Reimagining Historic House Museums

Creating tours, school programs, and other interpretive activities at historic house museums are among the most effective ways to engage the public in the history of their community and yet many organizations fail to achieve their potential. This guide describes the essential elements of successful interpretation: content, audience, and methods.

Since 2015, co-editors Kenneth C. Turino and Max A. van Balgooy have led the popular reinventing historic house workshop for the American Association for State and Local History. Kenneth C. Turino is Manager of Community Partnerships and Resource Development at Historic New England. He oversees community engagement projects throughout the New England states and is responsible for exhibition partnerships at the Eustis Estate, Langdon House, and Sarah Orne Jewett Museum and Visitor Center. He consults on interpretive planning and community engagement projects at historic sites, including Madame John’s Legacy in New Orleans and the Palmer Warner House in Connecticut. Ken teaches courses on the future of historic houses in the Tufts University Museum Studies Program and is vice president of the board of the House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. Max A. van Balgooy is president of Engaging Places, a design and strategy firm that connects people and historic places. For more than thirty years, he has worked with a wide range of historic sites on interpretive planning and business strategy, including Cliveden, Molly Brown House, Haas-Lilienthal House, James Madison’s Montpelier, and Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. He is an assistant professor in the Museum Studies Program at George Washington University, directs the History Leadership Institute (formerly known as the Seminar for Historical Administration), and regularly leads workshops for the American Association for State and Local History.