Small Museums

Finding New Audiences in Small Markets

While most major museums are based in urban centers or tourist hubs, those located in more rural areas face a unique challenge to expand their reach. Without a large local population or a …

A House Museum Built for the Digital Age

Trevor Beemon

The museum sector went into the pandemic ill-prepared to use digital strategies to keep themselves afloat, but many museums that had begun to experiment with how digital could enhance or …

With the Help of MAP, the Manassas Museum Met Its Changing Community’s Needs

Mary Helen Dellinger & Rachel Goldberg

Through the Museum Assessment Program, museums gain perspective on how to improve core areas of their operations, with a combination of guided self-reflection and close consultation with an …

From Preservation to Participation: The Journey of Sandy Spring Museum

Allison Weiss

Many museums think that serving the needs of more ethnically diverse constituents will lose them “traditional” audience and supporters, but at Sandy Spring Museum (SSM), we’ve found just …

Black History in Our Own Backyard: Building Community in a COVID World

Rowena Houghton Dasch

Lately, at the Neill-Cochran House Museum we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what community means, and the best way we can define it for our institution. This question has become even …

Advocacy is (Always) Essential

Allison Titman

Do you have five minutes to take a small action that could make a big impact? I know, it sounds like a cheap sales pitch, and if you work in a small museum, your answer may be no. Whether …

A Small Museum’s Rapid Response Collecting Project for COVID-19

Anne Raymond

For historians, there is history in the making at any given moment. The life events, triumphs, and tragedies we experience and record help us define our ever-changing world for generations …

A Community Museum’s Plan to Document Gentrification

Sarah Zenaida Gould, PhD

This past November, I attended Reimagining the Museum: Conference of the Americas, held in Oaxaca, Mexico. Part of my excitement about attending the conference was that Latin America, and …

Silent No More: The new Lucy Burns Museum speaks to the centennial of suffrage

Karin McKie

Suffragists are recorded as the first in US history to use silence as protest, calling themselves “Silent Sentinels.” US suffragists (rather than British suffragettes) were also the first …

It Takes a Village: How community partnerships made for a winning summer camp formula

Jeff Ludwig & Zachary Finn

For museums with the resources and opportunities to do so, offering a summer camp is a great way to open up the doors to students whose guardians might need the structured daytime hours a …

Leveraging MAP for Capacity Building: The Sierra Mono Museum experience

Sam Shogren, MPA

The Sierra Mono Museum and Cultural Center—a small, rural, nonprofit museum set in the California foothills just south of Yosemite National Park—is today undergoing a one-million-dollar …

The Advantages of Being a Small Museum

Carissa Pfeiffer

Despite visiting only rarely, I have a strong affinity for New Orleans, the “big sister” of my own hometown: Savannah, Georgia. Both were historically port cities, sites for the global …

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Latest Stories from AAM

Museum Philanthropy & Fundraising Tipsheet

American Alliance of Museums

Financial Sustainability

This tipsheet summarizes the transcript of a webinar presented by Charles Katzenmeyer, Eowyn Bates, Amy Burt, Shannon Joern, and Ginevra Ranney. It was developed with the help of ChatGPT. …

Speaking the Audience’s Language: A Q&A with James Heaton

Adam Rozan

Alliance Blog

At some point in the pandemic, I was working on a project, and I needed a museum-based definition of a term relating to audience development and museum work. I started by flipping through a …

Striving for Excellence in Exhibition Label Writing

John Russick and Jojo Galvan Mora