National Standards and Best Practices for U.S. Museums

Standards and Best Practices for U.S. Museums: The Nutshell Version

This Web Exclusive article was adapted from National Standards and Best Practices for U.S. Museums(2008), available through the AAM Bookstore.

By Elizabeth E. Merritt

What Is a Museum?
A museum is a place which invites, in a special way, to contemplation and musing about our humanly strive after truth, goodness and beauty. This contemplation and musing brighten at one side the notion of our nullity and transitoriness, but reinforce at the other side the experience of our mysterious relationship and linking with the Imperishable.
—F. J. C. J. Nuyens, Dutch sociologist, 1981

Various attempts have been made over the years to draw firm boundaries around the category "museums," defining who gets in and who stays out. Some things people have tried to take into account are:

Whether the organization is nonprofit (private or governmental) as opposed to for-profit. Left outside in the cold using this criteria are institutions such as the International Spy Museum, the Biltmore Estate, Graceland, the American International Rattlesnake Museum and the Museum of Sex, not to mention numerous very small museums that have not gotten around to being formally incorporated as nonprofits. (For example, the World's Smallest Museum, in Superior, Ariz., which has a total interior space of 134 square feet.) While museum professionals may feel strongly that nonprofit status is an important way to establish that the primary purpose of the majority of museums is serving the public benefit, the average person walking in off the street would recognize any of the institutions mentioned above as fitting his or her concept of a museum.

Whether the organization has education as one of its core functions. Most everyone agrees this is an appropriate criterion, but when you realize that education can encompass almost any form of learning about anything, it becomes so broad as to be useless as a boundary. Would you argue about the educational nature or content of the Museum of Advertising Icons, the Dr. Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute or the Museum of Jurassic Technology? They may not present traditional art, history or science, but they provide fascinating explorations of their topics of choice. And what to make of the Bloedel Reserve of Bainbridge Island, Wash., which identifies its purpose as "to provide people with an opportunity to enjoy nature through quiet walks in the gardens and woodlands"? It is undoubtedly a public garden, and hence a museum, but as education goes, it doesn't get much more low-key than that. And, for that matter, how does this help distinguish museums from libraries or schools or dance studios or other types of organizations that are clearly educational in nature?

The care, preservation and display of objects. Historically, this may have been true, but the late twentieth century saw the proliferation of organizations broadly recognized as museums that do not care for, own or use collections—for example, many children's museums and science centers use objects as props but do not regard them as collections held in the public trust. Currently, 10 percent of museums identify themselves as not owning or using collections.1

Whether the organization has a physical location (which may itself be a historic artifact) and delivers much of its interpretive content through experiences at that location. A growing number of museums, however, are virtual, existing only on the Internet. They may be grounded in a physical location with collections that are not open to the public, but for some there is no "there" there. They are completely virtual organizations of knowledge and images with no physical presence (other than the server on which the site is housed). (See, for example, the International Spaceflight Museum, which is "located" in the Internet-based virtual world Second Life.) Even traditional site-based museums serve a growing number of people through their websites—their site visitation far surpassing their physical visitors. If the physical site closed or went away but the website remained, would it be any less a museum?

We may have to live with the fact that "museum" as a concept is the intersection of many complex categories, resulting in an organization that people can identify intuitively but that cannot be neatly packaged in a definition.

Where does this leave us in creating standards for this ill-defined bunch? The American Association of Museums takes a "big tent" approach. If an organization considers itself to be a museum, it's in the tent. This means the universe of American museums, from our point of view, includes the small cadre of for-profit museums, together with the vast majority of nonprofit; non–collections-based museums as well as the traditional collecting institutions; organizations that care for living collections (zoos, botanic gardens, aquariums); as well as the museums of art, history and science. Our intuitive judgment that this apparently diverse group belongs together is born out by the fact that they can, in fact, agree on standards that apply to all of them.

Why Standards?
Standard: something used as a measure, norm or model in comparative evaluations; a required or agreed level of quality or attainment.
—Compact Oxford English Dictionary

It is human nature to compare ourselves to others—we want to know that we are doing the right thing, and we want to know how we measure up. With personal conduct, we compare ourselves against cultural norms—unwritten rules of conduct, ethics, morality; and societal benchmarks—such as IQ tests, educational degrees, performance evaluations, salaries. Judging by popular magazines, Americans are irresistibly drawn to self-scored "How Am I Doing?" quizzes for everything from dating, appearance and sexual performance to achievement of life goals.

It is only natural that we carry this over into our jobs. Each specialized endeavor, from the moment it is founded, starts creating its own specialized points of comparison. For individuals, what does it mean to be a good mechanic, a good doctor or a good psychic? For organizations, what does it mean to be a good university, a good veterinary clinic or a good organic farm? In some ways these organizations have it easy. If they ask to be judged by outcomes, their effects are easy to describe: students who pass exams and get jobs; pets that are cured or comforted at the end of life; produce that is chemical-free. Museums have a harder time defining, as a field, the effect we are trying to produce, at least in any way that is clear and measurable. As providers of informal learning experiences, we may or may not be able to track and measure the effect we have on what people know or think. And the knowledge we provide is not always a concrete fact or way of thinking. Often it is an experience—the sum total of sights and sounds and smells, tactile impressions, emotions—that adds to the life experience that shapes who we are.

Yet the vast majority of museums in the U.S. are nonprofit and ask for public support in one form or another in return for providing some kind of public good. So it is important that we be broadly accountable for our conduct, not just to the users of our services but to society as a whole. While some individual museums measure and report the effect they have on their audience and communities, such practice is rare, and field-wide studies are scarcer still. That makes it all the more important that we have clearly agreed-upon standards that describe what it means to be a "good" museum, one worthy of public support and trust.

Also, as we are responsible for administering somewhere between $4.5 billion and $6 billion in government and private support, museums are understandably a subject of scrutiny by regulators.2 Adherence to mutually agreed-upon standards enables museums to self-regulate, to a large extent, in a flexible and appropriate way that accommodates the huge diversity of our field. When standards are poorly articulated in an important area of operations, or a museum's conduct seems to contravene generally accepted (if unwritten) public standards, the government steps in, and we get federal or state or local laws and regulations that may or may not be sensible and applicable to museums of all types and sizes.

Last but not least, museums are closely watched by the some 67,000 members of the American media—self-appointed guardians of the public interest and government oversight. Journalists are society's watchdogs, and while we might not like it when we are at the receiving end of their scrutiny, their zealous attention to museum behavior (and museum misbehavior does make for great headlines) keeps us appropriately on our toes. They constantly test whether we are able to credibly explain our actions and justify to the general public why they are reasonable and appropriate in the context of our self-identified standards.

Some Characteristics of Standards
Standards reflect areas of broad agreement. If people have not come to consensus, or pretty close, there can't be a standard, because nothing has been generally agreed upon. That means there may be very important areas of conduct for which there are no standards, as museums try out different types of behavior, see how their colleagues, the general public, regulators and the media react to these experiments, and adjust their actions accordingly. Sometimes these discussions can go on for decades without a consensus.

Standards reflect areas where things actually go wrong. People don't write standards about behavior that doesn't happen. A situation recently arose in which the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art included a Louis Vuitton boutique in the middle of its exhibition on the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Murakami is known for exploring the fuzzy boundaries between art and commerce, particularly his collaboration with Vuitton. The profits from the boutique went to the Vuitton company, not the museum. Some people started questioning whether this is ethical. Does it contravene standards? Well, no. At this moment the standards don't say anything about having a for-profit company running a store in the middle of an exhibit. As far as I know, no museum ever tried it before, so the issue hasn't come up and the broader ethical issue has not been debated.

Standards change over time. Museum standards arise out of technical knowledge (how to do things well, like conservation or education) and out of attitudes regarding what is right and appropriate (ethics). Both technical knowledge and attitudes evolve over time. As we come to appreciate the complexities of the effects of RH and temperature on objects and buildings, our technical standards for climate control become more and more nuanced. I remember when the rule handed down from on high regarding climate control was "55 percent humidity, +/- 3 percent." End of story. Now we recognize that you can't expect a museum housed in a brick building in Bishop, Calif. (average relative humidity 20 percent) to maintain an interior relative humidity of 55 percent—the brick would spall. Society changes, too, and museum standards evolve within this larger cultural environment. Fifty years ago it was simply accepted that museums owned human remains and sacred objects from other cultures. Now there is considerable debate about whether and when this is ethical. And because museums lagged behind societal expectations in this regard, failing to develop and apply credible self-imposed standards, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), legislating how museums must deal with federally recognized tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. NAGPRA has worked out pretty well, but maybe if museums had voluntarily worked with tribal representatives to develop a mutually acceptable solution, it would have been even better in terms of efficiency and effectiveness (two characteristics not usually attributed to government regulations). Implementation also might have been easier, starting from a premise of trust and goodwill.

Consequently, this book is a snapshot of a rapidly changing landscape. While you use it, pay attention to what may happen in the next week, month or year by reading professional publications, attending local, state and regional museum meetings, checking the websites of AAM and other museum professional associations, and talking to colleagues.

Standards come from broad dialogue. To be appropriate and credible, standards need to be created through a process that incorporates input of people in institutions expected to abide by the standards and of people who hold those expectations. For this reason it is important that you be an active participant in the ongoing discussion that culminates in written standards—to be appropriate for all museums, standards need input from professionals at museums of all types and sizes. Given the increasing pressure for public accountability, we also need input from members of the public, policymakers and media who use these standards to assess whether museums live up to their expectations. You can help by educating your museum's funders, local policymakers and media, and national representatives about museum standards, drawing them into this discussion, as well.

What Are "Standards and Best Practices"?
If it is hard to pin down one thing that identifies a museum, it is easy to characterize people who work in museums: We love to argue about the meaning of words. This book could be ten times as long and only begin to cover the debate that ensues from an open discussion of the definition of standard. To forestall that debate (and move quickly to the important business of determining what the standards actually are), the AAM Board of Directors approved the following definitions. Of course, we can't make the rest of the field adopt these definitions universally, but at least it establishes what they mean for the purposes of understanding the material in this book.

Standards are generally accepted levels of attainment that all museums are expected to achieve. Best practices are commendable actions and philosophies that demonstrate an awareness of standards, successfully solve problems, can be replicated and that museums may choose to emulate if appropriate to their circumstances.

Translated into plain English: Standards are things that all good museums should live up to, and they can expect to be criticized by colleagues, or supporters or the press, if they don't. Standards are not lofty goals that only a few will achieve they are fundamental to being a good museum, a responsible nonprofit and a well-run business. Best practices are "extra credit." Museums deserve applause if they can implement them but shouldn't be faulted if they can't. Some best practices may not be suitable to a museum's particular circumstances, and some museums might not have the resources needed to go that extra mile.

Where Do Standards Come From?
There are more than 17,000 museums in the U.S., with more than 200,000 employees.3 These museums range in size from all-volunteer to more than 300 paid staff. Their annual operating expenses can be counted in the hundreds of dollars or in the high millions. They include historic sites and houses, zoos, art museums, history museums, science centers, children's museums, nature centers and botanic gardens (to name but a few). It is truly daunting to imagine inventing a system to establish standards appropriate for all of these organizations.

Fortunately, the museum field did not have to create this system all at once—it evolved on its own, through almost four decades of experimentation. And the method, in concept, is very simple: Get enough people representing these diverse museums talking to each other, give them ways to look closely at a lot of different museums and how they operate, share observations about what works and what does not work, discuss what is and is not appropriate, write it down, report it to the field, see what gets accepted or shot down and revise accordingly. This takes place through the activities of the several dozen professional associations representing various parts of the museum field, with AAM representing the whole.

Within AAM, this ongoing exploration of standards principally takes place through the Accreditation Program, ethics task forces empanelled by the AAM Board of Directors and the Standing Professional Committees (which represent various segments of the museum profession: curators, registrars, educators, security staff, etc.)

Of these, the Accreditation Program has had the biggest influence in creating written standards for museums. There are about 800 museums in the Accreditation Program (more than 770 accredited, a couple dozen applicants). To earn accreditation they complete a detailed self-study of all areas of their operations. Two peer reviewers (senior staff from comparable institutions) read the self-study, visit the museum and write a report summarizing their observations. Finally the self-study and report are reviewed by nine museum professionals who volunteer to serve on the Accreditation Commission. Based on this information, the commission decides to accredit the museum, to table its decision while asking the museum to make improvements in areas where it falls short of standards, or denies accreditation. There may be considerable follow-up discussion (as you may imagine) between the commission, museum and peer reviewers regarding these decisions.

When the program began in the early 1970s, it was pretty informal. Staff provided some minimal written guidance for the peer reviewers, focusing their attention on certain areas of operations, but there were no written standards per se. As the peer reviewers, the commissioners, and museums whose fates were being decided wrestled with how to make fair and equitable decisions, it became clear that it was necessary to have a set of objective criteria by which museums can be assessed—rules that everyone would know ahead of time so that the commission would have a common point of reference during the deliberations. These rules have evolved and expanded over time, forming the core of what has become National Standards and Best Practices for U.S. Museums.

The other document central to national museum standards is the Code of Ethics for Museums, written in 1978, and most recently revised in 2000, which guides museums' creation of their own individualized codes of ethics. This and other ethics statements approved by the AAM board are issued to the field for comment (and lively debate) before being approved. This process may include national colloquiums on a given topic (like those held in 2002 and 2005 on collections planning and interpretive planning, respectively); sessions at professional meetings; formal comment periods; and referral to specific related task forces or committees of other organizations.

This process is mirrored in the various discipline-specific museum associations that create standards applicable to the segment of the museum community that they represent—the American Association for State and Local History, Association of Children's Museums, Association of Science and Technology Centers, etc. Taken together, these written standards create an overlapping web of guidance that apply at the broadest level to all museums, and then drill down to practices or ethics specific to particular fields.

In sum, museum standards arise from a big, messy dialogue that corrals all this input into a form approved by the field as a whole, as represented by staff who are actively engaged in the work of their professional associations. In this way, we ensure that the standards are applicable to, appropriate for and achievable by all types of museums.

How Can Museums Use the Standards?
The board, staff and volunteers who govern and operate museums come from diverse backgrounds, cultures and training. Staff may be trained in museum studies programs, where they learn how nonprofits work in general, or they may come from specialized academic programs about their subject (art, science, history) and have little or no knowledge of the legal and ethical underpinnings of nonprofit operations. Some people primarily learn on the job, but practices vary from museum to museum. And particularly in small or isolated institutions, norms can drift away from those of the field as a whole. Some staff, many board members and volunteers—and with increasing frequency, the director—come from the for-profit world and bring an entirely different set of assumptions about what is right and appropriate behavior for the organization or its employees. Museums that exist inside non-museum entities (for instance, universities or city or state governments) may report to individuals whose instinct is to apply the conventions of the bigger entity to the museum, regardless of whether this would conflict with usual museum practice.

Many of the conflicts that arise in the course of running a museum happen in part because people assume they are all speaking the same language. In fact, nonprofits in general and museums specifically have a very detailed and arcane language that guides their thinking. Ensuring that all parties engaged in leading and operating the museum understand museum standards provides the beginning of a common vocabulary. As noted in Getting to Yes, a classic 1981 text on difficult negotiations, having objective criteria for decision making can help parties with disparate needs arrive at wise and efficient solutions. People usually can agree that nationally approved standards are an appropriate set of measures to guide their discussions.

Here are some opportunities to expose people to the standards in order to help build a shared culture:

When people are hired, elected to the board or recruited as volunteers: Include a copy of the "Characteristics of Excellence for U.S. Museums" in your personnel policy, board briefing book, volunteer manual or the equivalent. Present an overview of the standards in orientation sessions for staff, board members and volunteers.

When the museum is engaged in planning: Museum standards should inform the goals the museum sets in its planning process. Some museums make meeting standards, or gaining recognition for meeting standards through becoming accredited, a goal in and of itself. When the planning team begins to meet, include the standards with the other basic documents the team might review as it begins its work (e.g., the last plan, the museum's recent financial statement, feasibility studies, etc.).

When staff and board write policies: The first thing a museum's conduct will be judged by is whether it is in alignment with the museum's own policies. These, in turn, should be consistent with all the applicable national and discipline-specific standards. While an individual may not like a museum's actions, it is hard to make a case for those actions being objectively "wrong" if they are in accord with policies established in advance by people acting in good faith, and ratified by the opinion of their colleagues. It is, of course, crucial that these policies have been established before the action took place. (There is nothing like after-the-fact ratification to make an otherwise innocent action smell like a dead fish.) It is also important that they be publicly available—showing that the museum feels they will stand up to public scrutiny.

When the museum asks for support: It benefits individual museums and the field as a whole when private donors, foundations, grant-making agencies and policymakers understand what constitutes a "good" museum worthy of their support. When you cultivate donors, write grant proposals and work with your local, state or national political representatives, integrate information on the standards and how you meet them into your message.

When you make any important decision, and when you prepare the accompanying communications plan: Will you be able to explain how the museum's actions are in line with national standards? As discussed in Section 3, often when a museum lands in the news for something the press or public regard as questionable, they call AAM and we refer them to the national standards to guide their assessment of the museum's actions. So test your decision against the standards before the fact.

When you assess and report on the museum's performance: Museums are increasingly called upon to publicly account for what they do to deserve public support. While the most meaningful measures document how the museum delivers its mission (the good it does for its community and audience), showing that you comply with national museum standards is a powerful tool for demonstrating to the public, press, policymakers and funders that you make responsible use of the support they provide. Museums can measure and report on this themselves, engage outside consultants, participate in peer-based programs such as the Museum Assessment and Conservation Assessment Programs or receive outside certification of meeting standards by becoming accredited.

Who Else Uses the Standards, and How?
Increasingly, funders use nationally recognized criteria for assessing whether museums deserve support. Some take into account whether a museum is accredited—accepting this third-party certification that the organization meets national standards. Florida, for example, requires museums to be accredited to receive some kinds of state funding.

The Kresge Foundation and other major funders consider accredited status when reviewing grant proposals. The Institute of Museum and Library Services weighs a museum's participation in the Museum Assessment Program and the priorities it establishes through peer review against standards in that program in awarding competitive Museums for America grants. We do not track how often local and regional funders use such criteria, but we know that there is trend to do so and it is likely to become more common in the future.

Policymakers look to museum standards in deciding whether and how to create legislation or regulations to govern museum behavior. Often the museum field tackles the creation of standards because of a contentious issue in order to forestall government regulation. AAM Guidelines on Individual Donor Support, for example, were written in the wake of the "Sensations" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999, which raised issues of whether the lender of the works in the show, Charles Saatchi, exercised undue influence over the content and presentation, and the museum's lack of transparency regarding his support and the extent of his involvement. The state of New York takes accreditation into account when considering whether to charter museums as state nonprofits. Attorneys General in all states consult national standards in weighing the conduct of the nonprofit museums under their oversight. When the AGs do step in to intervene on behalf of the public, either because the museum proactively asks them to or because there is a potential breach of the public trust (such as when the Museum of the City of New York proposed large-scale deaccessioning of its collections), they often take into account ethics and museum standards as well as the law in issuing their decisions and providing guidance to the museum.

Members of the media use museum standards to inform their coverage, particularly regarding controversial actions that some people perceive to be unethical or simply objectionable. AAM is frequently contacted by members of the press about this or that museum, asking whether its behavior aligns with national standards. We don't comment on the actions of individual museums, but we are happy to take the opportunity to educate journalists on museum standards and help them understand how to apply them to their coverage. The topics that most often attract the attention of the press are: deaccessioning, care of collections, executive compensation, financial distress (particularly if it may be a result of financial mismanagement), relationships with individual and corporate donors and conflict of interest.

Members of the public increasingly refer to the standards, as well, particularly if they are irritated by something the museum has done and want to bring it to the attention of the press. It used to be that specialized standards were relatively inaccessible to the general public unless someone was pretty serious about doing research through a library or writing to a professional association. The World Wide Web has made this material easily available to anyone with a browser and some knowledge of how to search the Internet. Museums need to understand that members of their communities and audiences have access to this information—and take this into account when they make decisions and explain them to the public.

Museum Accreditation
In the U.S., compliance with museum standards is voluntary. The pressure brought to bear by funders, regulators, the press and the public may be considerable, but in the end, museums choose to follow or not follow standards of the field.

There is a cadre of museums, however, that have pledged to abide by the standards in a formally certified manner through the AAM Accreditation Program. For the past decade, the number of accredited museums has remained pretty constant, between 750 and 770—about 5 percent of museums in the U.S. We should commend these museums for their commitment to public accountability. By opening up their operations to intense scrutiny by their peers, they burnish the reputation of all museums. They also play a key role in the development of the standards themselves—accreditation being a crucible in which important issues are examined, patterns of behavior are observed to be consistently successful or unsuccessful, and emerging standards are tested for consistency, applicability and appropriateness.

The Accreditation Program constantly changes with time and is undergoing significant revisions even as I write. The broad outline has remained, however, and likely will continue to remain the same since its inception in the early 1970s. In the program, museums:

undertake an intensive self-study, documenting various aspects of their operations. This self-study includes assembling fundamental documents such as plans and policies approved by the governing authority;

open themselves to examination by a committee of their peers, who review the self-study and attached documentation, as well as visit the museum and interview members of the board, staff and volunteers;

are assessed by the Accreditation Commission, composed of museum professionals who volunteer their time to review the self-study, documentation and peer reviewers' report in order to determine whether the museum meets AAM standards.

AAM's website provides information on how these standards are applied in accreditation and what documents accredited museums must have to demonstrate they are meeting the standards.

In my estimation, from talking with museum staff over the years, for every one museum that has attained accreditation, another ten consciously use museum standards to guide their planning and operations. Some of these museums intend to become accredited eventually. Others feel that while the standards are appropriate and worthy of their attention, they don't need or want the certification per se. And there are a few museums that consciously opt out, deciding, for example, that their institutional culture is not compatible with some of the standards.

There is increasing pressure, however, from policymakers and funders for all nonprofits—museums included—to adhere to formal, widely accepted standards and to demonstrate that they are doing so. Given that this trend is likely to continue, museum accreditation—or certification in some way, shape or form—is likely to play a greater role in the future. In this context, the standards set forth in this book, and the methods that museums use to demonstrate that they adhere to these standards, assume an even greater importance. It is in the best interests of museums that the field determines the standards, and the processes by which they will be judged, rather than being subjected to standards or to reporting requirements that do not fit the quirky reality of our nature.

Elizabeth E. Merritt is founding director, AAM's Center for the Future of Museums.

1. Elizabeth E. Merritt, ed., 2006 Museum Financial Information (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, 2006).

2. Estimated from data gathered through the Museum Financial Information Survey 2005 and U.S. Census Bureau data on employer institutions.

3. Institute for Museum and Library Services estimates that there are 17,500 museums in the U.S., see www.IMLS.gov; employee estimate from AAM analysis of the 2000 Census, accessed through the Missouri Census Data Center.