Posts
Ethics
A Controversy of Monumental Proportions at the Kent State Memorial
The Kent State memorial commemorating the May 4, 1970, shootings has been polarizing since its inception. This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s July/August 2024 issue, a …
Reframing the Collection: How a Literary Catalog Experiment Brought New Voices to Interpretation
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 …
Probing Grief at Historic House Museums
Historic house museums can connect their physical spaces with personal experiences, including grief. This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s May/June 2024 issue, a benefit of …
Toward Equity in Metadata: How Sandy Spring Museum Adopted Restorative Cataloguing Practices
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 …
Advancing DEAI in a Polarized World
Recently, we hosted a webinar with museum leaders on values-based communications for diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI). While all attendees were eager to commit fully …
Remarks from Benin Bronzes Repatriation Ceremony
On October 11, 2022, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art hosted a repatriation ceremony in which officials of the museum transferred ownership of twenty-nine Benin bronzes and …
Museums Discover Impact Investing
CFM first flagged impact investing as a trend of significance to museums in 2013, inspired by a talk Seth Miller gave at SXSW in which he declared that “every time you spend a dollar, you …
Germany first to hand back Benin bronzes looted by British
“We face up to our historic and moral responsibility to shine a light and work on Germany’s historic past. The treatment of the Benin bronzes is a touchstone [of this process].” …
Baltimore Museum to Sell 3 Blue-Chip Paintings to Advance Equity
“This is done specifically in recognition of the protest being led by museum staff to be paid an equitable living wage to perform core work for an institution with a social justice …
Essential Evaluators: The Silver Lining
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. …
Fear Factor: In a contentious cultural climate, museums are wise to recognize the pressures to self-censor
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. In January 2020, it came to light that the National Archives had altered a …
Diving Deeper into Truth, Trust, and Fake News
In this series of posts, EdCom’s Trends Committee is taking a deeper look at emerging phenomena identified in the 2019 edition of TrendsWatch from the Center for the Future of Museums. …
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Latest Stories from AAM
Content Warnings in Museums and Galleries: Taking a Proactive Approach
Category:
Alliance Blog
I began writing and speaking about the need for trauma-informed practices in museums several years ago, and while I haven’t seen any big changes in the time since, I have seen small shifts …
Mental Health for All
Category:
Center for the Future Of Museums Blog
This is an excerpt from TrendsWatch: Museums as Community Infrastructure. The full report is available as a free PDF download. “What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and …
Urgent – Oppose Drastic House Funding Cuts to IMLS
Category:
Advocacy Alert
Advocacy Alert – July 19, 2024 In this Alliance Advocacy Alert: URGENT! Oppose Drastic House Funding Cuts to IMLS #InviteCongress 2024: Use Our How-To Guide to Participate Civic …