9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Concurrent Sessions
Making the Most of Media & Technology in Exhibits on a Budget 
Incorporating media and technology into exhibits can be a budgetary challenge. But don’t despair—you can get fun interactivity and engaging animation with a modest investment. By keeping your interpretive goals clear, planning a variety of visitor experiences, and using techniques that we’ll share, you can include computer games, interactive activities, and animated film for maximum impact with minimal cost. We’ll provide pointers and show case studies. Come to play and learn!
Chair: Shelby Marshall, Solutions Architect, FableVision, MA

The New Hampshire Membership Challenge: Strategies for Growing Membership that Work
In 2008, the Finlay Foundation challenged New Hampshire museums, historical societies, and libraries to find innovative ways to increase their membership. The most successful received grants from the foundation. This panel features institutions that rose to the challenge and increased their membership numbers 100%, 200%, even 694% in a single year! Following the presentation the session will be open to questions about how these organizations achieved their impressive results as well as what strategies were tried that didn’t work.
Co-chairs: Michelle Stahl, Executive Director, Peterborough Historical Society, NH; Gail Nessell Colglazier, Executive Director, American Independence Museum, NH

Riding out the Storm and Sustainability: Getting Your Museum Through Economic Hardship and Beyond
How does a museum go about marshalling its resources to get it through difficult economic times? More importantly, how does an institution build autonomy to ensure long term stability and growth? Subjects that will be covered include: creating compelling programming, identifying target constituencies, endowments, capital campaigns, and developing and refining the role of volunteers, paid staff, trustees and contractors to get the most out of your resources. This session is designed for museum staff, trustees and volunteers.
Chair: Mark Wilkins, Director/Curator, The Chatham Historical Society/Atwood House Museum, MA

The Romance and the Reality: Curating at Small Museums
The romantic view of a curator is often one of a scholar researching and studying his or her collection, organizing exhibitions, publishing catalogs, and presenting all of it to the public in the museum setting—oftentimes, nothing could be further from the truth. Join three Nantucket curators, from three different museums, as they lead a roundtable discussion of the reality of the curator’s role in the 21st century. This discussion will be particularly useful to new curators but all are welcome.
Chair: James Lansing, Curator, Egan Maritime Institute, MA

Vision = Value: Linking Mission to Marketing
Museums’ success depends in large part on the strength of their missions. But what if members and visitors at your institution don’t understand what you do— or don’t (yet) care? In this session, you’ll see how the Fuller Museum of Craft and the Harvard Museum of Natural History, two wildly different institutions with wildly different missions, successfully tackled the challenge of creating mission-based messages to drive attendance, membership, and giving. Leave with a checklist for how to put your mission into motion at your institution.
Co-chairs: Tamsen McMahon, Director of Digital and Strategic Initiatives; Sametz Blackstone Associates, MA; Brandon Walsh, Manager, Strategy, Sametz Blackstone Associates, MA

Where to Find Exhibit Art?
Museums of all sizes are exploring the current trend of integrating visual and performance art into history and science exhibitions. Including art in any type of exhibition can truly inspire and enlighten visitors. This session will examine this trend and answer the following questions: What types of original art are appropriate to include? Where can you locate art? How can art be incorporated into an exhibition in a way that enhances the primary message?
Chair: John Quatrale, Principal, ArchivalExhibitions.com and Museum Director, Water Works Museum (opening 2010), MA

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Opening Session
Welcome from Gail Nessell Colglazier, President, New England Museum Association

Veterans Day Observance
The Opening Session will commence as we recognize the sacrifices of our nation’s veterans and members of the armed forces.

Keynote Speaker:
Lewis M. Feldstein, President,
New Hampshire Charitable Foundation
Building Social Capital
The most obvious and prized gifts that a museum brings to its visitors and host community–the exposure to ideas, works of art, lessons in natural history, the sciences, local history–can cause us to overlook or undervalue the more subtle but equally vital contributions made by a museum to the overall health of the community. A well run and designed museum can strengthen the community’s stock of social capital, the networks of trust and reciprocity among members of the community. Over the past decade the research of scholars across the country and abroad have documented the powerful impact of social capital on such key community measures as the health, general optimism of citizens, safety, and local business climate. Lewis Feldstein, who has worked closely for the past decade with Dr. Robert Putnam, the world’s leading scholar on social capital and author of Bowling Alone, will talk with us on the role of museums in building social capital in a community, discussing examples drawn from museums across the country.

NHCF is New Hampshire’s statewide community foundation, a powerful force for change and the principal source of venture capital for the state’s nonprofit community.

Feldstein worked with the civil rights movement in Mississippi and served for seven years in senior staff positions to New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay. Prior to coming to NHCF, Feldstein served as Provost of the Antioch/New England Graduate School. He is a graduate of Brown University and holds a Master’s in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University. Among his singular achievements were a seven-year tenure as the MC of the International Zucchini Festival, and a stint as wine steward and personal assistant to John Wayne on his yacht in the Mediterranean.

Feldstein serves on the Boards of Directors of the Independent Sector and the National Center for Family Philanthropy. He Co-chaired the Harvard University three-year Executive Seminar Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America. He has received six Honorary Doctorates. Feldstein was selected as one of the 100 people Who Shaped New Hampshire by the Concord Monitor, and one of the ten most influential people in New Hampshire by Business NH Magazine in 2001. He lives in Hancock, New Hampshire.

National Update from AAM
Carl R. Nold, President and CEO, Historic New England, and Chair of the Board, American Association of Museums, will discuss initiatives that AAM is developing in response to the issues facing America’s museums.

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
Nashua Conference Opening Lunch
It’s all about the networking! Meet more colleagues, reconnect with old friends, have fun and strengthen your ties in this great big, talented, generous museum community that we call the NEMA Family!

12:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Directors and Trustees Lunch Program
It’s a Green Day!
Feeling a bit black and blue about being green and you want to be red, white and blue? Whether you lead an historic house or a new LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified facility, there are tremendous opportunities. Utility technology is rapidly advancing. Federal agendas can support your work. Staff can be passionate about green operations. Donors are compelled by the savings – both to your bottom line and the earth. Following opening remarks, we will share stories – both challenges and successes – to raise our collective wisdom.
Co-chairs: Phelan Fretz, Executive Director, ECHO at the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, VT; Pieter Roos, Executive Director, Newport Restoration Foundation, RI

Pre-registration is required. Registration is limited.

1:15 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.
Dessert and Coffee in Exhibit Hall
Hosted by
Hosted by Tru Vue, Inc.

1:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.
Afternoon Off-Site Sessions
Pre-registration is required. Registration is limited. Fee of $10 includes transportation.

Afternoon in Lowell
Everything Old Is New Again
Visit the new American Textile History Museum to hear the inside story and lessons learned in the design and fabrication of Textile Revolution: An Exploration Through Space and Time. President and CEO Jim Coleman will be your guide to this magnificent new interactive exhibition on the art, science and history of textiles. Go behind-the-scenes with the curators to see ATHM’s extraordinary textile and costume collection, and view rare documents and unusual ephemera with the librarian of the renowned Osborne Library.
At the New England Quilt Museum, the curatorial staff will present iconic quilts from the permanent collection that, viewed together, provide an overview of the history of quilting through 150 years. Enjoy the delightfully whimsical exhibit Master Pieces: Haberdashery Textiles in Antique Quilts, a compilation of graphic and visually compelling American quilts made from menswear fabrics such as suiting, shirting, socks, and ties—materials often dismissed as utilitarian, resourcefully recycled by quilters.
Co-chairs: Linda Carpenter, Director of Advancement, American Textile History Museum, and Connie Colom, Executive Director, New England Quilt Museum

Afternoon in Manchester
Exhibit Development: The Team Process
Join us for a hands-on session on team exhibit development using a process of message/design development. How do you choose, refine and develop an exhibit topic in an egalitarian way? How do you work together in a creative team to frame the content of an exhibition?

Explore these issues with Jan Crocker and her team in a half-day workshop at the Millyard, home to the SEE Science Center and the Millyard Museum of the Manchester Historic Association. Participants will work in groups to develop exhibit concepts, creating messages that become the guideposts for identifying, sorting, and modeling exhibit content. This workshop welcomes participants from all museums and is especially directed to those working on new exhibit teams.
Chair: Jan Crocker, President, Jan Crocker LLC, MA

1:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.
Double Session
Marketing in Web 2.0: Using Social Networking to Promote Your Museum and Engage Audiences
The first half of this session will introduce the concept of Web 2.0—that is, the cultural shift towards user-created and highly-personalized content—and what this means for your internet marketing strategy. We’ll provide demographic information for social networking sites plus an essential checklist for managing your online presence.
The second half of the session will introduce the basics of creating a Facebook fan page, Wikipedia entries, a Twitter feed plus how to leverage photo and video sharing sites such as Flickr and YouTube. We’ll provide strategies and ideas for using these social media sites to promote events at a moment’s notice and engage audiences.
Co-chairs: Kate Burgess, Curatorial Assistant, Peabody Historical Society, MA; Jason Smith, Managing Director and Chief Creative Officer, OHO Interactive, MA

1:45 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions
The Care and Curation of Contemporary Collections for Small Museums
How does one ascertain the vision of any given contemporary artist regarding the preservation of their artistic intent? Can one predict the rate of change of contemporary art as time progresses? What are the best ways to document the condition of contemporary art? How much do preventive conservation measures cost to a museum? How do concerns about the stability of materials impact acquisitions?
Chair: Ingrid A. Neuman, Museum Conservator, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

Change Brings Opportunity
Things have changed—again! How have recent changes in the economy and the way people make travel decisions affected museum and cultural organization marketing and development programs? This session will focus on changes in the hospitality industry, in the expectations of the public visitor and how these changes affect your business. Learn about the implications for how we do business and what opportunities there are for you to increase your market share. This session will be of interest to those working in museums of all sizes, historic houses and hybrid cultural organizations.
Co-chairs: Mary Kelley, Principal, The Field Organization, MA; Chris Pappas, Owner, Open the Door, MA

Essentials for Cultural Collections: Space Planning and Environments
Storage is a constant problem in cultural institutions, whether you are planning for a new facility or want to update your current storage area. What do we need to think about in regard to safety, security and optimum use? What do we need to understand and remember when it comes to the environment? This session will focus on the basics of maintaining “good” storage for any collection. In 2008, the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts presented a two-day symposium on storage basics. If you were unable to make the symposium, this is the chance to hear from the two main guest speakers, James Reilly of the Image Permanence Institute and Walter Crimm of Ewing Cole.
Chair: Melissa Wilson, Park Ranger, Adams National Historical Park, MA

Looking Through a New Lens: Interdisciplinary Programs (even on a small budget)
How do you offer programs to entice and engage visitors of varying ages and interests? How do you incorporate multiple learning styles in a way that’s central to your mission and not overwhelmingly expensive? How is science linked to art, or history to music? Open to all, this session offers perspectives from science and history educators, will offer ideas for designing interdisciplinary programs, and will include hands-on activities.
Chair: Meg Winikates, Associate Director of Education, The Discovery Museums, MA

Reinventing Your Site: How One Small Museum Repackaged Itself
Explore how the Noah Webster House worked with its community, staff, consultants, and Board to repackage the way it shares its mission and creates greater value within the community. A museum director, guest curator, and filmmaker will take you through their processes and demonstrate the final products. This program will address the following questions: Why and how do you reinvent your institution? What intellectual, funding, and physical challenges are involved in this process? How do you make it an inclusive approach?
Chair: Christopher I. Dobbs, Executive Director, Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society, CT

Small Museum—Big Partner: Maine and NASA on Their Way to Pluto
A zero-budget community project in rural Maine breaks world records for three dimensional, single-scale Solar System models. One man’s vision and hundreds of people build a 40-mile-long drive-by exhibit. Learn how the Maine Solar System Model was organized, designed, and completed; how the educational component has grown; and how the model created grant opportunities from NASA and aligned the Northern Maine Museum of Science with the nine-and-a-half-year New Horizons mission to Pluto and Beyond.
Chair: Jeanie L. McGowan, Astronomy and Space Science Outreach Coordinator, Northern Maine Museum of Science at University of Maine at Presque Isle

3:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions
Hear ye, Hear ye: “Sustainable” Historic House Museum Is Not an Oxymoron
Sustainable historic house museums are sustainable in large part because of their commitment to maintaining the public’s trust while delivering exceptional value. To better understand the characteristics that set successful house museums apart from those that may be facing peril, and to learn more about transferable success stories taking place in other institutions, join us for a conversation about the recently published American Association for State and Local History technical leaflet titled, “How Sustainable Is Your Historic House Museum.”
Chair: Terry Dickinson, Special Assistant to the CEO, The Preservation Society of Newport County, RI

How to Win Friends and Influence People
The lessons of Dale Carnegie’s 1936 bestseller still offer valuable advice in our 21st century world of email, social networking and the Internet. Making the case for your museum relies not only on having an arsenal of strong arguments, but also on building and maintaining relationships with key individuals and organizations. Panelists will share successful (and not so successful) approaches to winning over supporters for their institution.
Chair: Eileen Goldspiel, Director, External Relations, American Association of Museums, DC

How Well Do You Know Your Audience? 
While focus groups are often seen as a technique reserved for corporations, they can also be extremely useful for museums wishing to better understand and connect with their communities and can aid in a wide range of activities, from creating interpretation strategies to fundraising. Recent case studies will be reviewed and attendees will leave with tools to incorporate focus groups into their own planning processes and utilize the information that they generate.
Chair: Stefanie Muscat, Principal, Bevara, MA

Impress the Press!
How do you get local and regional reporters to cover events at your museum? What is the best way to maintain a good relationship with the editor? In this session you will learn the answers to these questions as well as learn about the most attractive press materials to share—either electronically or in print. The fundamentals of writing a great press release will also be reviewed. This is a good session for people in smaller organizations who may not have formal training in public relations but who are responsible for it in their museums.
Chair: Andrea Carneiro, Communications Manager, The Preservation Society of Newport County, RI

More Than Just a Pretty Label: Designing Exhibitions for Different Learning Styles
Whether large or small, we want our exhibitions to be meaningful to visitors of diverse ages and backgrounds. One way to meet the challenge is to create designs that address a wide variety of learning styles. This participatory workshop will blend a little of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences with practical suggestions for low-tech interactive exhibition components. Participants will work together in small groups to explore their personal museum experiences and brainstorm creative components for each other’s new exhibitions.
Co-chairs: Susan Twombly (MS, Early Childhood Education), Director of the Infant Toddler Children’s Center, MA; Will Twombly, Principal, Spokeshave Design, MA

Things You Should Know! Legal Issues for Small to Mid-Sized Museums
When it comes to legal issues, do you feel like you are walking a tightrope without a net? Museums are complex organizations, encompassing collections, trustees, volunteers, donors, and visitors. Legal issues abound related to employment practices, property acquisitions, contracts, and visitor incidents. This session will provide an overview of museum law, which will benefit all museum professionals. Learn the questions you should ask and the action you should take to keep a small legal issue from becoming a major mess.
Chair: Nina Zannieri, Executive Director, Paul Revere Memorial Association, MA

Want to Meet More of Your Independent Museum Professional (IMP) Colleagues? Try “Speed Dating!”
Broaden your contacts in the IMP community at this fun and lively session, which borrows techniques from speed dating. Both new and experienced independent museum professionals are welcome. At the start of the session, you’ll receive a list of “dates” and will have five minutes to spend with each one. A moderator will serve as time-keeper. Further information, including a short questionnaire to fill out and return to the session organizers, will be sent to you after registration. 
Chair: Sue Schopp, Independent Copywriter & Marketing Consultant for Museums, MA

Pre-registration is required. Registration is limited.

Evening Events

Exhibit Hall Reception
5:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m.
Don't miss this opportunity to visit the exhibit booths and learn about wonderful museum products and services. Enjoy delicious hors d'oeuvres and meet with friends old and new!

Directors and Trustees Dinner at the Currier Museum of Art
7:00 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
The Currier Museum of Art invites directors and trustees for a dinner reception with special tours of the museum’s recent expansion. In March 2008 the Currier Museum of Art opened a 33,000 square-foot addition design by Ann Beha Architects of Boston which includes a new lobby, three new galleries, two classrooms, a 180 seat auditorium, and the dramatic Winter Garden where dinner will be held. Tours highlight recently reinstalled galleries housing the distinguished collections of American and European painting, sculpture and decorative arts. The special exhibitions Brett Weston: Out of the Shadows and Evolution of a Shared Vision: The David and Barbara Stahl Collection will also be open for viewing before dinner. The Currier’s museum shop will be open for guests to visit before dinner.

Registration fee of $55.00 per person includes transportation, hors d’oeuvres, dinner buffet, home-style desserts, and 2 complimentary drinks, as well as guided tours of the galleries. Pre-registration is required.

Sponsored by Museum Search & Reference

An Evening at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center
7:00 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
Explore, discover, be inspired…celebrate the International Year of Astronomy with our staff and your colleagues at the new McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, a lively educational science center featuring 21st century interactive exhibits on aviation, astronomy, and Earth and space sciences.

The evening begins with a half-hour social with light hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar, followed by a delicious dinner in our new Atrium space.

After dinner, guests will have a chance to explore the exciting exhibit areas and experience a show in the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium. The evening will conclude with telescope viewing, weather permitting.

Pre-registration is required. Registration fee of $50.00 includes dinner and transportation.