Interpreting and Conserving Colonial Williamsburg

Robert C. Wilburn
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

I have been asked to speak about "Interpreting and Conserving Colonial Williamsburg." Colonial Williamsburg, as many of you know, is the restored 18^th century capital of Virginia. Virginia was England's oldest, richest and most populous of the American colonies; and Williamsburg served as Virginia's capital from 1699 until 1780 when Thomas Jefferson moved the capital to Richmond.

Today we present Williamsburg as a living, breathing town: a representation of how it existed around 1775 on the eve of the American Revolution. We are America's oldest and largest outdoor living history museum. People these days know Williamsburg as a town of 18^th century power and prominence, and - I hope - as a great place to vacation.

But there is a forgotten time in Williamsburg's history, the period from 1781 to 1926. During that time Williamsburg's star faded. The capital moved. The Civil War came and went. Residents left. The city slipped into quiet decline. Gas stations, auto dealers, and aging houses dotted Williamsburg's main avenue , Duke of Gloucester Street. A concrete-bordered median and telephone poles ran down its center.

So, what happened in 1926? 1926 was the start of what we at Colonial Williamsburg call "The Restoration." With the help of Reverend W.A.R. Goodwin, rector of Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church, a man named John D. Rockefeller Junior secretly purchased Williamsburg's Ludwell-Paradise House, which he called "the antique." And so began one of the largest projects of its kind ever undertaken in the Western hemisphere - the restoration of an entire town.

But why do it? Why restore an entire town? Rockefeller said that "The restoration of Williamsburg offered an opportunity to preserve the beauty of the city and its historic significance." But Rockefeller also went on to say that, "Perhaps an even greater value is the lesson that [Williamsburg] teaches of the patriotism and unselfish devotion of our forefathers to the common good."

In other words, preserving Williamsburg offered an opportunity to present its stories, its history and its lessons. That is what Colonial Williamsburg does today. We are a place of both preservation and presentation. We are a place where, just as Rockefeller's motto for Colonial Williamsburg later stated, the future may learn from the past.

But how do we do that? How do we create a museum that works? How do we strike that delicate balance between preservation and presentation? It is a question that all museums, and I am sure all of us in this room, struggle with every day.

I am sorry to tell you that I bring with me no magic answers. And what answers there are often change from year to year. But I think one of the answers that never changes though is focus - knowing what your fundamental mission is and sticking to it.

At Colonial Williamsburg, our mission has three parts. The first is preservation -- stewardship -- preserving the buildings and the artifacts for future generations. The second part of our mission is presentation -- outreach -- using our buildings and artifacts to reach as many people as possible, on-site and off, and with the story of the values and ideals that were born in Williamsburg. And the third part of our mission is financial - running Colonial Williamsburg in a responsible manner so that we have the resources to fulfill the other two parts of our mission.

All three are equally important. You cannot preserve a culture for museum purposes without presenting it. And you cannot do either if you do not have the finances to maintain yourself.

We are perhaps best known, at least within the museum community, for our restoration, preservation, and conservation work. Colonial Williamsburg is recognized worldwide as a leader in preservation.

Preservation philosophy has evolved since the 1920's, as you well know. Colonial Williamsburg has actively participated in that change. We continue to refine the methods and results of restoration in our Historic Area. We use subtle physical evidence to unravel how Virginia houses like that of Thomas Everard on Palace Green evolved through the 18^th and 19^th centuries. There, we employed microscopic paint analysis to interpret the colors Everard and his neighbors chose. But we are equally involved in conserving what has survived. We recently completed work on a small Historic Area house built in 1716 and much altered through the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Here the focus of our work was to preserve all the elements -- severely decayed though they were - regardless of whether they were 18^th century or later. There was no attempt to push the house back to an early 18^th century state, but rather to preserve it as it had passed down to us with its many changes and additions,. all of which contributed to its character.

Most of our outreach is now in this vein - helping other museums, private individuals and governments gently to preserve their own architectural legacy, generally dissuading them from harsh restorations.

When Historic Charleston in South Carolina was looking to rebuild after Hurricane Hugo, for example, Colonial Williamsburg staff and the Red Cross were among the only ones allowed in. Colonial Williamsburg experts have been summoned to Jamaica, Bermuda, and around the globe to assist with preservation and conservation projects.

We are currently working with Russia's Novgorod United Museum and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism there on a high-level exchange program. The program will help build tourism in this important and historic region of Russia without losing the visual and historic qualities that make the place distinctive.

Colonial Williamsburg will never lose sight of the paramount importance of conservation. However, we have spent considerable time and resources over the past year working on the presentation aspect of our history -- how we tell our stories.

Our world is changing. MTV, a new "family-friendly" Las Vegas, the Internet. As museums, we are competing for people's precious time. And whether or not we want to admit it, we are not just competing with other museums. We are competing with places like Yellowstone, Universal Studios, people's backyards, Washington, D.C. Disney has attractions opening this year in both Florida and California, and has spent over a billion dollars on each one.

We must come up with new and creative ways to get people to pay attention to us, to come to places like Williamsburg. But our job does not end there. Once we get them to visit, we must deliver on our promises.

Where visitors were once content to stroll Williamsburg's Duke of Gloucester street and admire our buildings, they now want to become part of the experience. They want to meet Thomas Jefferson...and Martha Washington. They want to take part in courtroom programs where they can learn about the "Americanization" of English law.

You and I may think that Williamsburg as a place, as a preserved and restored colonial capital, speaks strongly, but it does not speak by itself. It must be presented and interpreted if the future is truly to learn from the past. If no one comes to receive the message, we have failed in our mission.

To address this and to meet our competition head on, we have launched a whole new Colonial Williamsburg: new programs, new historical characters,. a bold and aggressive advertising campaign. Some call this "Disney-ing." We call it reality.

This year's advertising campaign is centered on the belief that Colonial Williamsburg is the most important vacation a family can take. The new ad campaign is unusual for Colonial Williamsburg in that we have used humor and irony to reach out to a much wider audience, to encourage people to visit America's real birthplace for their vacation rather than just another amusement park or a virtual reality movie set.

We cannot excite, engage and inspire our visitors about the ideals and values that were born in Williamsburg or teach them about the origins of a democratic society if we do not have any visitors.

Of course, Colonial Williamsburg is not on the verge of having no visitors but we do rely heavily on visitors to support our operations and our preservation efforts. Unfortunately, over the last decade or so our numbers had been declining and then it has gone flat. The results of our recent changes, though, are promising. Last year we had our best single-year increase in ticket sales in more than a decade. Visitor feedback has been quite favorable.

Just last weekend, on March 21st, we opened our 1998 season and with it even more new programs, more hands-on activities, more costumed interpreters, more opportunities for families.

Our visitors this year will feel they really have stepped back in time 223 years to the eve of the American Revolution.

Throughout our Historic Area an engaging mix of sights and sounds helps visitors reconnect with America's past and become active participants in 18^th century life. They can join the Revolutionary militia and train for an upcoming battle against the British, take part in the vote for independence from the British crown, even volunteer as a juror at the trial of one of Blackbeard's pirates - who were tried in Williamsburg.

Elsewhere, visitors can share a compassionate moment with a slave who longs to see her children again or ask Thomas Jefferson and George Washington why they were willing to risk death by committing treason. Children can dress up as colonial boys and girls, fall in line behind the fife and drum corps or learn to dance the minuet.

We have added a "connective thread" to Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area experience.

Over four days, daily "headlines" recreating four significant days in Virginia's history will set the tone for conversations, activities, and events throughout the restored capital. Each day's events trace the decline of British influence in North America culminating in Virginia's declaration of independence from Great Britain on May 15, 1776.

In addition, this year we are grouping our programs in three major areas to better enable us to control the flow of visitors and reduce the wear and tear on our buildings. With millions of visitors annually, our buildings have more people going through them in one year alone than in all their previous centuries combined. That is a concern when you have, as we do, 88 original 18^th century buildings and hundreds of others reconstructed on their original foundations.

We must take care that as we change to meet the growing needs of our visitors, we do not harm our buildings, and that we do not compromise the integrity of our Historic Area.

All of this is part of the balancing act I spoke of earlier : taking care of your place and its artifacts while at the same time communicating the messages and lessons those artifacts teach to as many people as possible.

I am confident Colonial Williamsburg is on the right track. We have always had a style that in museum terminology is called "environmental." We are conceived of as a whole town, not a collection of separate historic house museums. Objects in their larger context are our specialty.

The Governor's Palace is intended to be seen from a distance as well as from the inside. The whole, as we see it, is truly greater than the sum of its parts. And I suppose that is what all of this boils down to. That for a museum -- just as it is for non-museum historic communities -- the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That while preservation and presentation are important in their own rights, they are much stronger when viewed together, like partners in a delicate ballet where each must work in concert with the other.

If we have not preserved our artifacts we will have nothing to present. But if we do not take care with our presentations and if we fail to reach people, then our preservation efforts will have been for nothing. It is only by careful attention to all of what we do that we will deliver on that promise, now and for the future.