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Attracting Charitable Giving through Education Programs

By Lori Kartchner and Mickey Maley

In this series of posts, EdCom’s Trends Committee is taking a deeper look at emerging phenomena identified in the 2020 edition of TrendsWatch from the Center for the Future of Museums. In this post, they turn their attention to the …
Giving Back: Three Model Practices for Sustaining Older Volunteers during COVID-19

By Marjorie Schwarzer

As cases of COVID-19 spike across the country, resulting in more museums suspending operations, what are the implications for older docents and volunteers, especially in regard to ageism and creative aging? In part one of this two-part …
Why I Abandoned the Traditional Museum Education Model

By Annie Thomas-Bubel

Personal stories are how we, at Nemours Estate, connect our visitors with the duPont family who once lived in this grand place. So I’d like to share my personal story of building a museum education program from the ground up, to illustrate …
onePULSE, Many Perspectives: Collaborating with Diverse Stakeholders to Develop the National Pulse Memorial & Museum

By Barbara Poma, Pam Schwartz, Mark Knott, and Anne Voshel

In the aftermath of a tragedy, there is no one way for communities to grieve and heal. This is especially true when the event impacts people on a national or even international scale. The response, as well as any attempt at permanent …
Hosting Remote Internships: Successes, Challenges, and Thoughts for the Future

By Emily Shield

When I posted our call for internship applications last December, I had a very different idea of what the summer would look like. A typical internship at the Chrysler Museum of Art involves current students or recent graduates gaining …
For Post-Pandemic Success, Get Creative with Distributed Museum Models

By Theresa M. Genovese, AIA, LEED AP, NCARB

As the global pandemic has put a halt to in-person visitation for much of 2020 and brought long-held planning and operational models into question, museum leaders across the country have been grappling with challenges of how to prepare for …
Giving Back: Museums and Older Volunteers during COVID-19

By Marjorie Schwarzer

As cases of COVID-19 spike across the country, resulting in more museums suspending operations, what are the implications for older docents and volunteers, especially in regard to ageism and creative aging? In part one of this two-part …
With Rapid Response Collecting, Who Are We Responding To?

By Carol Ghiorsi Hart

After the start of protests over the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent looting of businesses, hundreds of plywood boards went up in Greensboro, North Carolina’s downtown. But these boards, which could have been an angry reminder …
A Big COVID-19 Pivot: The Museum Assessment Program Goes Virtual

By Anastasia Wallace & Dr. Matthew White

The Museum Assessment Program (MAP) is one of the most valuable programs offered by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) for emerging institutions, museums undergoing structural change, or organizations looking to improve one or more …
Why Museum Store Sunday Matters More Than Ever This Year

By Susan Tudor, Emily Kowalski, and Stuart Hata

Museum Store Sunday, the Museum Store Association’s (MSA) signature advocacy initiative, is fast approaching, happening this year on November 29 during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. While this year’s event will look different due to …