• Monday Musings: Volunteers and Discrimination

    Monday Musings is an occasional series of posts in which I challenge myself to spend 15 minutes or so sharing my thoughts on something I have read in the news, and the story’s potential implications. This article from the Nonprofit …
  • Engaging with a “Director of Audience Engagement”

    Earlier this month I blogged about Museum Jobs that Didn’t Exist in 2003, and what they tell us about the evolution of our field. Evidently the essay hit a nerve, as it quickly became one of the most read CFM posts ever, (about 5000 page …
  • Go East, Young Woman

    Many people, giving advice to people aiming at museum careers, have pointed out that you have to be willing to relocate. (See, for example, Robert Connolly’s recent Thoughts on How to Get a Museum Job). Today’s post raises the question—how …
  • Museum Jobs That Didn’t Exist in 2003

    (& what that says about the evolution of our field.) A couple weeks ago, I read a post on Coexist called “Eight New Jobs People will have in 2025,” projecting openings for Digital Death Managers, Un-Schooling Counselors, Digital Detox …
  • Flower Power: A Story of Organizational Re-Blossoming

    A reporter recently asked me to name the biggest barrier standing in the way of museums adapting to the forces shaping the future. My reply was “ourselves—the funding and organizational structures that tether us to outdated models and …
  • No Future

    The Field Museum of Natural History recently announced that it is cutting its budget by 7%—$5 million from its overall budget of ~$70 million—with $3 million of this coming out of the science departments.The museum has begun a process that …
  • Will You Lose Your Museum Job to a Robot?

    Drawing produced by participants in the  CFM “Drawing Club” event at the 2012 AAM conference OK, maybe not to a robot, but to increasingly sophisticated automation.  This question is prompted by a report released last month by …
  • The Interdisciplinary Campus Museum

    Last week I bloggedabout the newly released Campus Art Museums in the 21st Century report, produced by the Cultural Policy Center of the University of Chicago with the support of the Kress Foundation. Evidently, the report struck a chord …
  • The Workforce of the Future Starts Now

    We get a lot of questions about who will be working, or should be working, in the museum of the future, and how museums should be finding, recruiting and training these future staff members. Any exploration of the future of the museum …
  • Landing a Job in the Museum of the Future

    I get a lot of calls from people asking for advice about careers: getting a first job, getting back into the museum field, switching to museums from another field. I wish I could wave a wand and open a door for these earnest job seekers. I …

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