Equity

Financial Sustainability Is Everyone’s Responsibility

By Laura Lott

Prepared Remarks of Laura L. Lott President & CEO of the American Alliance of Museums Opening General Session of the 2019 Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo May 20, 2019 Good morning and welcome to the 2019 AAM Annual Meeting, the largest …
Museums as a Pink Collar Profession

By Joan Baldwin

This week, my colleagues at GEMM (the Gender Equity in Museums Movement) published their second white paper, Museums as a Pink Collar Profession. GEMM’s paper poses some complex questions about our field. Among other things, it asks …
The Power of a Paid Internship: Creating pathways to careers in museums

By Makeba Clay

In 2015, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation issued a report on diversity in art museums that reinforced what is obvious to anyone working in or affiliated with the industry: non-Hispanic white men dominate leadership positions, and there is a …
The Museum of Street Culture

By Alan Govenar

One national trend I’ve been tracking is the recent rise in people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. On any given night over a half million people in the US are coping with homelessness. Over a third of these people are …
How Can Museums Empower Communities? TACA Perforum

By Elizabeth Merritt

Last month I had the honor of speaking on a panel organized by The Arts Community Alliance (TACA) in Dallas, hosted by the Nasher Sculpture Center. Every year TACA brings together speakers for Perforum: a Conversation to Advance Arts and …
Decolonizing the Museum Mind

By Frank Howarth

At the heart of modern museum work is the tension between our mission to preserve the past, and a moral obligation to confront the bias and inequities entangled with that inheritance. The history, mindset, and material culture of …
Leading By Example, Not by Mandate

By Laura Lott

Champion museums and nurture excellence in partnership with our members and allies. This is the Alliance’s mission statement and a call to action that is driving results across the museum field. There is no Alliance without our members! …
Exploring a Fragmented Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

The second installment of TrendsWatch 2018’s scenarios of 2040 is now up on the web for discussion and comment! Fragmentation is woven from some of the anxieties shared by museum people when I asked, “What are your fears about the future?” …
Leveling the Playing Field at Sugar Hill

By Elizabeth Merritt

I fell in love with the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling back in 2014, when I read that Broadway Housing Communities’ brief to architect David Adjaye for this affordable housing project included a preschool AND …
Museums for an Equitable Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

The museum sector often thinks about equity in terms of access to exhibits and educational programs. There is also a robust and growing movement to make museums’ digital assets, including documentation and images of collections, open and …