{"id":1583,"date":"2018-07-23T17:36:33","date_gmt":"2018-07-23T17:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.overbrookpublishing.com\/BackStory\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2018-07-23T17:36:33","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T17:36:33","slug":"book-review-the-anarchists-guide-to-historic-house-museums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/book-review-the-anarchists-guide-to-historic-house-museums\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Anarchist's<\/a>Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums<\/a> by Franklin D. Vagnone<\/a>
\nMy rating: 4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

The Anarchist\u2019s Guide to Historic House Museums offers fresh ideas for museum administrators and staff to evaluate and improve the visitor experience to their historic house museums (HHMs). The authors, Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. Ryan, use a variety of HHM case studies to illustrate their points. Each chapter in the book opens with a thought-provoking quote by a museum representative that the authors explore throughout the chapter, offering insights and recommendations for making HHMs relevant to the community and meaningful to the visitor. The authors define a key problem on p. 59: \u201cFor many HHMs, it will initially be difficult to find \u2018a place of relevance and meaning, to genuinely contribute to building better communities and serving the needs of individuals, and to define the new normal in a world that no longer derives knowledge from objects, looks to institutions for answers, or defines reality through materiality\u2019.\u201d The ideas and suggestions presented in the book apply not only to HHMs, but to many different types of organizations. While I was reading The Anarchist\u2019s Guide, I visited a well-known HHM in Manhattan and experienced many of the elements it described that detract from the visitor experience. I came away thinking the director should really read this book. During the same week, I visited a small, state-funded museum with a limited collection, yet I got the impression that its administrators had definitely read the book and successfully implemented its recommendations to increase visitor engagement. The difference between the two experiences proved to me that The Anarchist\u2019s Guide to Historic House Museums is a useful tool for HHM administrators and staff to improve their institutions and remain relevant. <\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums by Franklin D. Vagnone My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Anarchist\u2019s Guide to Historic House Museums offers fresh ideas for museum administrators and staff to evaluate and improve the visitor experience to their … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,151,150,44],"tags":[131,162,161,159],"class_list":["post-1583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-art","category-about-culture","category-book-reviews","category-museums","tag-art","tag-culture","tag-historic-houses","tag-museums"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/rMsQj10kRXOzslNmOHjXg.jpg?fit=4032%2C3024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1584,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1583\/revisions\/1584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}