By Rena Lawrence and Lisa E. Worley, AASLH Historic House Museum Committee co-chairs
Building on the successful and inspiring April 2025 summit “Interpreting Historic House Museums Today,” the Historic House Committee hosted a virtual History Hour and an in-person working group at the 2025 Annual Meeting to expand on the Summit’s findings that resulted in these themes/pillars.
• Define your values and non-negotiables.
• Be bold.
• People are messy and complicated.
• Develop safe spaces for difficult conversations and places for visitors to opt out.
• Telling the “whole history” of our sites is more important than ever.
• Connect your audience to meaningful things relevant to their everyday life.
• Do you have artifacts and places to tell this story well?
• Staff need training to deliver more meaningful content.
At the virtual History Hour, we discussed the Summit’s findings and teased out additional aspects of great interpretation. The in-person Working Group delved into the challenges of implementation and what tools historic house museums need to excel, including proposing an additional theme/pillar to the original eight: Community/Stakeholder engagement is critical in every phase.
Participants established the overarching goals of all three events as tangible takeaways that empower historic house museums to engage in creative and meaningful interpretation according to best practices and standards. The Working Group based their discussions on four prompts (questions below). Their responses confirm and expand on the initial themes/pillars.
1. What does utilizing these themes/pillars look like in your museum?
Historic house museums are undertaking a major shift toward more inclusive, research driven, community-centered interpretation that expands beyond a single narrative and fully embraces historical complexity. This work requires clarifying core values and non-negotiables, updating exhibits and tours, and grounding all storytelling in accurate, respectful scholarship. Strengthening docent and staff training is essential, with an emphasis on flexible, audience-responsive tours, understanding visitor motivations, and maintaining consistency despite turnover. Creating a culture of continuous learning, openness to change, and willingness to interrogate old narratives will support experimentation, improved visitor experiences, and better alignment with the mission. By leaning into nuance even when it brings discomfort and intentionally gathering visitor feedback, Historic house museums can foster deeper engagement and deliver impactful, meaningful interpretation for all audiences.
2. What challenges do you anticipate with implementation?
Historic house museums face significant barriers related to resources, staffing, interpretation complexity, and external pressures. Limited funding, space constraints, and internal discord impact the ability to fully utilize collections or adapt facilities. Interpreting “messy” or difficult history poses challenges for visitor connection, especially amid political or social resistance. Staffing issues, including shortages, turnover, inconsistent soft skills, and the need for extensive training, create gaps in delivering updated, audience responsive tours. Volunteers and staff may resist change or leave, complicating workloads and the introduction of new standards to meet. Additional hurdles include unclear responsibilities for content renewal, difficulty sustaining continuous training, and gaps in collections needed for fuller stories. External factors such as donor expectations, community politics, and shifting audience reception add further complexity. Finally, time, money, and capacity constraints combined with the need for ongoing dialogue, data collection, and flexibility make long term implementation challenging.
3. What types of resources could AASLH provide to support your success in implementing these themes/pillars?
Historic house museum professionals are seeking stronger, more accessible support systems for training, collaboration, and operational guidance. Key needs include improved soft skills training, expanded interpreter and docent training beyond content knowledge, and more diverse formats for professional development such as webinars, roundtables, case studies, and online, on demand modules. There is a desire for clearer best practice standards covering interpretation, environmental controls, accessibility, preservation, and mission development as well as practical tools like quick reference guides, evaluation resources, survey templates, and program planning aids. Professionals want increased collaboration across sites through buddy systems, regional partnerships, national level networks, and opportunities for informal connection and shared problem solving. Additional support is needed for challenges like managing legacy practices, engaging younger audiences, navigating competition, crafting safe spaces for difficult conversations, and training volunteers. Overall, the field needs a broader toolkit, better communication channels, and structured resources to help prioritize work, strengthen skills, and maintain consistent, mission-aligned implementation across diverse staffing and capacity levels.
4. Other information that would help AASLH serve you and your historic house museum?
AASLH can strengthen its support for historic house museums by expanding data access, enhancing professional development opportunities, and improving sector-wide collaboration. Sites need better benchmarking data (including staffing, utilities, preservation costs, and regional comparisons) to guide budgeting, advocacy, and grant writing. More sharable resources, case studies, and templates would help organizations communicate with Boards, audiences, and funders. Training support is also critical: customizable Zoom trainings, topical webinars, consultant-led sessions, and resources addressing accessibility, interpretation, difficult history, technology use, and docent recruitment are all desired. AASLH can further help by fostering experimentation through grants or safe-to-fail initiatives, helping sites build relationships with tourism partners and community organizations, and supporting next generation museum workers with resources and regional AASLH hubs. Finally, AASLH could act as a clearinghouse for high-quality data, examples, signage references, and best practices making it easier for sites to compare, learn, and collaborate across the field.
Using the information gathered from our historic house museum colleagues during these various conversations, AASLH and the Historic House Museum Committee will work to develop resources, including a Historic House Museum Pro Certificate program generously funded by the Jenrette Foundation, to meet the critical needs of the field.