Housing Our History: A Search for Place, Past & Community The best community-based museums offer inspirational experiences, are evocative teaching tools, epitomize historic preservation, and are a refuge for local knowledge like few things left in our culture. To reaffirm the importance of these, our most authentic and civic-minded museums, Bill Hosley has embarked on a campaign titled Housing Our History: America’s Search for Place, Past & Community. Drawn from an investigation of hundreds of mostly small local and regional museums this program examines the role of historic houses, community collections and historical societies in fostering sense of place, civic pride and community by showcasing extraordinary examples in New England, New York and beyond. The variety and diversity of content, storylines and presentation styles is remarkable and reminds us that the quality of biodiversity so important to the survival of life is no less important to the survival of freedom and the 1001 communities and locales that make up America. These museums preserve and present half of our nation’s cultural patrimony. Their importance and contributions are too often overlooked and underappreciated.

1. Housing Our History: A Search for Place, Past & Community By Bill Hosley, Terra Firma Northeast wnhosley@snet.net

4. Say What?

8. 2 Sheldons / 2 Museums: Middlebury, VT & Deerfield, MA