Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion

#AAM2021 Elevate Stage Session: Increasing Racial and Ethnic Diversity on Museum Boards

By American Alliance of Museums

How do we diversify the makeup of museum boards while promoting artists, curators, leaders, and museums who preserve and tell the stories of people of color? Many museums are challenged with navigating the steps to create a more equitable …
From Preservation to Participation: The Journey of Sandy Spring Museum

By Allison Weiss

Many museums think that serving the needs of more ethnically diverse constituents will lose them “traditional” audience and supporters, but at Sandy Spring Museum (SSM), we’ve found just the opposite. Nearly ten years ago, when a financial …
What Does a Truly Equitable Recruiting Process Look Like?

By Katherine McNamee

A few years ago, AAM began a journey to re-evaluate our recruitment process and do more to encourage a diverse applicant pool for our job openings. As a result, we overhauled our expectations around job qualifications, working to ensure …
Crowdsourced Resources on Museums & Creative Aging

By Elizabeth Merritt

IMHO, the best thing about webinars—a feature not replicated by live events—is the chat room. Chat offers the thrill of passing notes in class, but with the explicit validation of the teacher. Last month’s virtual Summit on Museums and …
These Museums Helped Welcome Immigrants and Refugees to their Community, and Yours Can Too!

By American Alliance of Museums

Welcoming America’s annual Welcoming Week enlists organizations around the country to welcome new immigrants and refugees into their new communities. This year, AAM is a national partner of Welcoming Week and is calling on museums to get …
Same Storm, Different Boats

By Elizabeth Merritt

Sometimes, in the wake of disruptive events. the world acts like a rubber band, snapping back to its original shape. Other times, disruptions have a lasting impact—resetting our boundaries, reshaping our practice. It will take several …
Hindsight is 2020: What We Learned About Leadership in a Crisis

By Preeti Gupta, Daniel Zeiger, Sara Pelleteri, Alie LeBeau, Lindzy Bivings, and Kristin Evans

At the height of the pandemic, as so many aspects of our professional and personal lives hung in the balance and emotions fluctuated between despair and hope, effective leadership surfaced as essential. Facing public health restrictions …
Rethinking Our Human Resources Practices to Build a More Equitable Museum

By Micah D. Parzen, Ph.D., J.D.

Less than three weeks after COVID forced museums around the globe to close their doors last year, an article by Arundhati Roy in The Financial Times titled “The Pandemic is a Portal” stopped me in my tracks. In the midst of an …
A Deeper Model of Community Co-Creation

By Marjorie Bequette and Robby Callahan Schreiber

Museums often talk about reaching out to communities, or co-creating with community members, for an exhibition or project. But often in these cases, the formula is lopsided in favor the museum; even though they may be eliciting feedback, …
Museums Can Renew America Through the Semiquincentennial

By John Garrison Marks

Though it may still feel like a long way off, the United States’ 250th anniversary is rapidly approaching. Right now, the US Semiquincentennial Commission, federal agencies, state history organizations, and individual museums throughout …