2019 – American Alliance of Museums

Four Ways Modern Audiovisual Technologies are Helping Museums Improve Exhibits and Operations

By Dan Goldstein

The museum field is using modern audiovisual (AV) technologies to reinvent how people experience art, cultural antiquities, and historical events. Some of these methods include developing immersive digital exhibits, deploying virtual and …
Philanthropy and Creative Aging

By Bill Tramposch

Philanthropy is often thought of as the giving of money to some cause, in our case to our museums. But in essence philanthropy is a human resource, and as such it should be viewed from three perspectives: not just treasure but also …
The Best Museum #GivingTuesday Campaigns of 2019

By American Alliance of Museums

GivingTuesday is a “global generosity movement” originally founded in 2012 by New York’s 92nd Street Y in partnership with the United Nations Foundation. Every year, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving is designated as a day of …
Making a Museum in the Age of 3D Digital Models

By Michael D. Cherney and Adam N. Rountrey

In 2005, not long after the advent of tabletop 3D printing technology, the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology (UMMP; a research institution) used this approach to generate elements missing from a skeletal mount of the Buesching …
Museum Advocates Score Major Victories in Year-End Spending Legislation

By American Alliance of Museums

Advocacy Alert – December 20, 2019 Museum Advocates Score Major Victories in Year-End Spending Legislation Federal Funding Victories! Great news in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 appropriations bills Congress just passed: Funding for the …
Programs for People “Fifty-five and Better”

By Teresa Bonner

In 2018, twenty organizations enrolled in a special museum cohort of Aroha Philanthropies’ Seeding Vitality Arts® program. This is the third cohort of grantees that have received funding from Aroha, and training provided by Lifetime Arts, …
Museopunks Episode 41: Digitization is not neutral

By Suse Anderson and Ed Rodley

Over the past decade, museums have increasingly shared high-resolution open access images of their collections. Yet there are significant legal and ethical complexities related to digital cultural heritage, particularly when blanket …
The Top Ten Alliance Blog Posts of 2019

By Joseph O'Neill

It was a whirlwind year of museums making themselves over for our changing world. Evolving ethics, social and technological transformation, and the looming presence of the bottom line are turning our institutions inward, searching for …
Take a Look Around: A customer journey analysis of the museum store

By Michael Latta, Mark Mitchell, and Robin Gabriel

Today’s successful museum operators are finding new ways to provide visitors with an active, interactive learning experience that recognizes personalized learning, social experiences, evolving technologies, and customer service. This …
Let it Bloom: Reconstructing a hurricane-stricken historic garden

By Adam Levine

Like many museum professionals, I am drawn to the idea that objects and places connect us to cultures throughout history. We handle the works entrusted to our institutions with extreme care, in no small part because these links to our past …