Signal boosting the current call for proposals for AAM 2026.

I almost typed 2206 there, which would be apt, as next year’s theme—The Museum Odyssey—is shaped around museums and time. I’m in love with the four theme-related tracks, which encourage you to explore museums as timekeepers, time travelers, chroniclers and seers.

(Not everything has to fit into the time theme, however. If the best, brilliant, essential work you want to share doesn’t fit naturally into the theme, you may want to submit a proposal for the fifth track: Museum Essentials and Evolving Practices.)

I’ve always thought of museums as time machines, so the 2026 theme is my favorite, in 25 years of working at AAM. This year’s electronic pile of submissions is going to be like my birthday, Christmas, and Hanukah all rolled into one. Just to nudge things along a little, here’s a few thoughts about what I’m hoping to see in the submission pile:

Museums as Timekeepers explores longevity—in collections, governance, and partnerships that endure. I hope some of the oldest museums in the country tell the story of how they have persisted over literally hundreds of years. (Here’s looking at you, Charleston Museum, Massachusetts Historical Society, Albany Institute of History and Art, Peabody Esssex.) Pivoting the lens of time in the other direction—what would it take for museums generally, or your museum in particular, to persist for the next 250, 500, 1,000 years?

Museums as Chroniclers celebrates museums as keepers of our collective narrative. Of particular importance, right now, is the role of museums in “shaping the historical record with transparency and integrity.” The power and trust invested in museums grant our sector a huge role in our collective understanding of who we are as a people. Leading, in turn to the current attempts to control how we tell those stories. How can museums resist attempts to censor their work, and explore our multiple, sometimes conflicting, remembrances of the past?

Museums as Time Travelers is an opportunity to showcase examples of exhibitions and programs that turn the museum into a real-life Tardis. That may be through the most traditional, low tech immersive reconstructions of the past (dinosaur galleries! Period rooms!), augmented or virtual reality, or (my favorite) experiences that actually transport people to alternative futures, helping them understand how what we do today will shape the world we leave to our descendants.

Museums as Seers (be still my heart) is about how organizations spot trends, foster innovation, and create resilient plans for the future. I hope to see proposals from staff that have attended CFM workshops, showcasing how they’ve integrated foresight into their work.

That’s my short version of the tracks—you can find more details here.

Tips for a Successful Proposal

Don’t contort your session description to match the theme. If it has a natural fit for one of the tracks, beauty, drop it there. If it doesn’t, put it into the essentials and evolving practices track. It won’t get “marked down” for being submitted to that general category.

Create a session title that clearly and succinctly describes the content of the session, and don’t parrot words from the theme or track titles. A plethora of near-identical titles makes it super hard for attendees to distinguish between sessions.

Include a description of any kind of interactivity involved in the session design, whether that’s Q&A, polls, exercises or small group discussions.

(I rank those as the top three issues potentially derailing good proposals. Be sure to study the full list of presenter expectations in the call for proposals.)

The call is open through Friday, September 26. I look forward to reading your proposals, and to seeing many of these great presentations in Philadelphia, May 20-23, 2026.

Yours from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt, Vice President, Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, American Alliance of Museums