2016 – Page 12 – American Alliance of Museums

The Future of Museums (According to One Woman)

By Elizabeth Merritt

I was delighted to be interviewed for an issue of MISC Journal devoted to The Future According to Women. As the introduction notes, “The future we read about is made up of recycled bits of interviews curated from the minds of a few great …
Design Briefs: Art Museum as Innovation Incubator

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of the themes explored in Trendswatch 2014 is the rise of social entrepreneurship—the practice of linking profitable business models with socially beneficial outcomes. In the report, I pointed to the New Museum’s incubator space as an …
An Inside Look at TrendsWatch 2016 Webinar

By American Alliance of Museums

Watch this recorded webinar, hosted by Blackbaud, discussing TrendsWatch 2016, focusing on the chapters “Me/We/Here/There: museums and the matrix of place-based augmented devices” and “Happiness: You Get What Yo…
Futurist Friday: Author Author

By Elizabeth Merritt

Turing Test: Museum edition. Could a computer program write an exhibit label or an exhibit catalog that made visitors believe a human museum worker penned the text?There’s a lot of controversy right now over how many jobs, and which …
Speaking with the Next Generation of Museum Workers

By Elizabeth Merritt

Did you create a museum in your room when you were a kid? Did you—like the Field Museum’s Bill Stanley—have a #butterflymoment when you realized working in a museum could be a real job? The more I wrestle with the challenge of building …
Some Reflections on Museums and Labor at the Annual Meeting

By Elizabeth Merritt

Hi, Nicole here! This year’s CFM demo in the MuseumExpo during the AAM 2016 Annual Meeting was jam-packed with tough thinking and rich engagement on the issues of museums and labor. During the course of the programming from May 26-28, we …
Monday Musing: rethinking design at the opera

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’m devoting my brief musing today to a story from the Harvard Business Review that I included in “Dispatches from the Future of Museums” last week. In case you missed it, please do read “What Design Thinking is …
Futurist Friday: Inspiring the Next Generation

By Elizabeth Merritt

How many kids want to work in a museum when they grow up?I suspect (unfortunately) very few. . Museum folk talk a lot about the homogeneity of our field, and about what makes it hard to build a diverse staff: ossified job requirements, low …
And the 2016 MUSE Awards Go To…

By Elizabeth Merritt

My biggest frustration at the annual meeting is that I can’t be everywhere at once (at least, not until we master cloning). I rely on a host of correspondents to fill me in on the great events I miss. This week Dacia Massengill, …
Signals of Change: Questioning Nonprofit Status

By Elizabeth Merritt

Last November I drew attention to a letter that Senator Orrin Hatch (R Utah and Chair of the Senate Finance Committee) sent to a handful of private nonprofit museums founded by individual living collectors. His goal was to assess whether …