Posts
Curatorial Practice
Read the Winners of This Year’s Excellence in Exhibition Label Writing Competition
Exhibition labels are a primary tool museums use to communicate with visitors, so every word (and punctuation mark!) counts. To underscore this, AAM’s Curators Committee sponsors a …
The Hand of Native American Women, Visible at Last
The role of women art-makers in Native communities has gone widely ignored. Now a bold museum show, by and for these women, is shining a light on 1,000 years of their art. Sonya …
Taking Native Lands and Lives
Museums have power—the power to tell stories, shape narratives, and influence the lens we bring to bear on the past. That power can be harnessed for healing, as museums contribute to a …
Should These Clothes Be Saved?
Thousands of articles of everyday women's clothing are being preserved in lockers in a college basement. But where, exactly, does their value lie? It is possible that one of the more …
What Can the Museum World Learn From Hilma af Klint?
Earlier this month, as the Guggenheim Museum's exhibition of the formerly little-known Swedish painter Hilma af Klint drew to an end, art world power broker Thelma Golden posted an …
Collecting Girlhood: Why the new activist museum is virtual
The assumption that museums must be permanent buildings with physical collections is no longer sustainable. With decreased funding, increased competition, and the burden of care, museums …
Clean House to Survive? Museums Confront Their Crowded Basements
Fueled by philanthropic zeal, lucrative tax deductions and the prestige of seeing their works in esteemed settings, wealthy art owners have for decades given museums everything from their …
Through the ephemeral, Tenderloin Museum explores neighborhood’s past
Matchbooks used to be like calling cards. This was back in the '40s, '50s and '60s - when everybody smoked, back before we knew what we know now. And so bars and cafes and hotels and clubs, …
What does it mean to decolonize a museum?
By Elisa Shoenberger In the past few years, museums across the US, Europe, and Australia are trying to tackle the challenge of decolonizing their institutions. However, the very meaning …
Curator as Catalyst: How an interdisciplinary fellowship inspired “a new way of doing museum”
A few years ago, I had the unique opportunity to work across four fiercely independent and starkly different museums in the fine arts, sciences, and natural history. After being awarded …
Writing Fashion History at the Met, One Dress at a Time
How a behind-the-scenes museum team keeps 33,000 fashion ensembles alive and looking their best. Fashion history won't be written in ink. You can't even use a pen in the library at the Anna …
Listen to the Interns: The Importance of the “Budding Scholar” for Museum Decolonization
As a junior in college, I think I might have found my calling—for now anyway. For the past two and a half years I have been studying Art History, Museum Studies, and African American …