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When Trends Collide: The New Gilded Age Meets the Rise of the Amateur Expert
Museums have long struggled to resist pressure from wealthy donors or sponsors who want to call the shots. How might this play out in a future in which museums loosen their grip on curatorial authority and actively encourage participation … -
Museums & Wikipedia: The Future of Collaboration and Accessibility
Lori Byrd Phillips is a museum studies graduate student at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and the current Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. She recently received a full scholarship … -
How many museum educators does it take….
….to respond to Elizabeth Merritt’s “Call to Action” issued in Museum related to the CFM’s Demographic Transformation report? Apparently, 40 is a good start. Word cloud of participants’ responses to the question “What lingering thoughts, … -
Forecasting the Next Educational Era
As I wrote last week one of CFM’s foci in 2011 and 2012 (and probably beyond) will be the future of education. You’ve told us in workshops, correspondence and in feedback to this blog that the trends shaping American education will have a … -
Engaging and Empowering New Immigrants through Art
AAM’s recently released forecasting report Demographic Transformation and the Future of Museums highlights the gap between current museum audiences and the majority minority future of American society. The sobering statistics are leavened … -
What is Innovation Anyway?
One of the goals AAM set for CFM is to “foster innovation.” Why? Because innovation is to museums’ survival what genetic variation is to evolution—a source of novelty, producing structures or strategies that succeed better than the old … -
The Museum Identity Crisis—Who the heck are “we,” anyway?
Recently, the Christian Science Monitor ran this article examining the ways museums are engaging with their communities on a number of fronts. The reporter chose one quote from James Chung (co-author of the CFM report Museums & Society … -
Killing Buddha
The Accreditation Commission is meeting this week here at the AAM offices in Washington, D.C. Each time I walk past the big glass walls of the board room I see the huge binders scattered across the conference table, and the long, long list …
Standards
Upcoming Events
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Advocacy 101: Getting to know the basics
Event Date:Presented by: American Alliance of Museums -
Digital Collections Summit 2025
Event Date:Presented by: MuseumNext -
Publishing Profits Museums
Event Date:Presented by: Southeastern Museums Conference -
The Museum Summit
Event Date:Presented by: American Alliance of Museums
Latest Stories from AAM
Demographics of US Museum-Goers: 2025 Update
Category:
Alliance Blog
This visual Data Story is based on findings from the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, …
September Monthly Advocacy Alert: Federal Funding, IMLS, and Advocacy Webinar
Advocacy Alert – September 12, 2025 In this Alliance Advocacy Alert: Updates and …
Ask the Expert: Collections Insurance
Join Cecelia Walls, Assistant Director, Learning Content & …