New leader backs more interaction between visitors, exhibits at Atlanta History Center

An attorney by trade, Sheffield Hale now must make the case that history is alive, vital and provides essential lessons from our collective past that point the way to a brighter future.

Hale, 51, hopes the Atlanta History Center, where he became president and CEO in March, will play an even more important interpretive role for the metro area as it plows its way deeper into the 21st century.

At first glance, the Atlanta native, a 25-year history center volunteer and board chairman from 2004 to 2006, might seem like the ultimate insider at the Buckhead attraction, which includes the Atlanta History Museum, the Centennial Olympic Games Museum, the Kenan Research Center and two historic homes set on 33 lush acres. (The history center also operates the Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown.) Hale even followed his father as a trustee at the institution founded as the Atlanta Historical Society in 1926.

Yet the former chief counsel of the American Cancer Society, who was selected after a national search, sounds more like an outsider as he charts the history center's future course. Before assuming his new role, he was co-chairman of a $27 million capital campaign aimed at updating and transforming many public aspects of the history center, including the eventual replacement of the museum's signature Atlanta exhibition, "Metropolitan Frontiers."

"It's very 1993 state of the art," he said flatly, like a leader who doesn't want to live completely in the past.

The straight-shooting Hale, an easygoing and often funny storyteller, recently discussed his plans with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Q: As I was preparing to interview you, your marketing vice president sent me an email saying that you and your staff wanted to "begin to shift the community's perception so we are seen widely as a valuable, relevant, exciting, convenient, engaging, modern, inclusive, immersive, thought-provoking and welcoming" facility. Do you think the history center doesn't measure up to those qualities?

A: I think we have a lot of unmet opportunity to reach more people and do it even more effectively. And it's something we've been working on over multiple years. But I think we can articulate [our mission] better and accelerate all of these things. I do think we've got to make some cultural shifts internally and make some perception shifts externally. ...

There are not enough people who know what we have here and what kind of experience they're going to get when they get here. That, to me, is a great opportunity. Every time I learn about someone who should know about us who doesn't know about us, I get excited, as opposed to being frustrated. Because I think we're on the cusp of a huge amount of growth if we do the right things and if we get our culture aligned even better.

Q: What kind of shift, what kind of culture alignment, needs to happen?

A: For us to be much more outward-looking and less inward-looking. The approach of a historical society museum is to be looking at our wonderful collections and to study inwardly and to be focused on bringing people here [with the attitude], "Aren't they lucky to see all of our precious objects?"

That's not what I'm looking to do. That's not community engagement. That's not effecting the kind of change we want to effect in the community. That's [too] closed off. ...

We've got to make history easier, more accessible, the past more relevant to people and reach visitors the way they want to learn, not [with the approach] of giving them certain information that they have to have. We're redesigning the program, using audience research to determine the best way to reach people.

Q: Part of that, I assume, is wrapped up in "Meet the Past," your multiyear programming initiative funded by the Goizueta Foundation that uses interactive interpretation to bring to life the stories of historical figures? I know you've already changed your historic house tours and are working on a Civil War school tour that uses this sort of "museum theater."

A: We're talking [about] the ultimate interaction — that's between people. We're talking about incorporating more "participatory history," which is what we like to call it. We're taking people who used to be docents and have them become [players in] museum theater, have them take on roles.

I took one of the pilot tours this morning with a school group from Cornelia, and we got the same information in a different way that was a lot more engaging. We got a lot of questions, too [from the interpreters], and that better put the students in the experience.

You can take the same theory and do it with all of our programming. So, for example, with our history of Atlanta exhibit, we'll still have objects from our very important core collection. But what you won't have are objects in as many cases. We'll also have some technology, some text and spaces that will allow us to interpret objects in context of a performance.

The interesting thing about this is, you come back and there's a different character in the exhibit. And you have a totally different experience, so it doesn't become a static exhibit.

Q: The center launched a $27 million campaign a year ago at the tail end of a recession. How daunting is it to inherit the campaign as the new president and CEO?

A: A capital campaign in this environment is daunting. But we're having success. I was confident as the co-chair, and I'm more confident now because I'm going to be working four or five times as hard on it as I did before.

Q: Is there a specific time frame for concluding the campaign?

A: There's no end date, per se, but there's an end date in my mind and it's not forever. Because I want to get this thing done ... so we can begin implementing the strategy that will open up this institution.

Q: Are you considering community outreach beyond the extensive programming offered at the history center and the Mitchell House?

A: We're thinking about that, but we have so much further to go to optimize this site and the Mitchell House site, so that really needs to be our first focus. That's the low-hanging fruit. We've got the facilities here that people should want to come visit. They don't realize that we have 22 acres of gardens and green space on this 33-acre campus. We're going to put more emphasis on our gardens, put more programming in them.

Q: Speaking of gardens, I understand that you are impressed with the institutional growth in recent years of the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

A: Yes, I keep telling [botanical garden executive director Mary Pat Matheson] that I'm going to go steal her mojo: "Where's your pixie dust? I need some of it!" What they've done is taken a very good organization and raised its profile among the public and community leaders. ... I've watched it over the years, green with envy, so to speak.

It's not about copying them. It's about trying to achieve what they've achieved in our own way.

Q: At the same time that you were on the history center board, you were also active on numerous other local and national boards, all of them with a strong community component. Can you talk about why building a sense of community is important to you, especially in your new role?

A: I come from this activist background in terms of wanting to improve the community. From the historic preservation standpoint, it was about economic development, quality of life and livability. At the cancer society, the issues were pretty obvious.

Here, the history center's role is to provide the context and connectivity of the community, to bring people together, with deeper understanding, and ultimately to promote their ability and desire to improve the community. Because if they feel more connected to each other, they feel more connected to the community. ...

We have a community that's silo-ed in many ways. If the history museum could play a larger part in helping to bring that connectivity, we've had a good day.

Atlanta History Center at a glance

Membership households: 5,470

Annual visitation: 228,000 (168,000, plus more than 60,000 served through community outreach, school programs)

Permanent Atlanta History Museum exhibits: "Metropolitan Frontiers," tracing the city's history from its roots as a rural outpost to today's suburban outposts that transform into their own cities; "Turning Point: The American Civil War, 1861-1865" (one of the nation's largest exhibitions on the conflict, featuring more than 1,500 original artifacts); "Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South"; and "Down the Fairway With Bobby Jones." In a connected wing, the Centennial Olympic Games Museum chronicles the extended campaign to secure the Olympics and Atlanta's 17 days in the international spotlight.

Historic homes: The center boasts two houses on the National Register of Historic Places that are open for tours: the 1860s Tullie Smith farmstead and the 1928 Swan House, designed by the classically inspired late Atlanta architect Philip Trammell Shutze and long considered one of the city's most beautiful residences.

Visitor information: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays, noon-5:30 p.m. Sundays. $16.50; $13, 65 and older and students ages 13-18; $11, ages 4-12. 130 W. Paces Ferry Road N.W., Atlanta. 404-814-4000, www.atlanta historycenter.com.

Sheffield Hale

Job: president and CEO, Atlanta History Center

Volunteer roles: serves on boards of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the University of Georgia Foundation, the Atlanta University Center's Robert W. Woodruff Library and Central Atlanta Progress

Age: 51

Personal: married for 24 years to Elizabeth Hale, with sons ages 22, 21 and 18