Center for the Future of Museums Blog

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Short Term Strategies for Museum Workers

By Elizabeth Merritt

As I wrote in the latest edition of TrendsWatch, staff who feel valued, supported, and trained are a museum’s most important resource for implementing long-term strategies for financial sustainability. Staff are the foundation of a …
Culture and Community in a Time of Crisis: Join a National Audience Research Collaboration

By Elizabeth Merritt

As museums navigate the coming months and plan for reopening, they find themselves both deluged with too much information and sorely lacking critical data to inform their decision-making. Your news feeds are probably flooded with stories …
Three New Scenarios for Financial Survival in 2020

By Elizabeth Merritt

Support Free COVID-19 Resources for the Field: The current crisis is taking a distressing financial toll on cultural organizations, and AAM is no different. The Center for the Future of Museums is supported by AAM membership and …
Strategies for Short-term Financial Survival

By Elizabeth Merritt

Support Free COVID-19 Resources for the Field: The current crisis is taking a distressing financial toll on cultural organizations, and AAM is no different. The Center for the Future of Museums is supported by AAM membership and …
TrendsWatch: Building Financial Resilience in a Time of Crisis

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here at the Alliance, we know that COVID-19 is inflicting severe damage on museums. Our sector is just beginning to assess the impact of closures, travel bans, cancellation of major events (including fundraisers), and the implementation of …
Using Scenarios to Plan Your Museum’s COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Response

By Elizabeth Merritt

Support Free COVID-19 Resources for the Field: The current crisis is taking a distressing financial toll on cultural organizations, and AAM is no different. The Center for the Future of Museums is supported by AAM membership and …
Lessons from History: Museums and Pandemics

By Marjorie Schwarzer

Support Free COVID-19 Resources for the Field: The current crisis is taking a distressing financial toll on cultural organizations, and AAM is no different. The Center for the Future of Museums is supported by AAM membership and …
Workshopping the Future: Foresight in Hindsight

By Elizabeth Merritt

At AAM 2019 in New Orleans, I led a three-hour futuring workshop, teaching attendees how to conduct foresight activities at their own organizations. Katie Eagleton attended that workshop, and in today’s post she shares how she has applied …
#5WomenArtists Shaping Museum Practice

By Elizabeth Merritt

Museums are among the most trusted sources of information and can use that superpower of trust to nudge society towards preferred futures. Today on the blog, Amy Mannarino, Director of Communications and Marketing at the National Museum of …
Sharing the Webinar Recording: Creating Sustainable Financial Models for Research Collections

By Elizabeth Merritt

Last month, Jill Parsons at the Ecological Society of America and Judy Gradwohl of the San Diego Natural History Museum joined me online to explore how museums can build income streams around their collections and win hearts and minds in …