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6 Data-Tested Approaches to Building New Audiences

By Joseph O'Neill

It’s safe to say that most museums would like new visitors. Visitors actualize museums’ missions, give them vibrancy as places of insight and connection, and contribute to their financial welfare. Even for museums that receive plenty of …
Supporting Museum Professionals During a Time of Need

By Ryan Bourke

One of the best pieces of wisdom I’ve ever received came from a former boss of mine who later became a good friend. The year was 2009, almost a decade after our professional paths converged, and like so many folks during the Great …
Leveraging Smartphone Technology to Protect Museum Visitors

By Kim Spencer

Everyone is eager for a return to normal, which includes access to museums and other cultural venues. While countless people likely have been inspired and sustained by virtual museum tours these past few months, there is something very …
Staying in Touch: Addressing Concerns to Allow Tactile Exploration at Museums

By Cheryl Fogle-Hatch, Ann Cunningham, and Matt Gesualdi

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating new norms that discourage touching all manner of objects to curtail the spread of the virus. However, when public spaces reopen, understandable concern about disease transmission may lead museums to …
Key Takeaways for Museum Education at #AAMvirtual

By Reema Ghazi, Reggie Lynch, Mickey Maley, Meriel Stokoe

The theme of the Virtual Annual Meeting—Radical Reimagining—was already poignant in the context of the field’s reckoning with the impacts of COVID-19, but became even more so in the midst of nationwide protests against police brutality and …
What Museum Education Students Learned at #AAMvirtual

By American Alliance of Museums

With the AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo transitioning to a virtual format this year, a new crop of colleagues was able to attend, participate, and share their reactions on social media. Among these were students in the Museum …
Diary of a Museum Reopening

By Peter Seibert

As of May 7, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West is officially reopened to visitors. The BBCW is a massive AAM-accredited facility located in rural Wyoming in the Yellowstone National Park gateway community of Cody, with a budget of around …
The Phillips Collection’s Plan for Advancing Racial Equity

By Makeba Clay

Out of the brutal murders of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Arbery, and far too many other Black and Brown people in the United States, there has been a resurgence of a clarion call for racial justice. The …
What Juneteenth Means This Year

By Andrew Plumley

On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger of the Union Army strolled into Galveston, Texas, to announce that the last of the enslaved people in the Confederacy were free from the shackles of slavery. That day, two years after the …
Museums in Service to Society: A Museum in Colombia Responds to the Needs of its Community During the Pandemic

By Isabel Dapena and Armando Perla

The global crisis caused by the arrival of COVID-19 has not only forced us to rethink our daily lives and the way we work, but also the systems under which our societies have functioned. Moreover, the pandemic has exposed the shocking …