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Saying No: A Practical Guide

By Hilary Branch

Most of us in the museum field feel we have too much work and too little time. No matter how much we get done, our to-do lists never seem to get any shorter—only longer by leaps and bounds. Despite our heavy workloads, it’s hard to say no …
Innovations in Relevance: A Q&A with Stephen Reily of Remuseum

By Adam Rozan

I first learned about Stephen Reily when he was the director of Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, which at the time was making headlines for its Breonna Taylor-themed exhibition Promise, Witness, Remembrance. His name popped up …
Hope for the Future and Museums: Community and Family—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 …
Hope for the Future and Museums: Enthusiasm and Resistance—A 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Susie Wilkening

For many of us who work in the museum field, the idea of "hope" feels like a positive outcome of a museum visit, and thus worthy of cultivation. Fortunately, most museum-goers agree! As we saw in our introductory Data Story on hope, …
Scrappy Ways to Get Your Museum in the News

By Sarah Maiellano

For many museums—especially small- or medium-sized institutions where everyone wears multiple hats—a marketing department is a luxury, let alone dedicated media relations staff. For those without experience dealing with the press, the …
Hope for the Future and Museums: A 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Susie Wilkening

In the 2024 survey, we specifically considered the importance of hope in motivating museum-goers to take a more positive and proactive approach to the future. To find out what the public thinks about museums and hope, we asked a series of …
Cultivating the Next Generation of Black Museum Leaders: The AAAM x Howard University Advanced Executive Training

By Vedet Coleman-Robinson

The Association of African American Museums (AAAM) stands as the principal voice of the African American museum movement, providing support, respite, and abundant educational opportunities. For more than four decades, AAAM has successfully …
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 …