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Center for the Future of Museums Blog

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

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EO Impact: Is There an Existential Threat to Nonprofit Status?

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By Elizabeth Merritt
Charitable giving may fluctuate year to year, tourism ebbs and flows, your museum’s endowment will perform better some years than others. That’s normal and expected, and nonprofits have …

EO Impacts and the Next Era of Museum Funding Part 3: Charitable Contributions and Investment Income

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By Elizabeth Merritt
Welcome to part three of my exploration of the current and potential future impacts of presidential orders and actions on museums’ income streams and business models. If you’re joining …

What’s your wish for U.S.? turns history museums into future-imagining incubators

By Caroline Klibanoff and Adam Rozan
In 2021, history museums across the nation, working in collaboration with one another and with Gen Z-ers through Made By Us, generated an idea to link together Juneteenth and the Fourth of …

EO Impacts and the Next Era of Museum Funding Part 2: Earned Income

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By Elizabeth Merritt
This is the second installment in a series of essays exploring the impact of executive orders and actions on museum income streams. It summarizes what we know about the immediate, …

Staying True to Mission: Why JANM Spoke Out

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By Ann Burroughs
As my colleagues and I catalogue the damage being done to our sector, we take heart from a small but growing cadre of museums taking principled positions in the face of attacks on their …

EO Impacts and the Next Era of Museum Funding: Part One

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By Elizabeth Merritt
Earlier this month I gave a talk at the AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo on the impact presidential executive orders are having on our sector, and the implications for museum business …

Sharing Snippets from AAM 2025

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By Elizabeth Merritt
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!

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By Elizabeth Merritt
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

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By Elizabeth Merritt
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

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By Elizabeth Merritt
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

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By Elizabeth Merritt
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

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By Elizabeth Merritt
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 …
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Twenty Innovative Program Ideas for Small Museums

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By American Alliance of Museums
The tips below were shared by Ann Bennett, Allison Schell, Kenny Libben, Susan Goganian, and several audience members during the 60 Ideas in 60 Minutes: Small Museums Are Thriving! session …

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