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Museums as Community Catalysts: Museum of Northern Arizona
Many museums aspire to be “conveners,” “dialog centers” and “safe places for conversation.” So it’s nice to be able to share stories of museums living up to this aspiration. This week the Museum of Northern Arizona provided a forum this … -
Do Innovation, and Diversity, Sometimes Look Like Failure?
The New York Times reports that the Brooklyn Museum is struggling to meet its attendance goals, using director Arnold Lehman’s strategy of building local audience rather than competing with other NY museums for tourists. The article cites … -
The Future of Reality
I highly recommend this talk, When Games Invade Real Life, by Jesse Schell . It’s worth taking half an hour to plonk yourself down with a soda and let him blow your mind. Museum-ers will find this lecture particularly heartening because, … -
Demographic Transformation and…What Next? A Call to Action
On May 24th, at our annual meeting in Los Angeles, AAM released the latest CFM trends paper, Demographic Transformation and the Future of Museums. Betty Farrell and her colleagues at the Cultural Policy Center of the University of Chicago, … -
Questions of Scale: The Hard Business of Interpreting Trends
One of the fundamental tools of forecasting is trends analysis. If various things (price of oil, use of social media, craze for cupcakes) putter along in the direction they are headed now, at the same speed, how will these trends interact, … -
What is Innovation Anyway?
One of the goals AAM set for CFM is to “foster innovation.” Why? Because innovation is to museums’ survival what genetic variation is to evolution—a source of novelty, producing structures or strategies that succeed better than the old … -
Can Bingo (and Museums) Appeal to All?
Last week, at its annual meeting in Los Angeles, AAM released Demographic Transformation and the Future of Museums—the latest forecasting report from CFM. In the next four decades, America will become a majority-minority nation, while 90% … -
Dark Future/Bright Future
I love telling people I am going to LA next week to forecast the future. Not predict the future, mind you—forecast. There’s a big difference. Prediction implies certainty—“this is what is going to happen.” Forecasting is seeing a number of … -
The Future of Conferences, cont.
I blogged last year about AAM’s steps to “go green” with its annual meeting. Fact is, we may face a future in which professional conferences are profoundly different because of heightened sensitivity to travel’s ecological impacts as well … -
Thinning the Ranks–Alert!
I’ve had many a late-night debate about whether the field as a whole might actually be healthier if there were fewer museums, and some of the perpetually unstable ones closed. Whether or not that ever happens, we may be on the verge of …
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Latest Stories from AAM
Tracking Trust in Museums: 2026 Update
Category:
Alliance Blog
This visual Data Story is based on findings from the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, …
Mining the National Archives: New Exhibition Sparks Personalized Discovery with AI
Category:
Center for the Future of Museums Blog
CFM’s summer dive into artificial intelligence has included scenarios of potential …
From Fragmentation to Alignment: Project Management in Museums
Category:
On-Demand Programs
Project management in museums is often misunderstood as task tracking or administrative …