Selling history: Museums, sites find creative ways to attract patrons

History often is filled with fascinating stories, but telling them can require classic cars, loaves of freshly baked bread and happy hours.

“It's always a challenge to keep history alive,” says Michael Knecht, site administrator of Old Economy Village in Beaver County.

That challenge forces the managers of historical sites and museums to be alert to ways of telling their stories that sometimes seem far removed from history.

• Knecht admits a classic car show at Old Economy has little to do with telling the story of the communal past of the Harmonists, but says it does a job attracting visitors who say, “While we're here, we might as well stop in.”

• The Senator John Heinz History Center on Aug. 4 will go to the dogs when a variety of service canines will be visiting in a pet-oriented attempt to lure visitors to the current Civil War exhibit.

• Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County tells the story of a past that reaches back 16,000 years, but two weeks ago was the site of a food lovers' look at the cooking of America's slaves.

• Fort Ligonier in Westmoreland County several times a years offers a Friday evening Taste of History program where staffers bake on 18th-century ovens to provide “historic food with a 21st century twist,” says Annie Urban, executive director of the site.

Managers at sites find they have to reach deep in their efforts to win an audience.

“Where else could you get a chance to use a prehistoric, spear-throwing device,” says David Scofield, director at Meadowcroft.

He is referring to the annual target competition in the atlatl, a wooden device used by early hunter-gatherers to launch a spear farther and with more accuracy. The device is like an early-man version of the tennis ball throwers used today.

He says the staff at Meadowcroft tries to get people involved not only in the site 16,000 years ago, but in its use over that span with events that range from the atlatl event to the recent cooking program from 150 years ago.

Old Economy's Knecht is dealing with a more recent span of history, but sees being a part of the 21st century as a necessary way to draw people back to the 19th.

“We have increased our advertising budget from $7,000 to $16,000,” he says, “and we are using social media more.”

Along with the car cruises, he says, concerts by River City Brass have drawn peripheral visitors to Old Economy, even if they have nothing to do with communal living in the Ohio River valley.

Like Fort Ligonier, the Heinz History Center tries to attract a nonhistory-conscious audience with happy hour events called History Uncorked. It also has a yearly antiques appraisal called Pittsburgh's Hidden Treasures. A bocce tournament is only weeks away.

Andy Masich, president and CEO of the center, says the History Uncorked events are aimed at young professionals. They provide a chance for them to go to “every nook and cranny” of the museum.

“So, even if they aren't really interested in history, this has been an educational experience,” he says.

Happy hour and bocce don't seem like the material of museums, but Masich says people in his position have begun a battle against the “elitism” of the past, eliminating some of the lasting stuffiness that seemed a part of museums, he says.

“You can't force things on an audience,” he say. “You have to match the medium with the audience.”

Masich says such thinking is more common now, but in the late 1970s when he was in graduate school, he never encountered it until he went to a seminar for historical administration at Williamsburg, Va. He calls that event a “formative program” in his thinking of steering a museum.

In the long run, presenting history has a sense of entertainment, he says.

“You have to have a sense of the audience and know a good story when you see it, too,” he says.

In that sense, the staff at Fort Ligonier tries to thoroughly present the eight-year history of the wilderness outpost. It has galleries that deal with history, artwork of famous figures, and currently an overview of the Seven Years' War, the European name for the French and Indian War.

But, at the same time, it has a summer-long kids' day-camp experience, a Halloween Spooktacular, its happy-hour programs and an upcoming Night at the Fort geared at families. It also has been the site of concerts by the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra.

Executive director Urban says those programs all are designed to reach a variety of audiences.

“We have a responsibility to educate,” she says, “but to do that, we have to reach the people.”

For all such sites, the stories of the past have to be told with the techniques and tools of today.

“The didn't have Facebook then, but we use it now,” Urban says.

Bob Karlovits is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at bkarlovits@tribweb.com or 412-320-7852.