Sharing the Wealth: Museums as Equity Engines
Recently, I’ve been speaking of museums as banks—repositories of enormous wealth of reputation, knowledge, and influence, in addition to the sheer value of their endowments. I’ve advanced the thesis that by managing this wealth as a type …
Leveraging MAP for Capacity Building: The Sierra Mono Museum experience
The Sierra Mono Museum and Cultural Center—a small, rural, nonprofit museum set in the California foothills just south of Yosemite National Park—is today undergoing a one-million-dollar renovation thanks, in large part, to its recent …
Collection Ranking: Making deaccessions work for you
For all the objects in a museum’s collection that meet the standard criteria for accessioning—they fit the museum’s mission, are in good condition, and have thorough provenance—a significant percentage meet only one (or none) of these …
How Science Museum of Minnesota Put Its Collections and Research on the MAP
The timing was right for Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) to participate in the Collections Stewardship Museum Assessment Program (MAP) program in 2018. Since our last MAP, in 1985, we had experienced many changes. Most recently, our new …
Doing More with More: Investing in Earned Income
As the saying goes, “it takes money to make money.” Often museums feel they can’t risk their slim financial margin on speculative ventures, but not taking such risks comes with a cost as well—the cost of lost opportunities. In today’s …
Museopunks Episode 38: Decolonization and its Discontents
As decolonization moves more firmly onto the agenda in museums, so too does its critique. In this episode, we speak with Sumaya Kassim, author of the essay ‘The Museum Will Not Be Decolonised’, and Nathan “Mudyi” Sentance to …
Thinking about the Unthinkable: Disaster preparedness and emergency response plans for small museums
Since 1981, the Museum Assessment Program (MAP) has been assisting small and mid-sized museums in their quest to achieve best practices and national standards. The process begins with an application to AAM for one of the assessments, …
Collaborating with Emergency Responders to Protect Cultural Heritage
Protecting cultural heritage collections is crucial to preserving our nation’s history, sustaining the economy, and fostering resilience so that communities can respond to and recover from disasters of all shapes and sizes. Most cultural …
TrendsWatch 2019: Confronting the Past: The long, hard work of decolonization
This is one of the five trends from the 2019 TrendsWatch. Click here to read more about the full report. “Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn their flag and their police force from our …
Closing the GAAP on Direct Care
As lawyers with backgrounds in horticulture (Lori) and material culture studies (Sarah), we never thought we would be passionate about an accounting rule. Yet here we are. In 2015 we wrote a white paper suggesting a revision to an …
