana’s 2014 suffrage centennial to focus new attention on women’s history and to expand the public’s ideas about the nature of history itself. The project included a website (montanawomenshistory.org), printed material (posters, bookmarks, postcards), an active Facebook page (facebook.com/montanawomenshistory), and programming. Women’s History Matters (WHM) received a 2014 Award of Merit from AASLH, and we believe it can serve as a useful model for other institutions looking for ways to celebrate upcoming suffrage centennials, including the hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment in 2020. However, WHM provides only one model. Well-designed projects require conscious choices about how to spend our most valuable resources (money and time). WHM staff made a series of strategic decisions that both led to WHM’s overall success while creating areas of weakness. These included decisions to:
- focus on social history;
- privilege the stories of ordinary women and women’s organizations over stories about trailblazers;
- represent the diversity of Montana women’s experiences—including not just racial and ethnic diversity but also a diversity of rural and urban locales, historical periods, and in the ages and ideologies of women discussed.
- serve a statewide constituency of various ages and degrees of technological savvy;
- invest in the production of intellectual content (e.g., well-written, well-researched essays) rather than on technological frills;
- encourage any community organization use of the project logo and project-generated materials.
What was gained and what was lost? What choices have other, similar projects made to achieve their goals and make best use of available resources?
Seeking: I am looking for fellow presenters interested in dissecting successful projects they have been involved with to talk about how they designed their projects, the trade-offs they made, and the results of those decisions (both positive and negative.) In crafting Women’s History Matters, we wrestled with many of the questions outlined in the NCPH Call for Proposals, including:
- How are successful collaborations between public historians and under-represented communities built?
- How do new practices including digital history open up narratives and collaborations for public historians that challenge the exclusive past?
- What are the risks of using traditional great men and great event narratives when highlighting the histories of under-represented groups? Do we ignore or obscure important counter narratives when we follow this course?
- How and should activism and public history meet? Can such intersections lead to more inclusive histories?
- How do public historians weave together local, national, and global narratives to create meaningful histories for all communities?
Our answers to these questions, and others—especially about how much we wanted to control the project and its message and how to most effectively spend our time and resources—determined the final form of the project for both good and ill. What can someone embarking on a large-scale project learn from our choices? What choices have other project managers made that were different from ours–and to what outcome? I’m open to changing the structure of this session from a Roundtable to a Pecha Kucha or panel depending on others’ interests.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Martha Kohl,mkohl[at]mt.gov
If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.
All feedback, and offers of assistance, should be submitted by July 3, 2015.
Related Topics: Civic Engagement
Because we’ll be in Baltimore, it might be useful to reflect on “Mining the Museum” at the Maryland Historical Society, a 1992 exhibit by Fred Wilson that diversified the interpretation and created lots of controversy (more at http://beautifultrouble.org/case/mining-the-museum/). Not sure if anyone currently at the MHS had experience with this exhibit, however, Charles Lyle, the director at the time, is now the Webb Deane Stevens Museum in CT.
Thanks.
I am wondering if this could be part of a working group or even workshop about project management. I think that there are a number of practitioners who are functioning in this position but sometimes do not find useful training at NCPH. This could be somewhere between a workshop where you do have training but also allowing for an open dialogue.