Future Forecasting

Grab the Popcorn and Settle in for 2010—Year of All Things Local

By Elizabeth Merritt

Futurist Faith Popcorn’s predictions for 2010. She declares it will be a year of Local Cocooning. See her observations on the growing preference for “Locotainment” –for example, attendance at minor-league baseball games at the expense of …
From Theory to Practice: Applying Futures Studies

By Elizabeth Merritt

A guest post contributed by Joe Cavanaugh, museum director of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. Joe was one of Elizabeth Merritt’s classmates in the University of Houston Future Studies Program’s certificate …
Some Projections to End the Year

By Philip Katz

Contributed by Phil Katz, AAM’s Assistant Director for Research. Most anecdotal evidence has pointed to shrinking museum staffs in 2009. However, new projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the demand for museum …
The Museum of the Future—your vision reflected here?

By Elizabeth Merritt

A friend who works with, but not in, museums has asked me for predictions regarding characteristics of the museum of the future. He is working on an interesting project to create a prototype of the “future museum” in order to generate …
Meet Me in Houston, and Let’s Aim for the Stars!

By Elizabeth Merritt

Want be a pioneer in the ranks of museum futurists? Read on. CFM has on its to-do list starting a Museum Forecasting Network. The Network will draw on the experience of a diverse group of museum practitioners to preview trends within …
Tomorrow’s News, Today: Museums without Walls

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of the assumptions that CFM questioned early on is that museums are necessarily tied to a particular place. I’ve speculated about whether and when a museum might want to migrate to a new city or community. On a more local scale, why …
Economic Change and the Future of American Museums

By James Chung and Susie Wilkening

Guest blog by James Chung and Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors Over the summer, James was asked to speak at the International Council of Museums meeting about the current economic turmoil and the impact on American museums. Primed by our …
Building a Self-Study Course in Futurism

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of CFM’s major goals is to encourage museum practitioners to think and plan for a longer time frame (longer, that is, than the usual one to three-year plan.) In our rapidly changing, uber-connected world a plan that looks good in the …
Blog to keep an eye on: MuseumDesignLab

By Elizabeth Merritt

This blog documents the work of 18 students at the Parsons School of Design who will spend the next semester forecasting the future of 6 NYC-based museums: The American Museum of Natural History, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, …
Questioning Assumptions: the Future of Education

By Elizabeth Merritt

The recent CFM posts about museum studies (here and here) have spun off in all sorts of interesting directions, including discussions at New Curator and MJ Writes. People propose that graduate programs should guarantee jobs for graduates, …