2009 – American Alliance of Museums

Some Projections to End the Year

By Philip Katz

Contributed by Phil Katz, AAM’s Assistant Director for Research. Most anecdotal evidence has pointed to shrinking museum staffs in 2009. However, new projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the demand for museum …
“Why would you want to visit a museum?”

By Elizabeth Merritt

This week’s guest post is by Ron Chew, independent consultant and Community Scholar in Residence at the Museology Graduate Program, University of Washington. Ron is the former director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, and a member of the CFM …
Vetting Future Museums

By Elizabeth Merritt

I read this morning that the National Museum of Language is on the brink of closing the outpost it opened last year in College Park, Maryland. This caught my eye because almost ten years ago their founder asked me to speak to their board …
We love Free! We love Research!

By Elizabeth Merritt

If you follow CFM regularly, you know we love Susie Wilkening and James Chung of Reach Advisors. Of course I mean we love their work–notably their CFM report Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures. Come to think of …
Managing Holistically—Lessons from Ecosystem Management

By Robert Janes

This is a second guest blog post from Robert Janes, editor-in-chief of Museum Management and Curatorship, Chair of the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley and former president and CEO of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Canada. Read his …
Quick Thoughts from the CFM Lecture

By Elizabeth Merritt

My mind is still reeling from the boffo lecture Gregory Rodriguez delivered for the Center for the Future of Museums Wednesday night at the Embassy of Canada here in Washington, DC. It is going to take some time to process all these …
The Museum of the Future—your vision reflected here?

By Elizabeth Merritt

A friend who works with, but not in, museums has asked me for predictions regarding characteristics of the museum of the future. He is working on an interesting project to create a prototype of the “future museum” in order to generate …
What’s Innovation Look Like? And How Do You Measure It?

By Elizabeth Merritt

A few weeks ago, we used this spaceto invite museums to participate in the Nonprofit Listening Post Project at Johns Hopkins University. Reminder: the LP Project is a national research initiative designed to identify the challenges facing …
Towards a New Mainstream?

By Elizabeth Merritt

Museums & Society 2034, this figure always makes museum folk sit up and take notice. Changing composition of America (U.S. Census Bureau/Reach Advisors) It dramatizes the growing disconnect between the population of the U.S., which is …
Dialogue Centres—Wave of the Future?

By Robert Janes

This week’s CFM guest blogger is Robert Janes, editor-in-chief of Museum Management and Curatorship, Chair of the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley and former president and CEO of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Canada. (Hence the …