Shogren Consulting | Heritage, Museum & Cultural Planning

The Phillip Foster Farm and Jacknife-Zion-Horseheaven Historical Society of Eagle Creek, Oregon

We are beginning work with the Historical Society in August to help them develop a Long-Range Preservation Plan for their collections and buildings. We will also be offering workshops for staff and volunteers on collections care, housekeeping and implementing an environmental monitoring program for the buildings to develop baseline data for future projects.

This was a fantastic conference organized, planned, and hosted by the graduate students in the Museology Program at the University of Washington. Close to 100 people attended representing museums and academic programs from both coasts, the Midwest, Canada and China!

Significant news for us here at Shogren Consulting is the warm reception for our Principal Sam Shogren’s paper titled: Museums, Starbucks and the Third Place Way: Civil Society and the Revisioned Museum. Presenting in the first general session, Sam’s concepts of museums as Third Places, curtailing construction of new museums to seek new community partnerships and the emphasis on sustainability were influential throughout the conference.

Look here shortly for a link to a version of the paper Sam presented.

Can the arts and culture play a central role in revitalizing American cities? Over the past decade, a number of cities have answered this question affirmatively. For the most part, they have turned to big-ticket downtown cultural districts as the strategy to expand their “creative economy.” At the same time, skeptics like Joel Kotkin have ridiculed this approach as the creation of “the ephemeral city” that ignores thefundamentals of good city-building for the illusion of urban vitality.

Cultivating Natural Cultural Districts

Good Morning - Later today Sam will be presenting a draft of his paper for the Transforming Museums conference in Seattle before the students in the Arts Administration and Museum Studies Programs at the University of Oregon.

The paper’s draft titled: Museums, Starbucks, and the Third Place Way: the Museums Role in Civil Society proposes a new role for museums in our communities by   proposing that our real role is in fostering civil discourse concerning contemporary   topics and utilizing the museum’s collections to bring insights into the public debate.

Sam also argues that contemporary models of museum development and continued growth are not sustainable. The paper concludes with a new vision for museum in the 2st century as Third Places built upon a model of sustainability that envisions curtailed construction by the museum of new space (perhaps we have museum bloat?) that is replaced by community partnerships to build new museum spaces in new civic and commercial buildings taking the museum to the public.

Check back as a drafts of this exciting paper will be made available under the RESOURCES tab on this site!

Our Principal, Sam Shogren, was appointed to Washington County’s Arts, Heritage and Humanities Coalition by the Washington County Board of Supervisors in January of 2007. This month Sam assumed a leadership position within the Coalition by volunteering to steer the Coalition’s efforts at rewriting the Washington County’s Cultural Plan. The Coalition was formed at the County level in response to the formation of the Oregon Cultural Trust by the state legislature in 2001. Today the Coalition re-grants funds given the County by the Oregon Cultural Trust. And in accordance with the initial legislation of the Cultural Trust each county and tribe in Oregon must revisit and revise their cultural plan every 5 years. To contribute to the revision of the County plan, please contact Sam directly or through the County Cultural Coalition.

For more information please visit:

The Washington County Cultural Coalition Website at:
http://www.westsideculturalalliance.org/wccc/index.htm or,
the Oregon Cultural Trusts Website at:
http://www.culturaltrust.org/home/index.php