Posts
Leadership
For Museum Leaders Who Want to Do Better
In the midst of a pandemic that has brought an incredible amount of pain and suffering to so many of us, I know there’s a lot on your plate as a leader, and you are being pulled in multiple …
Restarting Teams to Restart Museums
As we develop strategies and protocols that will allow us to safely reopen our museums, we’re faced with a glut of new challenges to consider: How can we welcome members and visitors back? …
American Alliance of Museums Welcomes Four New Board Members and New Board Leadership
For Immediate Release ARLINGTON, VA – The American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the only organization representing the entire scope of the museum community, today announced that four leading …
How Complexity Theory Can Help Decision-Making in Chaotic Times
You wouldn’t be wrong to call these times chaotic. But chaos, though not always life-threatening in the way of COVID-19, is not uncommon in our work. In November of 2011, I was a CEO …
One Museum’s Plan to Keep Its Full Staff During COVID-19
Like most sectors of the economy, the museum field is facing sharp losses in revenue and uncertainty about when they will be reversed. Many institutions have decided to lay off, furlough, …
In Times Like These: Managing Museums Through Crises
On March 23, I sent out a tweet thread to encourage museum peers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Little did I know those simple tweets would resonate with so many. I wrote: Having led museums …
Kansas City’s WWI Museum is avoiding layoffs by giving employees thousands of pages from its archives to digitize
A museum in Kansas City, Missouri is avoiding laying off its employees during the coronavirus pandemic by giving some of them a big project to take on. The National WWI Museum and …
Museums and Equity in Times of Crisis
Just weeks ago, many of us in the museum field were in our offices, in the halls of our institutions, outside on our grounds, or observing nature at our zoos or aquariums. Now we are in a …
‘Nothing Prepares You for This’: Top UK Museum Directors Reveal What It Takes to Put an Art Institution on Lockdown
The directors of London's biggest art museums, like many of their colleagues across Europe and North America before them, were faced with little choice but to abruptly close their …
What It Means to Be a University Museum in the Twenty-First Century
These days, when I stop by the café at the Chazen Museum of Art, I often find myself in conversation with my University of Wisconsin–Madison colleagues—students, staff, and professors from …
Toxic Philanthropy
We live in a time in which the public is hyper sensitive to the ethics of where money comes from, and where it goes. As I observed in TrendsWatch 2015, nonprofits don’t get a free pass in …
You’re Doing What?!: Becoming “The Founder”
Museum professionals have creative aging journeys of their own, which might mean figuring out how best to cap off a career in the field. But in today’s world, with more people …