Heather Marie Wells

Recently, Crystal Bridges received the Gold MUSE award for Audio Tours and Podcasts from the American Alliance of Museums’ Media & Technology committee for the audio/music tour of the temporary exhibition This Land: Picturing a Changing America in the 1930s and 1940s .  This is the highest award that a museum can receive for an audio tour.  MUSE awards honor outstanding achievement for digital media that enhances the experience and engages audiences. They celebrate scholarship, community, innovation, creativity, education, and inclusiveness.  Judges consider each project’s accessibility in terms of ADA, the overall production quality, the inventiveness, and the impact that the project makes to the museum field. The goal of Crystal Bridges’ winning audio tour was to illuminate guests’ exploration of the exhibition in a unique way. Thus we partnered with the Fayetteville Roots Festival to curate a collection of music to accompany  This Land . Each o...

Several months before the museum opened, a number of staff members were asked to speak at a staff meeting about our belief in a great museum's power to transform individuals and communities. Because of the American Association of Museums recent advocacy efforts in DC, I felt compelled to go back and clean up the notes, which I had hastily written on short notice, and share my thoughts with more of my museum colleagues and friends. I hope that for some of you this will inspire you to include your voice and get involved. It's important that we all continue to work to save funding for museums. We believe in a great museum's power to transform individuals and communities. I feel like this statement is the story of my life. When I was growing up, my family was by no means what you might call "well off," so my parents were very careful about how they planned family vacations. We did not go to amusement parks and such, because they were just too expensive for a fa...

Note: This is the second half of an article that I wrote published in the HHMAG RAG, Historic House Affinity Group Newsletter Volume 9, Issue 2, August 2009, pg. 7 although I have made updates to it. Last week I discussed two social media platforms that I think Historic House Museums can use to help the public connect on a more personal level to the home and how to get started with them. Today I want to get down to the more nitty gritty ideas of content. Suggested Content Now that you know the basics and have tips to get started, let’s get to the heart of the matter. What can Historic Houses do with these media to make the house more like a home? If you have diaries from the people who lived in your historic home, consider blogging their diary. Consider the journal postings on pepysdiary.com and orwelldiaries.wordpress.com . I personally would love to read a blog entry where there is a picture of something in the house accompanied by diary excerpts about the object, perhaps abo...

Note: This is the first half of an article that I wrote published in the HHMAG RAG, Historic House Affinity Group Newsletter Volume 9, Issue 2, August 2009, pg. 7 although I have made updates to it. I love going to historic house museums. My favorite ones are those that make me feel like I’ ve been transported back in time. I love it when I feel like I’m a guest being invited into someone's home for a visit. Take a moment to consider that statement. Notice the words I used: guest, invited, home, and visit. Historic House Museums have an opportunity to shine above other institutions like science centers and nature museums by conveying intimacy and being personal. Unfortunately, Historic House Museums aren ’t always the best at conveying these characteristics through their online presence. However, I feel that the new wave of social media and networking sites can really help historic house museums to make those personal connections. There are a number of sites out there, and ...

I'm often asked to review books on tech topics and I'm finally getting some time to work on it. Currently, I'm looking at a couple of books on podcasting, because I'm pretty knowledgeable on the topic and I think it will be easy to decide if a book is helpful on that topic. However, I would love some suggestions on books that you think need to be reviewed. I've also been asked to write an article on podcasting for a Botanical Garden publication. I'm pretty excited about that as I love the outdoors and gardens, but I don't often get to do a lot of work with them. I've also started diligently working on an exhibit that I've been put in charge of to open in 2010. My plan is for it to be our first publicly curated exhibit and we will have the public vote on what artifacts will actually be included in the exhibit.

The museum world is in mourning. Today a man walk through the doors of the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and shot a guard. Guards had to return fire for the safety of the visitors at the museum, including a group of 165 eighth graders there on a field trip. The guard, Stephen T. Johns, subsequently died at the hospital. The Holocaust Museum will be closed tomorrow and flags will be flown at half mast in his honor. I've been to DC twice and of course my favorite place is the mall. So many fabulous museums in such close proximity. My most recent trip to DC was last August. It was a wonderful trip and the first time my husband had been. On our last day in DC we stopped to get frozen lemonades after we had finally been asked to leave the Natural History Museum because it was closing time. It was such a lovely evening to be sitting on a bench at the Mall watching the sun set after a hot August day. We watched some guys playing football and there were little girls turning c...

My current projects are many and varied. For the museum I'm currently cataloging and organizing a very large manuscript collection of papers from the International Order of Odd Fellows. I'm also trying to catch-up on editing some podcast episodes and planning an exhibit that will open in 2010. I'm in the process of writing an article for the Historic House Museum Affinity Group newsletter and I'm putting together a workshop on social media for the Arkansas Museum Association. On the personal front I'm currently working on creating a portfolio.