This week we're sitting down with Susan McMahon, Executive Director of the Landmark Trust USA, a nonprofit organization that preserves historic properties and makes them available as short-term vacation rentals. Susan has a background in community development and historic preservation. Historic preservation has always been a professional pursuit and a personal passion of hers. 

On this week's PreserveCast we're joined by Kathryn Mayer, who built a searchable database of 19th-century coroner’s records with the Baltimore City Archives. We're chatting about her project and more about how to evaluate historic information. 

Today we're joined by Marion Werkheiser and Will Cook from Cultural Heritage Partners, a law firm that works to leverage humanity’s past to create a better future. With policy, funding, and staffing issues in the current political climate, the firm is working to educate the community and advocate for cultural heritage and historic preservation so our places are protected. Join us as we talk Section 106, executive orders, and other legal matters affecting the preservation community.

https://www.culturalheritagepartners.com/

We're excited to sit down with Cristiana Pena, a digital communications expert in the preservation world. Cristiana is the social media director at CIRCA, where she creates an online community of old house enthusiasts by featuring real estate listings of historic properties. 

Today we're chatting with Amy Kehs, a brand strategist and communications expert for museums. She has owned Kehs Communications since 2000 and has worked for the most renowned and well-loved museums in the Washington, D.C. area. Her goal is to ensure that museums thrive in the next century and she hopes people will come to love museums as much as she does. She is the creator of the Love my Museum suite of services, free and affordable support for museum professionals, including the Love my Museum podcast.

Learn more: https://www.lovemymuseum.com/

Today we're talking with Dr. Mary Anne Hunting and Dr. Kevin D. Murphy about their new book, Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism, detailing the history of the women architects who left their enduring mark on American Modernism

Dr. Mary Anne Hunting is an architectural historian and the author of Edward Durell Stone: Modernism’s Populist Architect. Dr. Kevin D. Murphy is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities and professor and chair in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Vanderbilt University. His books include Jonathan Fisher of Blue Hill, Maine: Commerce, Culture, and Community on the Eastern Frontier.

Today we're joined by Laura Zimmerman, Chair of the Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage, and Liz Shatto, Executive Director of the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area, about the history of the organization, this year's Washington County House and Garden Pilgrimage (Saturday, June 7th), and engaging the public around history and historic places. 

For more information and tickets:

https://www.mhgp.org/washington-county

Today we're talking with Hank Levine is the President of the Bethesda (Maryland) Meeting House Foundation and the Secretary of the Bethesda Historical Society. He was a prime mover in the Foundation’s 2023 purchase of the Bethesda Meeting House site and leads its ongoing efforts to preserve/restore the site and turn it into an active community asset.  He regularly leads walking tours of Bethesda and is a frequent speaker on the history of the community.

Learn more: www.bethesdameetinghouse.org

Today we're talking with Jeffrey Ricketts, who, in July of 2022, took ownership of Mullen’s Folly in Calvert, Maryland. Mullen’s Folly is a log house located in northeastern Cecil County, Maryland. It was built possibly before 1789. It operated as a general store from 1789-1823 servicing the surrounding community with a wide variety of goods sourced in Philadelphia and Wilmington. After 1823, the building was converted into a house. From 1859-2022 the house was owned by four generations of the Berriker-FitzGerald family, until it was sold to Jeffrey, who is currently restoring the building to its late 18th-century appearance, and is rediscovering all of its lost history. 

Learn more: https://www.eastnottinghamantiques.com/about-6

Today we're talking with Dr. Cheryl Fogle-Hatch, founder of MuseumSenses LLC, a consulting firm that helps museums develop multi-sensory exhibits for everyone, regardless of their visual acuity. Creating exhibit content with tactile and audio components engages blind people with history, the arts, and sciences. Exposing sighted people to tactile and audio content creates an integrated experience for all visitors.

Dr. Fogle-Hatch works with historic sites to improve their tactile experiences. Projects include:

•           The Please Touch tour at Macculloch Hall Historical Museum in Morristown New Jersey

•           Revolutionary Anthology: Power of Place exhibit at Fort Ticonderoga, New York

•           Making History Accessible: Toolkit for Multisensory Interpretation, a digital publication produced by the Intrepid Museum and the NYU Ability Project.