Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion

Virtual Internships Are Here to Stay—and That’s a Good Thing

By Mattie Schloetzer

Amid the challenges of 2020, one of the most successful learning experiences for me was pivoting to a 100 percent remote internship program at the National Gallery of Art. When I began planning to make the transition last March, I saw …
Essential Evaluators: Let’s Keep Unlearning

By Laureen Trainer and Andréa Giron Mathern

Essential Evaluators seeks to gather evaluators in a common space to dialogue, reflect, and support each other in a world upended by COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protest movement. This is a time of uncertain and unknown expectations …
New TrendsWatch! Navigating a Disrupted Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

In a normal year, TrendsWatch explores the impact emerging forces of change may have on museums in the next decade or longer. Some, such as demographic shifts, affect all museums in the present. Others, such as the rise of blockchain …
The Benefits and Challenges of Producing Creative Aging Programs for the LGBTQIA+ Community

By Eli Burke

Since 2018, AAM has partnered with Aroha Philanthropies to highlight and support museums that are developing programs for older adults, and to encourage others to do the same. The aim has been to address the epidemic of ageism, both within …
Essential Evaluators: Digital Storytelling

By Laureen Trainer and Andréa Giron Mathern

Essential Evaluators seeks to gather evaluators in a common space to dialogue, reflect, and support each other in a world upended by COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protest movement. This is a time of uncertain and unknown expectations …
How the National Air and Space Museum Took Volunteering Virtual

By Elisa Kosarin, CVA

A mother and her spaceship-loving children, ages five and seven, arrive at the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center using their timed tickets. As they enter the museum, unsure where to turn first, a volunteer on a sixty-five-inch monitor behind the …
10 Best Practices of Accessible Museum Websites

By Sina Bahram

This article explores ten high-impact areas you should consider to enhance your website’s accessibility and bring it into conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the set of rules and practices that aims to define …
A Roadmap for Equity

By Marianna Pegno, PhD, and Jeremy Mikolajczak

The Tucson Museum of Art is seeking institutional change through its IDEA plan. This article originally appeared in the January/February, 2021 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. In an effort to provide the broadest …
The White Supremacy Elephant in the Room

By Museums and Race contributors Janeen Bryant, Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, Stacey Mann, and Levon Williams

These dual crises of COVID-19 and the national racial justice reckoning have drawn the curtain back on a field rife with systemic inequities. While many within the field have been pushing these inequities to the forefront for decades, …
Embracing the DEAI Mindset

By Makeba Clay and Cecile Shellman

A conversation between two DEAI experts on how museums can prepare a chief diversity officer for success. This article originally appeared in the January/February 2021 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. In an effort to …