Labor

Running with Scissors (and a Mask!): COVID-19 Responses at Old Salem Museums & Gardens

By Franklin D. Vagnone

Just as flexible buildings can withstand hurricane-force winds and earthquakes, flexible institutions can withstand monumental challenges like a global pandemic. Because of our four years of re-envisioning at Old Salem Museum & Gardens …
Virtual Internships Are Here to Stay—and That’s a Good Thing

By Mattie Schloetzer

Amid the challenges of 2020, one of the most successful learning experiences for me was pivoting to a 100 percent remote internship program at the National Gallery of Art. When I began planning to make the transition last March, I saw …
How the National Air and Space Museum Took Volunteering Virtual

By Elisa Kosarin, CVA

A mother and her spaceship-loving children, ages five and seven, arrive at the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center using their timed tickets. As they enter the museum, unsure where to turn first, a volunteer on a sixty-five-inch monitor behind the …
MSN Conversation #3: Making the Future Museum We Want

By Cecelia Walls

View a recording of “MSN Conversation #3: Making the Future Museum We Want” presented by American Alliance of Museum (AAM)’s Museum Studies Network on Wednesday, October 28, 2020. MSN’s Juilee Decker and organizers Chelsea Haines and …
Hosting Remote Internships: Successes, Challenges, and Thoughts for the Future

By Emily Shield

When I posted our call for internship applications last December, I had a very different idea of what the summer would look like. A typical internship at the Chrysler Museum of Art involves current students or recent graduates gaining …
How Can We Make Volunteer Programs More Inclusive and Accessible?

By American Alliance of Museums

Last year, AAM released a popular toolkit on structuring, developing, and supporting volunteer programs—whether starting from scratch or reimagining an existing program. Since the release of Designing a Museum Volunteer Program, many …
Navigating a Job Search in the COVID-19 Market

By Dana P. Hundley

The museum field, and cultural institutions in general, have undoubtedly been hit hard by COVID-19. As a result, many museum professionals are finding themselves job searching and considering career transitions at a time with seemingly …
Museopunks Episode 45: Getting By With A Little Help

By Cecelia Walls

Mutual aid systems rely on forms of exchange, sharing support and resources, to enable communities to care for their members in the face of difficulty. In May this year, Museum Workers Speak started the Museum Workers Relief Fund, a form …
Mind the Accessibility Gap

By Meredith Peruzzi

When we talk about equity, diversity, and inclusion in museums, we have a usual list of groups we mention: Black and Indigenous people, other people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, unhoused people, socioeconomically disadvantaged people, and …
Mutual Aid in a Time of Crisis

By Elizabeth Merritt

The upheavals of 2020 are drawing more attention to a venerable form of community self-help: mutual aid societies. These self-organized support groups arose in the eighteenth century as a way for communities to provide their members with …