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Museums Shaping Cities

By Elizabeth Merritt

One crucial way museums can change the world is to help people in their communities improve their own environments. I want to spotlight a few notable examples that have crossed my radar recently. The National Building Museum’s Intelligent …
Creating your own Arcadia: Where do you start?

By Elizabeth Merritt

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 …
Who Oversees the Future? Introducing the Council

By Elizabeth Merritt

When the AAM board green-lighted the concept of CFM back in 2006, they took an important step in making sure this AAM skunkworks would operate in truly new ways, helping museums see things from a fresh perspective. They handed over the …
Big Food: Health, Culture and the Evolution of Eating

By Elizabeth Merritt

Ella Mitchell, an intern in AAM’s Government Relations and Advocacy department, reports on an innovative collaboration between the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and CARE—Community Alliance …
Futurist Friday: Exploring the Future of Education

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’ve been blogging a lot about the future of education, and the coming of a new educational era. If we are on the cusp of transformational change, it’s very important for museum futurists to be actively scanning for hints of what this new …
Landing a Job in the Museum of the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

I get a lot of calls from people asking for advice about careers: getting a first job, getting back into the museum field, switching to museums from another field. I wish I could wave a wand and open a door for these earnest job seekers. I …
At the Phillips, Just Take the Stairs

By Elizabeth Merritt

Today’s guest video is introduced by Dorothy Kosinski, director of The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. For me, the future of museums has a lot to do with supporting an overall sense of well-being for our visitors and community. In …
More Crowdsourced Scholarship: Citizen History

By Elizabeth Merritt

Today’s guest post is by Elissa Frankle, an education consultant at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. When not coordinating and raving about the Children of the Lodz Ghetto Citizen History project, she trains law enforcement …
Museums Can Save the World: Tackling Food Deserts

By Elizabeth Merritt

Take a look at DC’s food deserts: The pink areas are food deserts. In D.C., they are all located in Wards 5, 7 and 8. Image is from DCentric Pretty scary, yes? All those swathes of pink are low income communities where at least 33% of …
Futurist Friday: BLDGBlog

By Elizabeth Merritt

Sometimes scanning for change is about finding information. Sometimes it’s about fueling your imagination, seeking out what Jane McGonigal called “brain grenades”—ideas that shake up your thinking and open your mind to new possibilities. …