Center for the Future of Museums Blog

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Museum People are the Best!

By Elizabeth Merritt

Dan and Marieke at the Renwick Galleryin Washington, DC One of my favorite museum podcasts—Museum People—just launched its second season with an episode profiling AAM’s own Laura Lott. In this series, produced by the New England …
Monday Musing: the future of philanthropy

By Elizabeth Merritt

I included an essay by David Callahan in last week’s edition of Dispatches from the Future of Museums because I was struck by his projections of how government budget cuts may promote the rise of “crisis …
Futurist Friday: Telepathic Theater

By Elizabeth Merritt

What if you could hear what characters in a play were thinking, as well as what they were saying? How would that change how playwrights create and audiences experience performance?While my main futurist focus is museums, I keep my eye on …
A Blog Committed to Space-Making and Equity

By Elizabeth Merritt

Hi, all! This is Nicole writing to recommend an addition to your summer reading list. I’m excited to share a source from my scanning files, Brown Girls Museum Blog (BGMB). You can check out the full blog here. Co-curated by Ravon Ruffin …
Monday Musing: Solving Social Problems

By Elizabeth Merritt

Today’s brief “musing” looks at a story from Pew Research Center I featured in Dispatches from the Future of Museums last week: Are churches key to solving social problems? Fewer Americans now think so.Summary of the …
Futurist Friday: Cognitive Museum Buildings

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here’s a short video from Jonathan Strickland of Forward Thinking on the emergence of “cognitive buildings”: structures that use the internet of things (IoT) to analyze performance and anticipate our needs. …
Moving Primary Schools into the Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

The museum school movement in the US is gaining steam, and now our colleagues in the UK are jumping on the bandwagon. The “My Primary School is at the Museum” Project, conceived of by architect Wendy James, pairs two primary …
A New AR Invasion: Pokemon Go!

By Elizabeth Merritt

If you haven’t heard the buzz about Pokémon Go—the new augmented reality game taking the world by storm—well, you must have been locked in collections storage, with no internet access, for the last few weeks. This new game was born from …
Futurist Friday: A View of the Future Curated by Women

By Elizabeth Merritt

Usually I select small snips for your Friday assignment: videos that are less than 10 minutes long; short reads; sometimes just a mind-blowing picture.This week I’m strongly recommending a long read as well worth your while: The …
Talking About Museums and Internships

By Nicole Ivy

Hi, Nicole here! Throughout the course of my work on museums and labor at CFM this past year, I have had the pleasure of talking with—and learning from—colleagues across the US in various stages of their careers. Time and again, I’ve heard …