Posts
Ethics
Direct Care of Collections: Ethics, Guidelines, and Recommendations
This article originally appeared in the July-August 2016 issue of Museum magazine. First issued in 2016, the white paper was updated in 2019 to reflect the updated FASB accounting standard …
Futurist Friday: All Too Human
To add to your TV viewing list: Humans, a new eight part series on AMC. (You can watch all eight episodes online if you have an account with any one of a number of providers.) The show is …
The Limits of Neutrality: A Message From The Natural History Museum
Today’s guest post, from the team at The Natural History Museum (including director Beka Economopoulos), illustrates one of the trends I discuss in TrendsWatch 2015, and touches upon …
Monday Musing: On Small Dead Things
15 minutes of top-of-my-head thoughts on a story featured in last week’s Dispatches from theFuture of Museums e-newsletter. One of the things that drove me out of graduate school (besides …
What Do Ethical Consumers Expect of Museums?
An open letter released today calls on natural history and science museums to “cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate change obfuscation.” The letter, signed by …
Monday Musing: TrendsWatch Watch
Here’s a quick roundup of recent stories related to the themes in TrendsWatch 2015 (Haven’t got your copy yet? Download the free PDF here. Print copies will be available in the AAM …
Shaping the Future of Museum Ethics
Today the Alliance is launching a survey asking for input on what museum professionals think should be included in the definition of direct care. Sally Yerkovich, Chair of the AAM Direct …
Sold out of science: embracing private collectors in natural history museums.
Is there such a thing as déjà prevu—the feeling of seeing something that you intended to write, but haven’t, yet? This feeling swept over me recently when I read a piece by Mark Carnall, …
Futurist Friday: Artifacts of the Future
What artifacts will history museums of the future collect, and how will we interpret them? Scenarios—fictional stories of potential futures—can help us imagine how we would adapt to …
Ethics Smackdown: For the Resolution
This is the fourth and (for now) final installment of our report on the debate held at the Alliance in May regarding the future of museum ethics. In today’s post, James Bradburne, director …
Ethics Smackdown: Against the Resolution
This is the third installment in our report from the Ethics Smackdown at the Alliance annual meeting, debating whether museums should loosen the ethics restrictions governing the use of …