Beyond the Mannequin: Indigenous Bodies, Presence, and Textiles in Two Exhibitions at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca
Who decides how a body is represented inside a museum? This article first appeared in the journal Exhibition (Spring 2024) Vol. 43 No. 1 and is reproduced with permission. Museums, as institutions that sustain a certain visual order, have …
Climate Solutions: How Audience Research Helped Us Support Visitors in Envisioning Alternate Climate Realities
This article first appeared in the journal Exhibition (Spring 2024) Vol. 43 No. 1 and is reproduced with permission. Solutions to climate change exist. We have the knowledge. We have the technology. What is required now is the …
You, Me, We: Tackling Identity and Discrimination with Young Audiences
In February 2023, Boston Children’s Museum opened a new exhibition called You, Me, We, which encourages families to connect with each other around questions of fairness in the world, reflect on and express their identities, explore …
Seizing the Moment: How Museum Outreach and Programming Can Champion Overlooked Communities
Sometimes, instead of waiting for an invitation, overlooked communities will come knocking at your door. If so, is your museum ready to be fearless, seize the moment, collaborate, share narratives, and maybe even have some fun? One such …
Climate Action Heroes: How National Children’s Museum Is Empowering the Next Generation of Climate Innovators
African American students walking out of school to march for equal rights in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Eight-year-old activist Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins climbing out of her wheelchair and up the steps of the US Capitol to support the …
9 Colossal Exhibit Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
A Comprehensive Tipsheet to Thoughtful Curation, Engaging Exhibits, and How to Limit Headaches When Bringing Museum Experiences to Life. This tipsheet was developed by Elizabeth Skrabonja of EK SKRABONJA Exhibition Design and Shawn Jeffas, …
Seeding the Future at the New Children’s Museum
I’m a huge fan of speculative fiction—stories with the power to immerse us in the daily reality of possible futures deeply and viscerally. We can fall in love with fiction in a way we rarely love academic research or formal foresight. As a …
Curatorial Chatbot: An Experiment with AI at the Nasher Museum of Art
CFM has explored museum applications of artificial intelligence (AI) since 2017, notably business analytics, customer service, collections data analysis, and provenance research. Today on the blog, Julianne Miao tells us how the Nasher …
Moments That Matter: Toward a Visitor-Centered Understanding of Belonging in Museum Spaces
Imagine being a visitor or a member of a visiting group walking into the lobby of a museum you’re familiar with: you see a sign proclaiming “you belong here.” How would you get a sense of belonging in that space? What would you see, hear, …
Resisting the Colonial Imagination: The Role of Exhibition Design in the Decolonial Project
It is Monday morning at First Americans Museum (FAM), and a group of fifth graders are bustling with excitement as they embark on a gallery tour. A museum educator welcomes the students in her native language and emphasizes the uniqueness …
