Rouviere Media

As you have been working on your display themes, you undoubtedly have been considering where  you will put each of your displays. Perhaps in some cases, you started by considering the space. This is perfectly fine and may be a preferable place to start if you are planning to have your museum in a specific space or to furnish a historical family home. If one of your major themes was to recreate your grandmother’s parlor, then the space has been a prime consideration from the beginning. Now is the time to consider the space in detail, preferably while you are standing in it with your list of themes and artifacts and a sketch pad and measuring tape.  If you are very lucky and have a large house,  you can designate an entire room or a history corner for your displays. Most of us, however,  have to work our museum in wherever  we can, and this can actually make it better.  My home has 1,700 square feet, so we display our museum in several spots. We have a little nook in the master bedroom that is our museum corner. In it, we keep a collection of antique office items such as an old telephone, Underwood typewriter, old ledger books, glasses, and other small items that look as if someone had left her desk and would be back soon.

That area also has a shelf or two with antique toys and other children’s items. On the wall near our sewing cabinet in the same room is a shadow box with a collection of antique sewing items that belonged to my grandmother.

In the living room, we display my great great grandparents’ organ. My husband discovered a family photograph of my great great grandparents and their children that had the organ in the background, establishing that it went back two generations earlier than I had known and which branch of the family had owned it. An hour of research on the Internet on antique organs pinned down its age to between 1885 and 1900, the dates the organ company whose name is inscribed on it was in business.

Some of the best locations for parts of your family museum are foyers, dens, family or living rooms and bedrooms.  Look for natural places  to display your family’s heirlooms, and keep the displays simple. Photographs, documents and jewelry are three items that are often linked to important events. Displayed together in a shadow box, they become more meaningful than when they are apart.

Walk through your home, considering all of the themes you have chosen and where they would best fit in terms of size, relationship to the space, environmental considerations (don’t put heirlooms in a bathroom where they would be exposed to damaging moisture or right across from a large window that exposes them to hours of direct sunlight that can  damage them),  and  spirit.  Some choices are obvious good ones and should be noted down immediately.  Other choices such as putting a display down low can be eliminated immediately if you have a chewy puppy or a small child.  These leaves you with a realistic view of what you have to work with in terms of space.

No one wants to live in a home that looks like a museum,  so we have to be creative about making our displays livable.  Some displays and heirlooms naturally belong in certain rooms. My grandmother’s kitchen display, for example,  belongs --  where else? In our kitchen. Our kitchen has become a tribute to early 20th century cooking. We cook on my grandmother’s 1933 Home Comfort cookstove,  which we have converted to electricity. We use her Hoosier cabinet for a baking center and store cereal and snacks in an old cupboard my great great grandfather built. My grandmother’s cookie jar and recipe box,  coal oil lamps that are turning a delicate purple with age, a flea market-find butter churn, blue and white plates from our family histories and wooden buckets that we purchased new decorate the room. The kitchen island’s base is a large wooden barrel  from my family’s ranch which my husband and I converted to a cupboard. Copies of old family photographs are on the walls.  Other displays are in other places in my home. Note: like most museums, not all of the items which we display were originally family heirlooms. The butter churn was not owned by my ancestors but is representative of a butter churn they did own.

While some displays don’t necessarily belong in one room,  their style may look better with one space than another. A collection of old carpentry tools or a saddle could be beautiful in a casual den or family room that has brown leather couches. Framed quilt blocks that are remnants from an ancestor’s quilt could be perfect above a bed with a modern quilt on it.

Foyers, dining rooms, and family rooms are ideal spots for larger displays. Less ideal locations are basement rooms,  as they are notorious for flooding and destroying family collections.

Include natural features such as landscapes and buildings if you live in a home that reflects what you want to do in your museum.  If you enjoy gardening and having a family museum, research heirloom plants that your ancestors grew and include them in your gardening plan.

Wherever you choose,  the location should be accurate in spirit. Don’t display heirlooms somewhere  which will give a false impression about the way they were used or their history.  Do a little research if necessary to help you to understand how items were used or where they commonly were placed in homes so that you avoid telling the wrong story about them.

Don’t overlook small spaces where you can place a shadow box or two or three framed items that can commemorate an event or family member.

Don’t overlook spaces that already seem occupied. I have an antique box with numerous cubby holes that my ancestors, who ran the local post office, may have used for mail boxes at some point. I use this splendid little box on my desk in my home office to put my office supplies in. Next to it is a framed painting of a village post office that used to hang in the post office my family ran. I have updated the old family post office and now communicate via e-mail from it.

You may want to get out some of your smaller heirlooms and place them in the space to consider whether  they  would  work  there. 

Sometimes you may have to make compromises. You need to decide whether you want to keep an antique piano in perfect condition by forbidding anyone to tune or play it so the strings will stay intact or risk its more rapid deterioration by using it as a musical instrument. Will you allow family members to sit on an old chair, knowing that use will strain it and perhaps shorten its life, or will you keep it in a back room where it is likely to get little use? I have both situations in my home. Everyone is allowed to play our antique organ and sit on most of our 120-year-old chairs. We have one chair, however,  that is so fragile that it cannot take ordinary use, and we have been unable to repair it well enough to make it peopleworthy,  so we keep it in a little-used corner of our bedroom.  Consider this issue as you are planning how to use your space. 

If you have a display that a relative with special needs will be particularly interested in, and they won’t be able to enjoy it if you put it on the second floor, consider moving it to a location that is accessible to them.