Center for the Future of Museums Blog

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What is Mastodon and Why Should You Care?

By Elizabeth Merritt

I joined Twitter in 2009, soon after the launch of CFM. That was the first social media account associated with AAM, and trying out this new realm was part of CFM’s work exploring emerging digital tools and their significance for museums. …
Improving Access to Employment for People with Disabilities

By Dana Spencer Winfield

The museum sector is working to increase the diversity of our workforce through a variety of ways: for example, how we craft position requirements, word job announcements, and conduct interviews. That is helping museums make some progress …
Art, Wellness, and Mental Health

By Elizabeth Merritt

I met Ashley Witherspoon while researching CFM’s current TrendsWatch report—one of the topics we examine is how museums can help foster mental health for all. Ashley is the founder and CEO of Hand Made Dreams, a mental health platform …
Museums Can Help Transform Education

By Katherine Prince

Last week I spent an inspiring afternoon in a Zoom workshop dedicated to envisioning “liberatory futures” for P-12 education. How can we collectively create an educational future that is rooted in equity, self-determination, and the right …
A House Museum Built for the Digital Age

By Trevor Beemon

The museum sector went into the pandemic ill-prepared to use digital strategies to keep themselves afloat, but many museums that had begun to experiment with how digital could enhance or replace existing practices found themselves at an …
Planning for a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

Why is foresight an essential skill for museum people in coming decades? Last week I had the pleasure of making that case at the ICOM 2022 Triennial Conference, and today I’m happy to share the presentation with you. It’s a 7 minute …
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 …