Max van Balgooy

Bio

Max A. van Balgooy teaches museum management, community engagement, project management, sustainability, and the interpretation of historic sites. His teaching, consulting, and research examine how museums and historic places connect mission, audiences, stories, places, staffing, governance, and resources to create meaningful public value.

A nationally recognized scholar-practitioner in museum management and historic site interpretation, van Balgooy focuses on the practical challenges facing museums, historic houses, cultural organizations, and public history institutions. His work asks how organizations make strategic choices about what stories to tell, who they serve, how visitors experience historic places, and what level of ambition is sustainable within available capacity. He is especially interested in visitor experience, community engagement, interpretation of complex histories, implementation, volunteer and labor systems, and the relationship between capital projects, facilities, and long-term institutional sustainability.

Van Balgooy has more than 35 years of experience in museums, historic preservation, heritage tourism, and historic sites, including senior positions at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum. Through Engaging Places, LLC, he continues to work with museums, historic sites, statewide agencies, national associations, and public institutions on interpretive planning, visitor experience assessment, strategic planning, community engagement, facilitation, governance, and sustainability.  Recent projects have included the Mercer Museum, Virginia State Capitol, Rancho los Cerritos, and Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage.

He is co-editor, with Ken Turino, of Interpreting Christmas at Historic Sites and House Museums and Reimagining Historic House Museums: New Approaches and Proven Solutions and editor of Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites.  He serves on the board of the GW Museum and editorial board of Curator: The Museum Journal.  

Current Research

• Interpretation as a management discipline for museums and historic sites
  Visitor experience, civic learning, and community engagement at historic places
  Implementation readiness, volunteer systems, and organizational change in small and mid-sized museums
• Capital projects, facility life cycles, and sustainability at historic sites
• Engaging History: A Guide to Community Involvement for House Museums and Historic Sites with Ken Turino.

Publications

Books:

• Interpreting Christmas at Museums and Historic Sites, co-edited with Ken Turino, Historic New England (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024)
• Reimagining Historic House Museums: New Approaches and Proven Solutions, co-edited with Ken Turino, Historic New England (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)
• Interpreting African American History and Culture at History Museums and Historic Sites, foreword by Lonnie Bunch (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015)

Articles and Chapters:

• “Turning Points: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Change.” In The American Association for State and Local History Guide to Making Public History in the 21st Century by Bob Beatty (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).
• “Six Ways to Engage Audiences,” Museum (July/August 2017)
• “Embezzlement: Is it Our Dirty Little Secret?” History News (Spring 2017).
• “Creating a 21st Century House Museum.” In The Museum Blog Book (Museums Etc., 2017).
• “Historic House Museums in the 21st Century,” “Mission,” “Vision,” and “Values,” Encyclopaedia of Local History, 3rd Edition (2017).
• “We Need to Move the Goal Posts.” In Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States, edited by Max Page and Marla Miller (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016)
• “Turning Points: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Change,” History News 68:2 (Spring 2013), 7-13.
• “Historic House Museums in the 21st Century” and “National Trust for Historic Preservation,” Encyclopaedia of Local History, 2nd Edition (2012).
• “Embezzlement: Is it Our Dirty Little Secret?” Exhibitionist, 31 no. 2 (Fall 2012): 70-4.
• “Crisis or Transition? Diagnosing Success at Historic Sites,” Forum Journal 22:3 (Spring 2008), 17-24.
• “Creating Award-Winning School Programs,” Forum Journal 19:1 (Fall 2004), 31-8

Education

BA in History, Pomona College
MA in History, University of Delaware (Hagley Fellow)
Early American History & Material Culture, Historic Deerfield Summer Program
Attingham Summer School for the Study of Historic Houses & Collections
Newport Summer School, Victorian Society of America
Royal Collection Studies, Attingham Trust

Professional Organizations

• Editorial board, Curator Journal
• Member of:
  • The American Alliance of Museums
  • Organization of American Historians
  • American Association for State and Local History
  • The National Council on Public History
  • International Council of Museums