Center for the Future of Museums Blog

The Center for the Future of Museums Blog shares musings on the future of museums and society.

Read Dispatches from the Future of Museums online!

Get more resources from the Center for the Future of Museums.

Explore all Publications from the Alliance.

Explore the AAM Resource Library by topic, and further filter by subtopic or resource types to find what matters most to you!

Capture the Flag: the struggle over identity and representation

By Elizabeth Merritt

#TrendsWatch 2016, artist @GynoStar @BreeNewsome #TakeDownTheFlag Follow the link in the photo caption to the associated story. You can find more glimpses of the future (and links) on CFM’s Pintere…
Labor 3.0: Museums and Co-working Spaces

By Elizabeth Merritt

Finding a stable business model for museums in the 21st century is going to take more than patching the old income streams. The goals and expectations of government funding and philanthropy are changing, and there’s more competition for …
9/11/2040: A Future Lesson About the Past

By Elizabeth Merritt

Hi, Sylvea here…..as we move into the last couple weeks of our Education Future Fiction Challenge I hope that many of you are still developing your submissions ;-). Not sure where to start? Read some of our Future Fiction Friday posts and …
Creating a More Inclusive Museum: Welcoming LGBT Students and Visitors

By Michael Berlucchi & Anne Corso

One of the important and difficult topics I delve into in TrendsWatch 2016 is the interplay of identity, representation, and inclusion. As I explore in the report, American society is finally recognizing that sexual orientation and gender …
Introducing TrendsWatch 2016

By Elizabeth Merritt

TrendsWatch 2016 is now up on the web! You can download your free PDF copy from the Alliance website. (Print copies will be available later this spring from the AAM Bookstore.) Here are the chapters in this year’s report: Labor 3.0: new …
More on our Ford Fellow Search: the future of distributed work

By Elizabeth Merritt

Did you go to work today? Did you go into the office? For much of the last century those two actions were synonymous. But now, for many Americans, the answers to these questions are respectively a) yes and b) no. I’m bringing this up …
Life’s Persistent Problems: TED Talk June 2040

By Elizabeth Merritt

Sylvea here. I’d like to introduce Dr. Tom P. Abeles, editor of On the Horizon, a foresight journal on education. His #FutureFictionFriday story is a 2040 TEDTalk about continuous learning . Dr. Abeles shares several future …
Do-ing Diversity in Museums

By Elizabeth Merritt

Chris Taylor’s commitment to helping his institution make traction in conversations about diversity, inclusion, and professional development led to the creation of The Department of Inclusion and Community Engagement (DICE) at the …
Experiments in Virtual Reality at The Museum of Flight

By Elizabeth Merritt

TrendsWatch 2016 will go up on the web at the end of this week! And (spoiler alert) one of the topics I cover this year is the explosive rise of Augmented and Virtual Reality devices. The technology behind AR/VR is rapidly becoming more …
FFF: NATIONAL COUNCIL OF EDUCATION HISTORIANS ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2040

By Elizabeth Merritt

<!—-> This week Kate Stoessel, a sixth grade Social Studies teacher in Houston sent us a creative story in the form of a conference keynote from the year 2040. She shares several future innovations in education and highlights …