The Transformative Power of Innovation
This guest post is by Richard Evans, president, EmcArts Inc. AAM is partnering with EmcArts, with the generous support of MetLife Foundation, to offer Innovation Lab for Museums. The Request for Proposals for the Lab has just been …
Don’t Just Stir It, Shake It!
Today’s guest post is by Richard V. Piacentini, executive director of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Richard previews one of the themes we will explore next month at Feeding the Spirit: Museums, Food & Community—how …
Save the Historic House, Save the World
This article originally appeared in the September/October 2011 edition of Museum magazine. A Conversation with Michael Babin and Laurie Ossman At Northern Virginia’s Woodlawn—a historic site that was once part of George …
Starting a Museum: Advice from the Trenches
Today’s guest post is by Liz Williams, president of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans (SoFAB). SoFAB “celebrates, interprets, investigates, entertains and preserves”—and in this museum, preservation means jam as well as …
When Trends Collide: The New Gilded Age Meets the Rise of the Amateur Expert
Museums have long struggled to resist pressure from wealthy donors or sponsors who want to call the shots. How might this play out in a future in which museums loosen their grip on curatorial authority and actively encourage participation …
Museum Ethics in a Gilded Age
This week’s guest post by Erik Ledbetter, principal of Heritage Management Solutions and special adviser to the Forecasting the Future of Museum Ethics project currently underway in partnership with Seton Hall University’s Institute of …
Creating your own Arcadia: Where do you start?
I’m often asked, “What will be the financial model be for museums in the future?” That model may well combine the idealism and mission-driven focus of nonprofits with strategies adapted from the for-profit realm. This week’s guest post is …
More on Reinventing the Historic House (while Saving the World)
Over a thousand readers perused the post on director Laurie Ossman’s strategies to improve Woodlawn’s future through partnering with restaurateur Michael Babin to create the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture. Arcadia is …
The Future of Development: Crowdsourced Funding
When AAM conducted its 2009 Museum Financial Information survey, a quarter of respondents had a capital campaign in progress. We don’t even have stats on how many museums regularly run annual giving campaigns, but it sometimes it …
Can Museums Help Make Cities More Intelligent?
“Smart cities” is a big topic now. How big? Smart Planet recently reported that investment in smart city infrastructure will hit $108 billion by 2020. Yah, that’s big. What makes a city “smart?” Smart Planet defines it as “the …
