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Reduce Uncertainty, Increase Confidence: How Internal Audit Supports Museums’ Success

By Laura Hopman, Christienne Johnson, Cynthia Liriano, and Roman Lindauer

We’ve all seen the dreaded headlines: “How many treasures have been stolen from the British Museum?” “Grief and Anger Mingle After Devastating Brazil Museum Fire” “How the Mona Lisa almost came to a watery end at the Metropolitan Museum of …
Botting: Methodology—A 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Jessica Strube

Unfortunately, sometimes malicious web-crawlers comb social media for online surveys, spamming them with fake responses. These fake respondents or “bots” use automated tools to complete surveys many, many times and often ve…
The Top Ten Alliance Blog Posts of 2024

By Joseph O'Neill

The museum field has emphasized ethics and standards for at least a century—in fact, the need to solidify them was one of the primary reasons for the founding of AAM in 1906. And yet, it’s fair to say we live in a time of heightened …
The Most Active Museum Junction Threads of 2024

By Joseph O'Neill

Thanks to a recent renovation, AAM’s community forum Museum Junction is bigger and better than ever, with a host of new features and a growing list of nearly thirty branch communities in categories like emerging professionals, …
Twelve Museum Innovations in 2024

By Joseph O'Neill

Every week, Dispatches from the Center for the Future of Museums gives you an update on how the future is looking, for our world and for our field. In addition to broad signals of social, technological, economic, environmental, and …
Following the Attendance Numbers: A Q&A with Angie Judge

By Adam Rozan

Every so often, a new museum is announced, its size in the hundreds of thousands of square feet, its cost in the millions, and its interior and exterior spaces imagined in visionary drawings featuring galleries filled with collections and …
Imaginative Learning in Museums, Part 3—Imagination Outside the Museum: A 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Susie Wilkening

This visual Data Story is based on findings from the 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, a national survey of American museum visitors from AAM and Wilkening Consulting. Every year, the survey partners with individual museums to research …
Imaginative Learning in Museums, Part 2—Enthusiasm and Resistance: A 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Susie Wilkening

This visual Data Story is based on findings from the 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, a national survey of American museum visitors from AAM and Wilkening Consulting. Every year, the survey partners with individual museums to research …
When HR is the Barrier: Identifying Problems and Solutions

By Michelle Martin Bonner

After more than two decades of experience in human resources (HR) and diversity, inclusion, and belonging roles, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing the inner workings of these departments across a diverse array of sectors, …
The 2024 Museum Store Gift Guide

By Joseph O'Neill

As cheerful as the holiday season can be, it can also be a dizzying blur of to-dos, chief among them the task of finding thoughtful, interesting gifts that will delight their recipients. Museum stores are a blessing in this challenge, with …