Announcing the Alliance Scholarship for Strategic Foresight
The first item on my wish list for the second decade of the Center for the Future of Museums is: “more museum futurists.” By which I mean, people who appreciate the importance of strategic foresight, and have whatever formal training they …
Decolonisation: we aren’t going to save you
In today’s guest post, Head of Mātauranga Māori (Head of the taonga Māori collection) at Te Papa, Puawai Cairns (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Pūkenga) reflects on what decolonisation means to the museum sector and what it …
Introducing TrendsWatch2018: The Scenario Edition
“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.” —Mary Catherine Bateson TrendsWatch 2018: The Scenario Edition has been released into the wild! This installment of the Alliance’s annual forecasting report …
The Museum of Street Culture
One national trend I’ve been tracking is the recent rise in people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. On any given night over a half million people in the US are coping with homelessness. Over a third of these people are …
Turning Geo-Spatial Museum Data into a Soft Power Evaluation Tool
One of the best things about working for the Alliance is the chance to meet interesting people who drop by our offices to chat about their work. One recent visitor was Dr. Natalia Grincheva, a research fellow in the Research Unit of Public …
Who’s afraid of the “majority minority” future?
I am not entirely comfortable with the fact that I’m looked to as something of a “thought leader’ in the museum field. I think of my writing, here on the blog or in CFM reports such as TrendsWatch, as the literary equivalent of sharing …
Monday Musing: A Prescription for Museum Sustainability
Monday musings are my way of sharing “brain blorts”: brief, off-the-cuff thoughts about something I have read recently, both to help clarify my thinking an in the hopes of generating discussion and response. I give myself 15 minutes or so …
How Can Museums Empower Communities? TACA Perforum
Last month I had the honor of speaking on a panel organized by The Arts Community Alliance (TACA) in Dallas, hosted by the Nasher Sculpture Center. Every year TACA brings together speakers for Perforum: a Conversation to Advance Arts and …
Call for Applications: Aroha Fellowship for Museums & Creative Aging
Last week the Alliance launched the search for our first senior fellow. With the generous support of Aroha Philanthropies, this individual will spend two years advancing the work of museums with respect to creative aging. One of the goals …
The Joker in the Museum Planning Pack
The fourth and final installment of TrendsWatch 2018’s scenarios of the future is now up on the web. Wild Times explores what might happen if fate deals our field an unexpected card: the loss of nonprofit status. In this version of 2040, …
