Inclusion

A New Way to See: Looking at museums through the eyes of the blind

By Samantha Silverberg

Let’s talk about accessibility. In the twenty-first century era of inclusivity, museums are working towards making the visitor experience a more positive and unique one, as part of efforts to increase the number of visitors to museums. In …
CAMPing Out: Making Museums More LGBTQ-friendly with Chicagoland Alliance of Museums with PRIDE

By Katie Slivovsky and David Carrasquillo

Part 1: Katie Slivovsky, Exhibit Development Director, LGBTQ Access & Inclusion Chair, Chicago Children’s Museum Something wonderful is brewing in Chicago—and I don’t mean craft beer. I’m talking about the 80-plus staff from over 25 …
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 …
The Citizenship Project

By Samantha Rijkers

It is shortly after 6 pm on a rainy summer evening in New York City. Ten adults are gathering in a classroom at the New-York Historical Society, carrying umbrellas, notebooks, and pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution. They come from the …
Seven Tips for Starting an Equitable and Inclusive Internship Program

By Ayanna Reed

Ayanna Reed is the Director of Human Resources at the Oakland Museum of California. One summer during my college years I interned for the Port of Oakland, one of largest shipping ports in the country. I was a business student at the time …
Access and Inclusion Case Study: Connecting Students to the Museum Field

By Amy Miller and Sarah Sims

In a session at the 2017 AAM Annual Meeting in St. Louis, a look around the room revealed a small sea of mostly mid-career museum professionals with experience and interest in education and interpretation. The presenter posed a question: …
The Portal: A Real-Time Conversation with People Forced to Flee Violence

By Elizabeth Merritt

In TrendsWatch 2017 I highlight Shared Studio’s Portals in the chapter on Empathy. These bi-directional video walls host virtual “face-to-face” conversations between people around the world, and have been used by a variety of institutions, …
Converting Family into Fans: How the Contemporary Jewish Museum expanded its reach to a new audience.

By Bob Harlow

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2017 issue of Museum magazine. Since its founding in 1984, the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) had been in a 2,500-square-foot space in the lobby of the Jewish Community Federation of …
Mapping Visitor Emotions to Make a Lasting Connection

By Elizabeth Merritt

Readers of the CFM Blog are also prime consumers of TrendsWatch, the Alliance’s annual forecasting report, which is available as a digital download and as a dynamic web version with real-time updates on this year’s trends. We are able to …