Southern Oregon Historical Society Looks to the Past for a Future

The NY Time reported on this Historical Society's plans to sell some of its historic properties. As the article relates:

They say economic collapse is what froze this place in time, a gold rush relic all but abandoned when the railroad passed it by. Decades later, that chance preservation positioned Jacksonville to benefit from new interest in the past. Boutiques moved to quaint California Street. Californians soon moved to town.

The U.S. Hotel building in Jacksonville, Ore., is one of the 19th-century buildings that a historical society has proposed selling. A high-end housing development, Nunan Square, is a recent addition to the historic town.

History sells, but now Jacksonville may learn that, the hard way.

The Southern Oregon Historical Society, which controls five of the most prominent historic properties in a town that is itself a historic district, has proposed selling some of the sites as a way to prevent the organization’s own economic collapse. After changes in state and county tax policies left it without a clear revenue stream in the 1990s and several short-term measures since then have run their course, the society says it is essentially out of money.

Last September, the society shut down the Jacksonville Museum, housed in a former courthouse from the 1880s. It has also closed the rectory of a local Roman Catholic church, built in the 1860s, and Beekman Bank, which still houses scales used to weigh gold. The rectory and the bank, as well as the U.S. Hotel, built in the 1880s, are among the properties the society said it hoped to sell. Read more here.

This is a trend across the country. Museums and cultural organizations have found themselves in the position of multiple properties with no way to sustain them, let alone maintain them. With facilities literally bleeding these organizations dry, what other alternatives do they have? Have your comments on this article? Share them here.

Museum Offers New Venture Idea

The NY Times reported about one history museum's new approach and plan to engage audiences and increase visitation. Great example of new ways of thinking and an entrepreneurial approach. As the article relates:

When thinking of ways to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon, studying history is not high on the list for most families. Now, in a bid to make history more vivid, alluring and accessible for the Wii generation, an interactive “museum within a museum,” focusing on the lives of young New Yorkers, will open in November 2011 on the lower level of the New-York Historical Society, museum officials said.

The DiMenna Children’s History Museum, as it will be known, is part of the $60 million renovation of the historical society building on Central Park West, Louise Mirrer, the president and chief executive officer of the museum, said this week. The roughly 4,000-square-foot museum has been designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture & Design Partnership with a $5 million donation from Joseph A. and Diana DiMenna.

The new museum will focus on the stories of children, from famous figures like Alexander Hamilton, who came to New York as a teenage orphan to attend college, to the boys and girls who hawked newspapers on city streets 100 years ago.

“In schools, history tends to be about figures once they have matured and become important,” Ms. Mirrer said. “But if we want history to become alive for children, what better way to teach them than showing them children from other periods? We want to be on the permanent agenda of children and families in New York.” Read more here.