Food Forward: Eat and drink trends in museums
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2015 edition of the Museum magazine. Museums today are leveraging eating, drinking and tasting in new ways for visitors. Institutions striving to deliver multisensory experiences can find no …
Beyond Four Walls: A conversation with Peter Kim about creating a museum of food and community
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2015 edition of the Museum magazine. Good projects never really end—they flow into the future with all sorts of serendipitous consequences. A lovely ripple effect of the Center for the …
Monday Musing: Millennial Anti-Materialism
I read an article in the Washington Post last Friday that resonated with some nascent thoughts on the role of museums shaped by audiences born between 1980 and 2000. The story, by Jura Konclus, looks at the “seismic shift of stuff” …
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 scientists and by one former museum trustee & …
More on the Wacky World of Museum Economics
“Food should be more expensive.” That’s a core message of the locavore/sustainable food movement, and it doesn’t resonate so well with most folks. It sounds ridiculous on the face of it—who wants to pay more for food? But proponents of …
Futurist Friday: Building the City of the Future
Eugène Hénard, ‘The Cities of The Future’, published in American City, January 1911. I just downloaded a report that looks like a fascinating futurist read. “A Visual History of the Future” looks at how past …
The Multi-dimensional Museum
I was delighted to hear this story over the weekend on NPR, on how the Pacific Science Center opens early, one Saturday each month, to provide an environment tailored to the needs of visitors with autism. For this time, they turn down the …
Lost Pleasures
“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer.” –Clement Freud There was an interesting bit of math tucked into the calorie count regulations released by the FDA late …
On Philanthropy and Paternalism
I’m immersed in writing TrendsWatch 2015 for the rest of the month, which leaves limited bandwidth for blogging. For the next few weeks, I’m going to be sharing brief thoughts, the kind of “here’s a 15 minute essay on why I think this …
What’s a Good CEO Worth?
This is part three in an ongoing series of essays sharing my thoughts on museum economics, training and compensation. Catch up with parts one (The Museum Sacrifice Measure) and two (What is the Fair Market Value of a Museum Job). I had …
