Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion

Welcoming Service Dogs to Your Museum

By Kristi Moore

Service dogs are becoming more common as the years go on, and as museum professionals it can be a challenge to welcome them in among our collections. We worry about hair and dander, physical damage, and health code violations. Most of us …
Sofa So Good: A word on behalf of older folks

By Bill Tramposch

I don’t know about you, but a career in museums has made it very difficult for me to be a satisfied museum visitor. I find that I am always peering into “how the sausage is made,” as it were, noticing how the front-of-house staff interact …
What Can a “Manifesto Against Ageism” Teach Museums?

By Bill Tramposch

Prior to the publication of Ashton Applewhite’s “manifesto against ageism,” This Chair Rocks, one reviewer proclaimed that the book would do for our society’s view of aging what Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did for the environment. Before …
Get about It: Change and Resistance

By Linda Norris

I’d never visited New Orleans before, and my brief but fascinating experience served as a metaphor for this year’s AAM Annual Meeting experience. New Orleans is a city of layers, with old finishes poking through, new ideas still pushing …
Welcoming the Next Generation of Board Leadership

By Christina Carr

AAM’s Facing Change initiative has put the spotlight on museum board diversity, but not everyone thinks of bringing younger people onto the board when the topic comes up. Age diversity, though, can contribute to financial sustainability …
51 Museums Selected for Board Diversity and Inclusion Program as Part of $4 Million National Initiative

By American Alliance of Museums

ARLINGTON, VA – July 23, 2019 – The American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the only organization representing the entire scope of the museum community, today unveiled the names and locations of the museums taking part in AAM’s unprecedented …
The Memory Café: Creating a museum program for people with dementia

By Norman Burns

At Conner Prairie—a Smithsonian Affiliate living history museum in Fishers, Indiana—we recently debuted a program for people with Dementia and Alzheimer’s. In partnership with the Central Indiana Council on Aging (CICOA) and Dementia …
Autism in Museums: a revolution in the making

By Claire Madge

As we work to increase diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility among museum audiences and in the workplace, we need to attend to the needs of neurodiverse visitors and employees. In today’s post, Claire Madge, founder of the …
Museopunks Episode 36: Queering Your Museum

By Suse Anderson

The end of Pride Month does not mean that we should stop talking or thinking about LGBTQIA+ inclusion and queer curating practices in museums. This month, we’re joined by Craig Middleton and Nikki Sullivan, authors of the KINQ (or …
An After-School Program Gives Refugee Children a Creative Boost

By Aimee Hunt

One of the many things that make Charlottesville, Virginia special is that it serves as a destination city for the International Rescue Committee, which helps refugees settle into their new countries. Since 1998, more than three thousand …