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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Will it Play in Peoria?

By Elizabeth Merritt

This article appeared recently in PJStar.com: “There’s No Plan ‘B’ for Peoria Museum”. It reports on a town hall meeting about the proposed Downtown Peoria Riverfront Museum and Caterpillar Visitors Center. Being blissfully ignorant of …
Forecasting the Financial Future of Museums Pt II: What are our Options?

By Elizabeth Merritt

Last week I wrote about “The New Borgias”—the uber-wealthy who may, in the future, be the most promising source of funding for museums. This week I share some thoughts on other funding models and explore how they, in turn, might influence …
The New Borgias

By Elizabeth Merritt

In Superstruct, the Alternate Reality Game from the Institute for the Future that ran last fall, player Phil Deely wrote a story titled “The New Borgias.” Deely posited that, in the game’s fictional future of 2019, the wealthy few dominate …
The Post-educational Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

The recent kerfluffle about whether museums should be included in the federal stimulus bill was a depressing reminder of the narrow stereotypes into which museums force themselves in order to protect their access to public funding. For …

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