While on the road last week, one visit prompted the question of whether it was necessary for a historical organization to operate a museum to be a “good historical organization.” Most of Minnesota’s historical organizations do operate a museum as those organizations are collecting institutions that want to share history through artifacts. In a sense, sometimes a museum with exhibits is the mark of being a historical organization. There’s no question that the public can connect with history through artifacts in educational exhibits, which must be housed somewhere. See the discussion on Pieces of History, for example. However, there’s also no question that museums can be quite costly to operate. How should a new organization weigh the benefits and costs of collecting, exhibiting, and operating a museum? Can a historical organization be solid without a collection or museum in which to exhibit?

Many historical organizations have architectural remnants in collections: cornerstones, stain glass windows, courthouse banisters, steeples, brackets, doors, decorative plaster and terra cotta to begin a possibly endless list of salvaged icons from buildings of a lost cultural landscape. All of these pieces of history are challenging to interpret as they are out of context in the sense that the building to which they had belonged is gone. Perhaps readers can respond to the following two questions:

• Under what circumstances should an organization accept an architectural remnant?
• If there is an architectural remnant in your collection now, how do you evaluate whether or not to retain it as part of the permanent collection? How might you use the object to tell the story of your community?