Rouviere Media

Choose a style for your family museum display that is compatible with the story you want to tell, the artifacts, and the space. Include typefaces for any labels, frames, cases in your consideration of appropriate style.

This blog focuses on planning your museum display.

Your next task is to figure out where to put the displays in your home. Make the decision based on the spaces you have available, the objects, documents, photographs, maps and other items you want to include in each display, and perhaps architectural elements. The decision as to where to put your family museum exhibits is important because the context in which you place your exhibits will be part of the information the viewers need to understand the message of each exhibit.

Once you have determined what themes you want to highlight in your family museum, choose the techniques you want to use to display your heirlooms.

Hurricane Irene canceled Civil War events in North Carolina, where I live. Fortunately, I was out of town. I was thousands of miles to the west, arranging to transport a pile of logs that once were a cabin built by Civil War veteran Elijah Adams McGregor.

Here are some more suggestions for possible themes that can tie your heirlooms together in a family history display:

As promised, this week's blog shows in photographs how to organize your family heirlooms around particular themes for display.

In previous blogs, we have talked about inventorying your family heirlooms, writing a brief history of your family and writing a statement of what your family history is about. This week we talk about how to use those documents to create themes for your museum.

In last week's blog, we discussed writing a 3-4 page history of your family to use in planning your family museum. Using this history, write a statement of the purpose of your museum. What are you interested in preserving and displaying? What don't you want to collect, display and preserve in your museum?

The last blog talked about how to write a brief history of your family. This blog talks about how to use that history as your vision for your family museum.