Middle Tennessee State University
A professional residency proposal presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for PhD in
Public History
By Kimberly Tucker
August 2011
In partnership with the Oklahoma History Center (OHC), I plan on working on several
projects in the Marketing Department, Education Department, and Exhibit/Curatorial
Department. I will assist in the development and implementation of a few educational
outreach trucks and traveling exhibits, a marketing plan for those education programs, and an
exhibit video for OHC’s new gallery to fulfill my professional residency requirement. I will be
working with the Education Director, Jason Harris, as my primary professional mentor and the
Marketing Director, Robin Davis, as my secondary professional mentor. This residency will
allow me to develop and hone a number of valuable skills in museum marketing, educational
outreach programs, exhibit design, video production, special events planning, and organizationwide communication. These skills that I will gain through my residency will help advance my
professional goals of becoming a museum marketer and eventually a museum curator. By
undertaking these diverse projects, this residency will enhance my professional training and
broaden my work skills, providing real world museum management experiences that will help
me fulfill my career aspirations.
Project Background
Over the last few decades, museum professionals have placed greater emphasis on
implementing education and marketing programs. In recent years there has been a trend of
museums radically redefining themselves in terms of their mission, their vision, their goals, and
what should constitute a museum. Until the 1970s, most museums were primarily collection
centered. Their function and purpose was to show the scientific wonders of the world, uplift
humanity to a desired perfection, demonstrate national glory, and increase and disperse
knowledge. It was not until the 20th century that museums began to redefine their function
and purpose. In fact, in 1917 John Cotton Dana observed that museums “did not make much
impression on the taste, manners or activities of those who visited them, and that they soon
would be either entirely neglected or very greatly changed in content, intent and activities.”1
There was a shift away from collection and display oriented museums to educational
programming. It became accepted that education was the primary function of museums. This
development occurred because Americans were placing “deep faith in public education both as
a political necessity and as a means of attaining technological excellence.”2 American museums
came to be seen as a public institution, which existed to serve the public good, uplift public
morals, and pioneer outreach programs (bringing the museum to the public). This shift and
radical redefinition of museums continued in the 1960s and 70s when the mentality of elitism
was challenged by the Civil Rights, counter-culture, and growth of the middle class. However,
the primary reason this revolution occurred is due to government cut backs on funding for
cultural institutions. Thus, in order for museums to compete for more funding, they had to
bring in new audiences, attract more people, turn to private sector/sponsors for funding, and
focus on education and educating the public.
Also, a greater emphasis on museum marketing and its importance in supporting this
education focus and the organization’s sustainability has just recently emerged. During the
1990s marketing in museums, which “requires careful diagnosis and analysis of current
environmental issues, eliminating any possible impact on the public, museum products, and
1
John Cotton Dana. The New Museum. (Elm Tree Press: Vermont, 1917), ix.
Edward Alexander. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. American
Association for State and Local History: 2007, 7.
2
museum resources,” was observed to “help museums arrange products that match the needs
of the current market.”3 This would allow museums, non-profit organizations, and cultural
institutions to stay relevant to customers during changing times and reach sustainability. Still,
during the decade, marketing personnel in museum settings “had not been used well and felt
isolated” and trends suggested “that museums did not contribute to the adoption of
marketing.”4 Even by 2005 some museums were still hesitant to implement modern marketing
strategies and shift “their role from static storehouses to providing interactive learning
environments for visitors.”5 Nevertheless, museum professionals are slowly recognizing that
they must enter the marketing realm and implement marketing strategies in order to meet
their accountability responsibilities, understand museum visitors/audiences, and compete
within the rapidly changing leisure industry. Also, because museum audiences have shifted
from “upper class to every class, museum collections could not focus only on subject matter
directed to specific people but had to focus on community-centered institutions.”6
Today, museums are beginning to pay more attention to underserved, low income,
rural/urban communities. They are also opening up their doors and educational efforts to
broader audiences. Additionally, museums and non-profit organizations are trying to
implement and use marketing techniques in order to reach sustainability, bring their mission
and vision to the public, and educate the masses. Still, museums have not reached their full
potential through marketing and educational programming.
Jin-Tsann Yeh and Chyong-Ling Lin. “Museum Marketing and Strategy: Directors’ Perception and Belief.”The
Journal of American Academy of Business, No. 2 (March 2005), 280.
4
Ibid., 280.
5
Ibid., 279.
6
Ibid., 280.
3
Project Goals
My residency and residency projects fall into this theme of education and marketing.
Through my partnership with the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (and at
times collaborating with several university-affiliated museums across the state), I will be
working on a variety of projects and endeavors that drive this emphasis on expanding
educational programs for broader audiences and implementing marketing techniques and plans
for all organization-wide departments. My projects include researching, creating, and
marketing education and exhibit activities and programs that focus on Oklahoma in World War
II, Oklahoma in space, and Oklahoma in the oil and business industry. As my primary project, I
will create, complete, and market two education trunks, one that focuses on Oklahoma in space
and the other that focuses on Oklahoma during WWII. I will be conducting historical
background research on the subjects, identifying hands-on items for the trunks that includes a
vendor list and prices, identifying images from research collections or public use images for use
in the trucks, identifying specific Oklahoma primary sources, creating a short paragraph
description of each object identified and purchased for the trunks, and creating 10 activities
and lesson plans for each trunk. For the World War II trunk, I will have additional research and
writing projects that include creating a two page description of Fort Sill, the Douglas Aircraft
Plant in Midwest City, and the McAlister Ammunitions Depot during WWII and their impact;
creating a two page narrative identifying POW camps in Oklahoma with associated images; and
creating a teacher annotated bibliography for additional sources for teacher enrichment. These
education outreach trunks will be developed for a younger audience (4 to 6 year olds) and be
available for schools, home school organizations, and other community institutions. This will
also expand OHC’s educational outreach programs to encompass subjects outside of their
current outreach emphasis on Native American and African American history. Thus, my work
will significantly expand the themes of school outreach. As part of my project, I will also be
completing a marketing database, creating marketing materials, and putting the marketing plan
I designed for the educational traveling exhibits into practice. The creation of education
outreach trunks, the development of marketing materials, and the implementation of a
marketing plan I will create to focus on the Education Department’s traveling exhibits will
further the mission and goals of the OHC to expand their audience base, create and maintain
community relations, and enhance the Marketing Department with new materials, plans, and
techniques.
Additionally, the OHC is designing and installing a new museum gallery that focuses on
Oklahoma’s Oil and Business. As part of my work at OHC, I will assist the Exhibit Curator, David
Davis, in the production of this gallery. Primarily, I will work on script development, research,
casting, and video production for one of the featured Steamboat Heroine exhibit videos. This
exhibit will feature interactive components and objects, like touchscreens and videos. There
are going to be 25 videos that are 2 minutes in length. I will conduct research on the boat,
what it did, why it was going through Oklahoma on the Red River, why it sank, as well as the
social and cultural aspects of the steamboat. Based on my research (which will be derived from
Louis C. Hunter’s Steamboats on the Western Rivers, primary source narratives, papers and
objects that survived the sinking, etc.), I will write five to ten of the 25 scripts and assist in
casting and video production. The scripts will focus on class and social structure, conditions on
the boat, how the boat operated as a business, cargo, what the boat did, jobs of crew
members, what passengers did, and life in the 1830s. All video casting, shooting, production,
and editing will be done in house.
Development of Professional Skills
In my coursework, I have focused on marketing in museums and non-profit
organizations, exhibit development, educational programs, and public programming. I have
also worked on creating a marketing plan for OHC’s traveling exhibits, which are a component
for their educational program. By working with OHC, I will be able to apply what I have learned
in a museum and marketing setting, interpret events and subjects in educational programs, an
exhibit, and a video, and then market these programs to a broader audience. These projects
will give me experience in museum marketing, educational programming, video production,
web design, and script writing. Not only will I gain skills in exhibit design, but I will participate in
the creation of a new gallery from demolition to installation to completion. I will also have the
opportunity to gain valuable experiences in education programming, public programming,
special events coordination, communication and presentation, and, most importantly, creating
and implementing marketing materials and plans for the education department and seeing
some return. By working in OHC’s Marketing Department, will develop valuable marketing
skills and see how marketing techniques are being applied to the museum setting. I will have
access to primary resources and other museums.
In terms of other projects, goals, and tasks at OHC, I will also be responsible for creating
marketing materials, attending marketing meetings with other non-profit marketing
departments, and participating and coordinating other education and public events, programs,
and activities.
Jason Harris and Robin Davis will serve as my professional mentors. I hope to gain a
greater understanding of how a museum educator, marketer, and exhibit curator for a museum
conduct their professional duties and how their jobs intertwine. I also hope to gainer a better
understanding on marketing in museums and directly apply this to my dissertation.
Additionally, I will work closely with the university- affiliated museums and OHC’s Marketing
Department to gather marketing research.
Project Timeline
I will begin work in September 2011 with Jason and Robin at the Oklahoma History
Center. During the fall, I will familiarize myself with the current education trunks, the current
marketing practices, and the beginning stages of the creation and development of the new
gallery and the exhibits within. I will research the subjects for two new trunks and identify the
information, activities, and materials to be used in the trunks. I will also complete a contact
directory that will be used for marketing OHC’s programs and events, as well as research items
and vendors to match the storyline of the future exhibit video on the steamboat Heroine. By
the end of the fall of 2011, I will have a rough draft of the traveling trunks, a completed
directory, and a list of the items for the video.
During the spring of 2012, I will complete the WWII and Space trunks, assist in the
production the exhibit video, and implement the marketing plan and materials for the traveling
exhibits. By August of 2012, a completed video and education trucks will be finished and a
marketing plan will be implemented.