Massachusetts living history museums rethink past
Print Edition
A Massachusetts living history museum that depicts life in the early 19th century is looking to overhaul the way it presents the past in an effort to stay relevant to a 21st century audience.
Old Sturbridge Village has received a US$75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It will use it to partner with scholars and other consultants for a multiyear study into how it portrays four areas: agriculture and food, civics, industry and economy, and race and gender.
The reboot, the museum’s first in about 40 years, is sorely needed, said Rhys Simmons, Old Sturbridge Village’s director of interpretation. Old Sturbridge Village hasn’t updated its staff training material since the 1970s, and visitor experience surveys have found that people, while generally positive about their visit, feel something is missing. Many museums are dealing with similar issues, said Jeff Hardwick, deputy director of the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Public Programs.
According to a 2016 report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Humanities Indicators project, visits to historic sites have been on the decline since 1982. Old Sturbridge Village depicts life in a small New England town of the 1830s, with 40 to 50 employees dressed in period clothing going about daily routines in the home, workshops or farm and interacting with visitors. It gets about 250,000 visitors a year.
The early 19th century was a time of social upheaval, and the role of minorities and women was changing. Slavery no longer existed in most of New England, and the abolitionist and temperance movements were in full swing. Yet the museum hasn’t done a good enough job of presenting those stories, said Simmons.
The role of women also needs to be re-examined, he said. While men held jobs in the fields, or in workshops, women held the household together. “Men couldn’t manage without women,” Simon added.
People have more options for their leisure time and money now than they did 20 years ago, and museums need to figure out how to better compete for that time and money, said Lauren McCormack, secretary of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums. The Old Sturbridge Village study may help.
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