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Taking a Stand: Prisons Today, The Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Award Winner

By Nicole Frankhouser

The Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site’s Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration exhibition won first place in the 2017 Excellence in Exhibition award presented jointly by the following Professional Networks …
Leaving the Museum Field

By Sarah Erdman, Claudia Ocello, Dawn Estabrooks Salerno, and Marieke Van Damme

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Don Wildman: Why does the Museum of Science & Industry look the way it does?

By Don Wildman

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Why Museums Should Care About Young Children

By Anna Forgerson Hindley, Cynthia Raso, and Tiffany McGettigan

Anne Forgerson Hindley is the Supervisory Early Childhood Education Coordinator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Cynthia Raso is Assistant Director of the Center for Innovation in Early …
Sustainability at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

By James Deutsch and Eric Hollinger

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival won AAM’s PIC-Green Professional Network 2017 Sustainability Excellence Award for Programming. Here, James Deutsch, Program Curator for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, …
Reflections on A Seat at the Table at NMAAHC

By Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell

Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell is an education specialist with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This essay is adapted from her presentation “Activating Social Justice in the Museum: A Public …
Membership Isn’t the Top of the Mountain

By Eric Bruce

Eric Bruce is the Head of Visitor Experience at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia). This is the third article in a series we are presenting on how Mia has expanded its audience. In this series of posts about the Minneapolis Institute …
Workplace Culture – Face the Facts!

By Shawn VanDerziel

Shawn VanDerziel is the Chief Human Resources Officer at The Field Museum in Chicago. This is the second in a series we’ll be presenting that discusses the Field Museum’s staff culture and engagement initiative. Are we ready to hear the …
3 Questions with the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs

By Cecelia Walls

Recently, we heard from Dr. Adam Long, Director of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center, and Ann Burroughs, President and CEO, of the Japanese American National Museum about their experiences in Accreditation. Today, we …
The Question of Gender: The “Unseen” Problem in Museum Workplaces

By Joan Baldwin

Joan Baldwin is Curator of Special Collections at The Hotchkiss School. Why is it important? Because for too long women–and more recently those openly identifying as women–have experienced both hostile and benevolent sexism in the museum …