2018 – Page 15 – American Alliance of Museums

Good news! Senate Committee Approves $2 Million Increase for IMLS and Invite Congress 2018

By American Alliance of Museums

Advocacy Alert – June 29, 2018 Senate Committee Approves $2 Million Increase for IMLS Good news! On Thursday, June 28, the full Senate Appropriations Committee approved the Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 Labor, Health and Human Services & …
Museopunks Episode 27: #MuseumsAreNotNeutral

By Suse Anderson

With a reticence towards partisan politics, museums are sometimes perceived to be neutral institutions, many avoiding taking a visible stand on issues. But can they really avoid being political when making choices about the allocation of …
Change is in the air!

By Stephanie Shapiro

PIC-Green In the 2007 Application to form the Professional Interest Committee on Green Museums, John W. Jacobsen wrote, “…over at least the next decade, we have a lot of work to do, and many challenges that require creative innovations. …
Benchmarking Inclusivity

By Donna Sack and Susie Wilkening

As the Alliance’s designated futurist, I’m often asked by journalists to comment on how this or that museum practice has changed over time. I’m often embarrassed (and frustrated) to admit I don’t know. It’s hard to track trends in museum …
With Liberty and Justice for All!

By Laura Lott

One hundred and thirty-three years after the Statue of Liberty first arrived in New York harbor, to the day, my husband and I took our daughter to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island on Father’s Day. Our almost-six-year-old has been …
What Small Museums Need (& Don’t)

By Allison Titman

Over the course of 2016, ten small museums participated in an AAM pilot project called the Small Museum Accreditation Academy. The Academy, which was developed through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, was designed to help …
Designing an AI Voice for the Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

This is the second of two posts exploring IRIS+, an AI chatbot at the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In part one, Daniel Morena, founder and creative technologist at of 32Bits, described the program, how it operates, and how …
Meeting Teachers Where They Are

By Meg Davis

As an elementary school teacher in New York City, I LOVED field trips. In my final year of teaching, I was lucky enough to find a school that not only encouraged them but purposely made “experiential learning” part of the curriculum. My …
IRIS+ Part One: Designing + Coding a Museum AI

By Daniel Morena

Museu do Amanhã in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is one of a very small cadre of museums experimenting with chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI). (Well, that seems appropriate. They are the Museum of Tomorrow, after all!) Curator …
Futurist Friday: Sustainable Civilization

By Elizabeth Merritt

Astrophysicist Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, is part of a group of researchers who are looking at climate change from an “astrobiological perspective.” Frank’s work is …