Who: Matthew Doyen.
When: February 18th.
Where: Austin, TX.
Last Thursday, I joined museum professionals and fellow classmates in Austin to celebrate another successful year for old and notable buildings during the Preservation Texas 2016 Summit. The event was held in the historic Central Christian Church and was composed of various presentations as well as the year’s most endangered places announcement. The broad range of topics that these presentations covered made the day extremely informative and enjoyable.
Listening to Evan Thompson at the historic Wooldridge Square Park (1909) announcing the most endangered places in Texas for the upcoming year.
The summit provided a lot of great reading material about the state of preservation in Texas, as well as a pretty sweet bumper sticker.
The first presentation was given by the director of the Arts in Sacred Places program. It discussed the partnership that historic churches can have with their local artistic communities. Many churches have social halls or community rooms that are scarcely used and there are many artists looking for a place for their work. The Arts in Sacred Places program aims to bring these two groups together. It would give the church an opportunity to stay relevant in its community, which, in turn, would ultimately preserve the building from being severely altered or demolished. I really like this idea, but I can see it being a problem to some if the artwork doesn’t follow the beliefs of the church and limitations like these could be unfair to the artists.
The presentation immediately after the break covered the identity and the memory of the state’s freedom colonies. It was surprising that none of us had ever heard of freedom colonies before, but they were the little settlements that former slaves created after the Emancipation Proclamation. A trio of women discussed the work they are doing to research the sites where these colonies were located and to archive any surviving documents about them. They are trying to reach out and spread awareness by communicating with the distant ancestors of the freedom colonizers and to organize family reunions on the property. I think that they are just getting started and that this will really be a prominent subject in Texas in the near future.
Between a talk about the importance and struggle to save rural places and about funding strategies for endangered structures was Professor Smith and Melissa Prycer’s presentation on the financial stability of historic organizations. Professor Smith spoke about the fact that some of these institutions have a life cycle and to not fight against closing if the specific institution has accomplished its purpose. Melissa, the executive director at Dallas Heritage Village, spoke about how her museum is experimenting with new programs to bring in a new audience every year so that they continue to be a prominent member of the community. I really enjoyed this presentation because it showed how important a solid program structure in a museum is to its survival.
The obvious theme of the day was preservation, but there was another theme that I picked up on of partnership. Many of these organizations have realized the importance of partnering with local and regional communities to help with their projects. It only make sense that we continue to do this while we are preserving our history because that history is for all to enjoy. I’m excited to come back next year to see the progress of the most endangered places and to hear more about the current issues that are facing museums and preservationists.
Written by: Matthew Doyen