Primary Museum Type

Making Space for Community Partners

By Ravon Ruffin

The 2019 AAM Annual Meeting was hosted in Louisiana—a state known for its rich culinary and musical traditions that attract droves of tourists. But another notable, though less touristy, aspect of Louisiana is that it has historically had …
Speechless: A sensory exhibition charts a new path to accessibility in learning

By Sarah Schleuning

Museums are constantly experimenting with how we can present content in ways that engage and inform a wide audience. Part of the challenge is to consider issues of accessibility and disability, to develop different ways of communicating …
Making a Museum in the Age of 3D Digital Models

By Michael D. Cherney and Adam N. Rountrey

In 2005, not long after the advent of tabletop 3D printing technology, the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology (UMMP; a research institution) used this approach to generate elements missing from a skeletal mount of the Buesching …
Science Gone Viral: An interactive comic engrosses readers in educational material

By Geralyn Abinader

What’s more fun than reading comics? And what if a comic could not only model science inquiry processes, but also offer readers the opportunity to jump in and solve a mystery along with the protagonists of the story? Action, adventure, and …
How Science Museum of Minnesota Put Its Collections and Research on the MAP

By Charlie Iverson

The timing was right for Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) to participate in the Collections Stewardship Museum Assessment Program (MAP) program in 2018. Since our last MAP, in 1985, we had experienced many changes. Most recently, our new …
An International Collaboration to Promote STEAM Experiences

By Susan Dorsey

As museum educators, we often teach children to appreciate art as a method of self-expression, but we can also use it to engage them with challenging educational subjects. Research suggests there is educational value in interdisciplinary …
2019 Museum Publications Design Competition Winner: Painting the Floating World

By American Alliance of Museums

AAM’s annual Museum Publications Design Competition recognizes superior execution and ingenuity in the graphic design of museum publications. A panel of graphic designers, museum professionals, and publishers chooses winners for …
An After-School Program Gives Refugee Children a Creative Boost

By Aimee Hunt

One of the many things that make Charlottesville, Virginia special is that it serves as a destination city for the International Rescue Committee, which helps refugees settle into their new countries. Since 1998, more than three thousand …
The Self-Care Ritual of Retreats

By Michelle Dezember

One reason I love museum people is that they work so hard to make the world a better place. But all too often, I see colleagues burn out and leave our field because they did not make time to care for themselves. Hence my recent dive into …
Outside the Collection Box: Connecting community with collections via augmented reality

By M. Anne Basham

Immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and cross reality (XR) are quickly gaining momentum as a mass media tool deployable in all areas of industry and society, which has …