From Preservation to Participation: The Journey of Sandy Spring Museum
Many museums think that serving the needs of more ethnically diverse constituents will lose them “traditional” audience and supporters, but at Sandy Spring Museum (SSM), we’ve found just the opposite. Nearly ten years ago, when a financial …
What Does a Truly Equitable Recruiting Process Look Like?
A few years ago, AAM began a journey to re-evaluate our recruitment process and do more to encourage a diverse applicant pool for our job openings. As a result, we overhauled our expectations around job qualifications, working to ensure …
These Museums Helped Welcome Immigrants and Refugees to their Community, and Yours Can Too!
Welcoming America’s annual Welcoming Week enlists organizations around the country to welcome new immigrants and refugees into their new communities. This year, AAM is a national partner of Welcoming Week and is calling on museums to get …
Why Teachers Want Virtual Field Trips to Stay
On a virtual field trip, students search their screens for signs of movement as they try to spot the elusive macroinvertebrates lurking in a pond water sample. A grid appears over the screen with the numbers one through six in each box, so …
Finding Wonder in a Virtual World
Envision a group of schoolchildren standing before you, giddy with anticipation and excitement. In front of them are two elongated rectangular wooden doors, which, once opened, will transport them to another time. The doors swing open and …
Hindsight is 2020: What We Learned About Leadership in a Crisis
At the height of the pandemic, as so many aspects of our professional and personal lives hung in the balance and emotions fluctuated between despair and hope, effective leadership surfaced as essential. Facing public health restrictions …
Designing for Engagement: Five Steps for Co-Creating Exhibits and Programs with Your Communities
Museums are changing how they interact with the communities they serve, adopting practices that are more inclusive and engaging for all. One of the practices they are increasingly turning to is co-creation: forming an equal partnership …
Crafting the Museum Experience: How Mingei International Museum Centered Mission and Visitor Experience in a Major Renovation
In September 2021, Mingei International Museum will reopen after a three-year, fifty-five-million-dollar renovation. This ambitious and unique capital project, completed in partnership with architect Jennifer Luce, has resulted in a fully …
Rethinking Our Human Resources Practices to Build a More Equitable Museum
Less than three weeks after COVID forced museums around the globe to close their doors last year, an article by Arundhati Roy in The Financial Times titled “The Pandemic is a Portal” stopped me in my tracks. In the midst of an …
Microclimates: A Greener Future for Collection Care
There are many options available for museums to address climate action and become more sustainable, but recent work at two institutions has highlighted the value in one particular method: creating “microclimates” which confine …
