Exhibitions

Hiding In Plain Sight: An exhibition showcasing America’s obsession with Native American iconography aims to start a new conversation.

By Paul Chaat Smith

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2019 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. By most standards, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, DC, is a wildly successful …
Read the Winners of This Year’s Excellence in Exhibition Label Writing Competition

By American Alliance of Museums

Exhibition labels are a primary tool museums use to communicate with visitors, so every word (and punctuation mark!) counts. To underscore this, AAM’s Curators Committee sponsors a yearly competition spotlighting the work of …
Taking Native Lands and Lives

By Christine Lashaw

Museums have power—the power to tell stories, shape narratives, and influence the lens we bring to bear on the past. That power can be harnessed for healing, as museums contribute to a reparative reexamination of history and the legacy of …
Futurist Friday: Deepfake Dali

By Elizabeth Merritt

What if you could speak with the dead? More to the point, what if they could talk back? I just read about a project at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, that uses “deepfake” technology to create a digital version of …
Designing for a Divided People: Planning the permanent exhibition for the Kurdistan Museum, Erbil

By Christine Echtner

“The next generation do not know about it. I talk to them, but it’s not like a film. If I tell them it may not stick, this way is more permanent.” Najiba Ahmad Hakeem, Kanitu Village, Kurdistan, Iraq about the Kurdistan Memory Programme …
Crowdsourcing the Peabody Museum’s Future

By Jaan Elias

I’m often asked which topics featured in CFM’s TrendsWatch report proved to be of enduring importance, and which fizzle. I’m happy to say that so far, all the trends we’ve identified have continued to be significant for our field. Case in …
N’Sync: Aligning Expectations During an Exhibition Design Project

By David Whitemyer, AIA

According to Google, pop star Justin Bieber is attributed with the quote, “Two people can look at the same thing and see it differently.” It seems more like something Heraclitus or another philosopher might’ve said. Stephen Covey wrote in …
Museopunks Episode 34: Paradigm Lost

By Suse Anderson

In early 2019, experience designer Ed Rodley asked the hivemind what they saw as the biggest issues facing ppl who make museum experiences in 2019? The answer from Jay Rounds, E. Desmond Lee Professor of Museum Studies emeritus at the …
Collecting Girlhood: Why the new activist museum is virtual

By Tiffany Rhoades Isselhardt

The assumption that museums must be permanent buildings with physical collections is no longer sustainable. With decreased funding, increased competition, and the burden of care, museums have had to reimagine themselves. Some small …
I AM A CHILD

By Noelle Trent, Ph.D

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2019 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of membership with the Alliance. Click here to learn more about membership! On June 5, 2018, on Twitter and Instagram, Paola Mendoza posted a …