Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion

Creating Access, Inclusion, and Belonging through Language

By American Alliance of Museums

This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Panelists in this session share how they incorporate Spanish language into visitor and staff experiences. Featuring four case studies from a diverse set of …
What Can Museums Learn from the Connected Learning Framework?

By Joseph O'Neill

How would you try to convince a naysayer of the value of arts education? Maybe you would plead for the value of these subjects in their own right, citing the mind-expanding powers of self-expression, technical exploration, and human …
Museum as Living Room: A Q&A with Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts’ Victoria Ramirez

By Adam Rozan

I believe museums matter because they serve as vital community spaces, where we can meet, mingle, work, learn, study, daydream, and everything in between. I came to this realization, in part, after reading Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good …
How to Transform a Volunteer Program in Six Steps

By Joseph O'Neill

Dive into the theme of The Next Era of Volunteerism at The Museum Summit this October! Are you taking a second look at your museum’s volunteer program? Maybe you’re struggling with flagging recruitment and retention, questioning how the …
A Guided Wellness Workshop for Taking Care of Yourself Before Your Communities

By Janet Tillman

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to join the AAM team for two wellness sessions in the lead-up to May’s Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Given the meeting’s wellness-focused theme, “Thriving Museums, Healthy Communities,” the team …
Reframing the Collection: How a Literary Catalog Experiment Brought New Voices to Interpretation

By Derek (DK) Nnuro

The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art (Stanley) is part of the arts ecosystem at the country’s premier university for the study of creative writing. As a curatorial team, we have long been aware of the unique position this puts us …
The Pains and Pleasures of Being a First-Generation Museum Person

By Jojo Galvan

Every few months or so, there’s a family gathering. From a birthday celebration to a family cookout, my family never seems to have a shortage of reasons to gather. At the time of this writing, I am twenty-six years old, making me the right …
Creating Restorative Moments at Woodland Park Zoo

By Lauren Carroll-Bolger

Woodland Park Zoo’s Hope & Healing offers uplifting community experiences for people facing life-altering challenges. This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s May/June 2024 issue, a benefit of AAM membership. A child …
Toward Equity in Metadata: How Sandy Spring Museum Is Going beyond Reparative Cataloging

By Allison Weiss

Equity: freedom from bias or favoritism Metadata: data that describes and provides context for digital items, which in turn helps users find and discover these resources. Though Black and white residents numbered almost equally throughout …
Faces of Baltimore Museums: Rachel Leeds

By American Alliance of Museums

Have you heard about AAM 2024 in Baltimore this month? (We hope so—we’re doing our best!) If so, you might have seen one of our ads for this year’s edition, featuring a lovely cast of smiling faces. But just whose faces are …