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Programming Through the Lens of Empathy

By Lorena Bradford

At the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, two new public programs and one new high school tour are built on the premises that empathy is worth cultivating and listening to the perspectives of others is valuable.[1] These programs …
Museums and the Census: How can you help?

By American Alliance of Museums

The 2020 United States Census is right around the corner, with National Census Day taking place on April 1, and it’s time for museums to start thinking about how they’ll be involved. This once-a-decade process of counting the country’s …
A Welcoming Week Celebration on the US-Mexico Border

By Ann Fortescue and Claudia Martinez

This fall, AAM partnered with Welcoming America to encourage museums to participate in its annual Welcoming Week, in which organizations around the country welcome new immigrants and refugees into their new communities. For one AAM member, …
The Old Man’s Guide to Health and Longer Life, 1750!

By Bill Tramposch

In the nearly endless stacks of the British Library there rests a little book entitled The Old Man’s Guide to Health and Longer Life. It was written in 1750 by a gentleman named John Hill, and it is a delightful read for two reasons: …
Dispelling Myths: Seven tips to build your museum partnership with the disability community

By Heather Irish and Christine Sonnabend

“We want our students to do more than just wipe tables,” said Lucas LaFaver, vocational coordinator at St. Coletta of Greater Washington, a DC-based charter school for students with intellectual disabilities. He’s passionate about creating …
Transforming Data into Stories with the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers

By Lindy Hoyer

Who visits our museums? What are their motivations, and what do they expect from the experience? Alternatively, who is not visiting, and why not? These are critical questions for the future of individual museums, and for the entire field. …
So You Want to Serve on a Museum Board?

By Christina Carr

In my last article for AAM on welcoming the next generation of board leadership, I encouraged young people who were interested in board service to develop their leadership skills and create opportunities at the museums they love. This is …
Somewhere Near the End

By Dr. Virginia Tandy

Creative aging is a global movement, and the demographic phenomena behind it are happening in many countries beyond the United States. Today’s guest post on the Ad Summa blog comes from a leader in the UK’s creative aging movement, Dr. …
A Modest Proposal for Museum Collections: Apply the principle of direct costs for deaccessioning

By John Wetenhall

Some years ago, shortly before I assumed the directorship of the Ringling Museum of Art—the state art museum of Florida—the leader of the Florida Legislature declared, “I love Rubens.” The Ringling was widely known for its rare and …
Conferencing While Introverted

By Hannah Hethmon

Something that I hear a lot of first-time museum conference attendees say is that they’re worried about being an introvert in such a demanding, extroverted environment. So I thought, for my official blog post as a 2019 Social Media …