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The Center for the Future of Museums Blog shares musings on the future of museums and society.

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Sharing Snippets from AAM 2025

It was lovely to see over 4,000 of you in Los Angeles last week! I hope those of you who did attend share what you learned through conversation, social media, blog posts, presentations to …

Join Us, LIVE FROM LA!

The recent wave of grant cancellations and other funding disruptions mean that some museum people have had to cancel their plans to attend the AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo this week. …

Cultivating Optimism: Signals of Hope

I’ve been on a deep dive into the world of optimism lately, looking for inspiration I might share to bolster our collective mental resilience in the face of massive disruptions. As I …

Revisiting Wild Times: The Loss of Nonprofit Status

In 2018 I published a scenario titled “Wild Times” set in a version of 2040 in which museums lost their nonprofit status due to a combination of political attacks, economic stress, and a …

Your Guide to the Future at AAM 2025

AAM’s annual meeting is a gigantic buffet of content, and I know from experience that navigating the offerings can be somewhat overwhelming. In this post I offer one specialized menu of …

TrendsWatch: Download, share, and go deeper

The 2025 edition of TrendsWatch, AAM’s annual forecasting report, is now available as a free PDF download! In this post I’ll tell you how to snag your copy and preview some opportunities to …

Special Screening of Repatriation Documentary at AAM 2025

I’m excited to announce that AAM has arranged a special showing of the 2024 documentary Dahomey at the upcoming AAM Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. Dahomey, directed by French Senegalese …

Against Efficiency

On occasion, I use this space to comment on norms and practices that I feel do active harm to our sector and our peers. (See, for example, my short rant on “quiet quitting” and the …

Living in a Wild Future

In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic upended the world for Americans and American museums, my job shifted from focusing on the far future to the immediate present. As museum leaders …

How to Face the Future, Cultivate Optimism, and Defy Dystopia

Over the past month I’ve been immersed in conversations with directors, staff, independent professionals, funders, and association staff, all trying to find a way forward in the face of the …

Strengthen Your Museum with Data

The past few weeks have many of us feeling uncertain about the future. I’m writing to remind you of an opportunity to reduce some of that uncertainty with cold, hard facts. Since 2020, AAM …

Responding to Rapid Change by Assessing Risk and Asking Questions

In recent weeks, museum leaders have often been forced to make decisions on the fly, in advance of crafting a comprehensive (or even a tentative) plan for coping with the current tsunami of …
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