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Museums and the Living Wage: How Filoli Developed a Bold Pay Equity Initiative

By Kara Newport

Each year CFM’s TrendsWatch brings attention to bear on critical issues for museums, challenging our sector to think about how we might adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Examining a future in which museums may create healthier …
A New Site of Conscience: Sing Sing Prison Museum

By Brent D. Glass

Five years ago, CFM’s TrendsWatch report examined how museums are helping society confront the need for criminal justice reform. Historic sites play an important role in this work, with institutions like the Eastern State Penitentiary in …
Historic Houses in the Shifting Landscape of Climate Change

By Jenny Dyer

In combating climate change, we can look to Indigenous and historic practices for models of sustainable architectural solutions to extreme heat, cold, and humidity. Structures built in societies or eras without electrically powered air …
Museums Discover Impact Investing

By Laura Callanan

CFM first flagged impact investing as a trend of significance to museums in 2013, inspired by a talk Seth Miller gave at SXSW in which he declared that “every time you spend a dollar, you are creating the world you live in.” Impact …
NFTs: Museums Can Build Other, Better Digital Stuff

By Elizabeth Merritt

“When I was a congressional aide, we had an expression, ‘No idea was too stupid to say out loud,’ so here it is, hear me out. Instead of buying these ships? Don’t buy these ships. Buy other ships. Better ships. That’s my …
Your Self-care Prescription: News Positivity

By Elizabeth Merritt

Reporters at Axios recently summarized data documenting a steep drop-off in news consumption in the past six months. Evidently, the relentless thunder of traumatic events is driving more and more people offline in an effort to preserve …
In Praise of Mission Creep

By Elizabeth Merritt

My focus this year is on exploring the ways museums serve as essential infrastructure for their communities: improving education for our children, creating livable communities for our elders, fostering mental health, helping prepare for …
Building Salary Equity at the Bakken Museum

By Joe Imholte

Some of the most interesting conversations I had at #AAM2022 were about workplace issues, notably pay equity, and I was heartened to find many people in leadership positions are looking for guidance and models of how to begin the process …
My High School Is in a Museum

By Andrew Farke

Followers of this blog will know I am a huge fan of museum schools. TrendsWatch: Museums as Community Infrastructure, the most recent CFM report, devotes one chapter to exploring how museums serve as essential pillars of education, in some …
The Library of the Great Silence: A Space for Beings Throughout the Universe to Explore Shared Challenges

By Elizabeth Merritt

I have a special place in my heart for exhibits and installations that explore potential futures in creative, immersive ways. As I compiled a collection of such work, at some point I noticed that an awful lot of them originated with one …