Center for the Future of Museums Blog

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Volunteers and Museum Labor

By Elizabeth Merritt

As I untangle the strange economics that shape our field, I’ve written several posts exploring the causes and consequences of the generally low salaries attached to museum work. In The Museum Sacrifice Measure I asked how poor people are …
Futurist Friday: An Anthology of Climate Fiction

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here’s an extra special treat for your Futurist Friday: “Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction” was just released as a free digital download by the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative (ICF) at Arizona …
Advancing Equity Through Arts and Culture

By Elizabeth Merritt

HI, Nicole here! Earlier this month, I had the honor of participating in a panel discussion held by Cool Culture, a New York City cultural organization that encourages arts education by providing free access to local arts institutions for …
Futurist Friday: Immersing Yourself in Your Fears

By Elizabeth Merritt

Today’s video–the Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano–is longer than my usual FF suggestion, but it is so sad, weird and thought-provoking I’m serving it up anyway. It would be well worth taking 24 minutes during lunch, …
The Future of Ownership

By Elizabeth Merritt

When it comes to collecting, museums are at the very end of a long chain of decisions. Before that new acquisition comes under the registrar’s pen, someone had to create an object, purchase or collect it, enabling it to eventually wend its …
Spontaneous, object-based fun with MuseumProv

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’m always on the lookout for entrepreneurs finding and filling open economic niches in and around museums. Previously, on the Blog, Nick Gray has shared how Museum Hack is building its business on the market for fun, irreverent, social …
The Future is Diverse

By Elizabeth Merritt

Today’s guest post is jointly authored by members of the 2016 cohort of the History Museum Fellows Program—a partnership between the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) that engages students in studying the …
Playing in the Museum Sandbox

By Elizabeth Merritt

Readers of CFM’s TrendsWatch reports and followers of this Blog will know of my fascination with the emerging business model of museums running co-working spaces. It’s such a genius use of museum resources (staff expertise, visitors, …
Futurist Friday: Emotional Intelligence

By Elizabeth Merritt

For your Friday future-break, here is a lovely short film by Dennis Sungmin Kim, exploring a future in which artificial intelligence has been supplemented by “artificial emotion.” ei: emotional intelligence from Dennis Sungmin …
FutureProofing Natural History Collections

By Elizabeth Merritt

When the Alliance chose financial sustainability as one of three areas of focus for our new strategic plan, I gravitated to one of the hardest challenges of all: how can we help create financially sustainable models for supporting …