Center for the Future of Museums Blog

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Texas Museum Opens Doors During Historic Winter Storm

By Elizabeth Merritt

This year has exposed the vulnerabilities of so many critical systems in the US, including health care, education, and the social safety net. In the latest edition of TrendsWatch I profiled many ways museums are caring for populations …
Opportunity! Dedicated funding for museums taking climate action

By Elizabeth Merritt

As I note in this year’s TrendsWatch, this is truly a “syndemic” year. We face multiple crises that, left unchecked, will interact to make each other worse. For example, the pandemic-induced financial crisis will make it more difficult for …
Building Equity: Reparative Practice at the Valentine Museum

By Bill Martin

Last week the Alliance released TrendsWatch: Navigating a Disrupted Future. The opening chapter of this year’s forecasting report addresses the need for museums to join with all sectors of society in redressing the systemic inequalities of …
New TrendsWatch! Navigating a Disrupted Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

In a normal year, TrendsWatch explores the impact emerging forces of change may have on museums in the next decade or longer. Some, such as demographic shifts, affect all museums in the present. Others, such as the rise of blockchain …
Tales from Campus: Radical Collaboration at the Nasher Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

In today’s guest post, Wendy Hower, Director of Engagement & Marketing at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, describes how an outdoor art exhibition became a wide-reaching way to support students, faculty and the local …
Crowdsourcing a Database of Permanent Museum Closings

By Elizabeth Merritt

Due to the independent nature of the nonprofit sector in the US, there no comprehensive way to track museum openings or closings (much less arrive at a definitive head count of museums at any given time). This is of particular concern as …
Mapping Uncertainty in 2021

By Elizabeth Merritt

I have been wishing everyone HAPPY NEW YEAR (in all caps) because I am so relieved to see the backside of 2020. But “better than last year” is a very low bar indeed, and we face many very hard months ahead. That being so, my focus this …
Ten Uplifting Museum Stories of 2020

By Elizabeth Merritt

This year my scanning feeds were clogged with relentlessly depressing news. My heart was eased, however, by the way that museums rose to the challenges posed by 2020. Here are a dozen stories of how museums helped their communities and …
A Pandemic Time Capsule and Tools for 2021

By Elizabeth Merritt

This blog has become an incidental time capsule of 2020, a monthly record of how the museum sector responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, when the first of the posts featured below was published, the US had 1,700 reported cases—that …
Game Plan Call for Applications! Professional Development for Museum Educators

By Elizabeth Merritt

In 2008, Dr. Jane McGonigal delivered the inaugural lecture for the new Center for the Future of Museums. McGonigal, who is both a professional futurist AND a ludologist, made the case that museums could learn a lot from games design. (AAM …