Image: Depiction of an O’Neill cylinder’s interior by artist Rick Guidice
Dispatches from the Future of Museums is in its new home—on the web!
As of January 2026, roundups for Dispatches that contain these news summaries are updated on this page, and no longer delivered as a dedicated newsletter. As part of this shift, Dispatches subscribers were transitioned to a receiving a new weekly AAM newsletter. Learn more and find out in the FAQs other ways you can subscribe to this AAM news in your inbox.
Week of August 10
Rise of the AI-ristocracy
Vox, 8-6-26 [Projections]
CEO Dario Amodei is now a multibillionaire, his fortune poised to skyrocket further if Anthropic goes public, as many expect it to do later this year. He is one of dozens of new billionaires and millions of new millionaires minted virtually overnight by the AI boom. Today’s AI barons appear far less likely to fund Carnegie-style works like opera houses or libraries than they are to put their billion in what they believe they can measure, calculated on the cost benefit analysis of a life saved or an apocalypse averted. If you add up the promises of Amodei and his fellow co-founders, the worth of the OpenAI Foundation — the nonprofit that owns a big chunk of OpenAI’s profits — and rumored contributions from Anthropic employees, then the AI wealth boom could, in theory, lead to at least $37 billion and as much as $100 billion in total annual giving, a sizable boost to the roughly $617 billion that was given in the US in total last year.
Museums might: ready up on the philosophy of “effective altruism” guiding many of these tech donors, as well as criticisms of the approach. Can museums measure their impact in ways that align with this approach? Can these donors be convinced to fund arts and culture as inherently good things?
The age of post-processable velocity
Axios, 8-9-26 [Tools for the Future]
We have entered post-processable velocity — a speed of change exceeding the ability of any individual, company, market or government to fully absorb, understand and respond to it in real time, a velocity [that] outpacing strategic thinking. Most strategic planning is built on a reasonably stable set of facts. Post-processable velocity destroys that stability. A decision can be logical when made and obsolete by the time it’s implemented. A staffing plan can be based on tasks that software learns to perform weeks later. Government writes rules that feel antiquated once they’re law. Four ideas that everyone can use: Loosen reliance on plans that require you to be right about things far in the future; Force yourself to rethink your focus and the tools you use every month; simplify [what you do]; keep evolving your information inputs so you can see the shifting field more clearly.
Go deeper: book a CFM lecture or workshop about this flexible, adaptive approach, also called “foresight planning,” through Alliance Advisors and Speakers Bureau.
The science behind using the arts to combat loneliness and social isolation
PBS News Hour, 8-4-16 [Museum Innovations]
A new program [at The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art] in Charlotte, North Carolina, is using the arts to tackle loneliness and social isolation. Individuals who are under the care of a doctor are prescribed art as medicine, and instead of going to the pharmacy to have their prescription filled, they come to the museum, where they get a year’s worth of arts programming for free. It’s a way to combat loneliness in Charlotte. They attend performances, they create art, they talk about art, they share experiences, and in the end they become friends. Eighty participants have gone to the ballet, the theater, taken art making classes, and visited The Bechtler to see, most recently, David McGee’s riffs on art classics from the past, like The End of Summer, playing off Caravaggio’s famous Bacchus.
Go deeper: listen to the podcast or read the transcript of this interview with the museum’s director, Todd Smith, and Julia Hotz, author or “The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging.” Then download the AAM toolkit Museums and Healthcare: A Practical Guide to Partnership.
This week on the CFM Blog:
The Four Illusions of AI: Implications for Museum Practice
Nik Honeysett, Chief Executive Officer of BPOC, takes us on a tour of how AI is changing how people encounter information, and shares a framework for how museums might respond.
Recent weeks of Dispatches:
The ‘dead internet theory’ is real. And it’s killing the web as we know it
Fast Company, 7-28-26 [Trends]
Sometime in June of 2026, without ceremony, human beings became a minority on the internet they built. Cloudflare, which manages traffic for millions of websites, reported that bots now generate 57.5% of web page requests. The business model that has financed the web for 30 years just erased its founding assumption. When the commercial internet was taking off in the 1990s, how it would be monetized was genuinely up for grabs. [Eventually] we settled on a grand bargain: Content would be “free,” and the price would be extracted from our attention and, eventually, our data. If you can’t monetize human attention, what do you monetize? [One candidate highlighted by this article is that] verified humanity becomes scarce—and valuable. When most traffic is synthetic, proof of personhood becomes a premium product. Expect authenticated human communities, human-verified reviews, and “certified human” experiences to command prices that the free, bot-flooded commons cannot.
Editor’s note: gleefully filed as a plot element for an optimistic future of museum business models.
Thousands of American landmarks face significant wildfire threat
Futurity, 7-28-26 [Research]
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) have completed the first national-scale assessment of wildfire risk to American cultural heritage. Of the 100,117 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, more than half face measurable wildfire exposure. For 3,446 places, that risk is severe. The study cross-referenced every mappable National Register of Historic Places sites in the US with high-resolution wildfire burn probability models, categorizing risk by place type, geographic location, and cultural significance. [Among the report’s findings] Buildings and historic districts—which account for 90% of all listed resources—likely face particularly acute risk, because their cultural value is inseparable from their physical form. Destroy the structure, and the heritage is gone with it. Climate change is expected to expand wildfire hazard zones, putting sites in previously lower-risk regions increasingly in the crosshairs. The researchers outline several mitigation strategies compatible with historic preservation standards, including vegetation management, structural hardening with fire-resistant materials and concealed fire suppression systems that protect structures without compromising their historic character.
Go deeper: Explore the map (which is very sobering), and review your own organization’s fire risk mitigation strategies.
Whaling Museum goes viral for ‘worst aquarium ever’ T-shirts, totes
AP News, 7-27-26 [Museum Innovations]
In 2020, a Google user left a one-star review of the New Bedford Whaling Museum coining that phrase. Last fall, the museum began selling shirts and hoodies with the review on the back and a whale skeleton on the front. Now, the design is capturing national attention. On Wednesday night, the CBS Evening News ran a segment about the merchandise after WPRI, Providence’s CBS affiliate, covered the story Tuesday. Sales are booming. Overnight, a slew of buyers rushed to get their hands on the merch, seemingly proud to represent such an accolade. Customers placed 738 online orders, mostly for “worst aquarium” merchandise, between the broadcast Wednesday night and 2:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon, according to Annelise Conway, the chief engagement officer at the Whaling Museum. On Thursday, orders for the week were up 250% compared to the week prior.
Editor’s comment: best “lemons to lemonade” story of the year so far.
Shrinking student populations cause spike in public school closures across U.S.
Washington Post, 7-20-26 [Trends]
School closures have spiked 35 percent across the country over the past four years, propelled by a shrinking youth population and the end of covid-19 relief funds that had propped up education funding in some places. For the fourth year in a row, the number of school closures rose nationally last year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics released last week. Districts closed more than 1,000 schools in 2025-26, compared with 755 in 2021-22. Nationally, federal projections indicate public school enrollment has already started to decline from its peak in 2019 and will continue to do so in coming years. From 2019 to 2031, schools were projected to lose nearly 4 million students. And those estimates were made before the Trump administration made changes to sharply curb immigration, further reducing the number of kids at some schools. Some districts are also coping with population shifts, as families move to the suburbs or other parts of the country.
Editor’s note: What are the local projections for school closures in the communities you serve, and how will the “Big Shrink” impact school visits and attendance, short and long term?
Can AI Ruin Something as Innocent as Birdwatching?
Gizmodo, 7-21-26 [Trends]
A letter [in the journal Nature] from a group of scientists based at Cornell and Manchester Metropolitan University discusses how a flood of AI-generated or enhanced images is undermining the utility of citizen science. As “citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI,” the paper explains, databases of crowd-sourced amateur data “increasingly underpin our knowledge about where species occur in space and time and how they behave.” Apps [like Merlin and iNaturalist] use machine learning to assist with the identification and classification of birds, relying on things like recordings of birds’ songs, records of geographical distribution, etc. They work impressively well, and provide a fine example of how useful machine learning can be in the right context. However, these platforms are of no use if they’re full of AI-generated nonsense, as is increasingly the case. The problem is worse because it’s self-perpetuating—it makes it more likely for even well-intentioned bird enthusiasts to make false observations, further degrading the pool of training data.
Editor’s note: The very first edition of CFM’s TrendsWatch report, back in 2012, looked at how the internet empowers museums to harness the “wisdom of the crowd,” inviting citizen scientists and citizen historians to contribute to their time and expertise. Might AI reverse that trend, whether through replacing the work of volunteers (for example, in transcription projects), or as this article illustrates, poisoning collaborative, crowdsourced data sets?
Recent Legal Developments Offer Encouragement for Employers Supporting DEI
Labor and Employment Law Insights, 7-17-26 [Good News]
Employers committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs have spent recent years navigating a hostile enforcement environment. Even against this backdrop, three recent legal developments offer meaningful encouragement for employers wishing to continue DEI initiatives. The Eleventh Circuit struck down the private employer provision in Florida’s Individual Freedom Act, commonly known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” which restricts certain training and instruction relating to race, sex, and national origin. The Ninth Circuit [has] affirmed a preliminary injunction reinstating research grants for a class of University of California researchers whose grants had been terminated because of their perceived connection to DEI viewpoints. The Southern District of New York granted summary judgment to plaintiffs on comparable claims arising from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and its mass termination of more than 1,400 grants. [These decisions] reflect a growing body of judicial precedent establishing that the government cannot terminate funding to punish [grant] recipients for their perceived association with DEI-related viewpoints.
IRS Proposes Regulations Changing Education Institution 501(c)(3) Status
The Nonprofit Times, 7-14-26 [Trends]
New Internal Revenue Service (IRS) proposed regulations would “amend existing regulations under 501(c)(3) to clarify that certain schools that discriminate on the basis of race are not operated exclusively for charitable purposes,” according to a notice from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB). [The regulations] are still under review by OMB and have not been made public. [However, some clues to the contents of the regs can be found in the Treasury’s 2025-2026 Priority Guidance Plan, which advocates prioritizing] “the application of the fundamental public policy against racial discrimination in determining the eligibility of private schools for recognition of tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3).” According to Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum, managing partner of the Tenenbaum Law Group, “One of the key questions the charitable community is anxious to learn is how narrowly or broadly OMB and Treasury will apply the proposed regulations, namely, whether they will be limited racial discrimination by private schools or expanded more broadly to other types of 501(c)(3) organizations.”
Heads up: This is the latest in series of executive orders, actions, and agency policies that significantly impact the nonprofit sector. Revisit the CFM essay on the growing threats to nonprofit status, and think about how you might respond to the call for public comments, when the proposed regs are published.
In DATALAND, Refik Anadol Has Built a Museum That Learns From Its Audience
The Observer, 7-13-26 [Museum Innovations}
The world’s first A.I. museum, DATALAND, recently opened in L.A., [is] the brainchild of Refik Anadol, generally regarded as the world’s first A.I. artist. Upon entry. A massive space, the Data Pavilion, [features] imagery inspired by the Yawanawá rainforest of the Amazon. Composed of an algorithmic 12 chapters, each one focuses on different data subject to artistic experimentation, what Anadol calls “a living sculpture,” abstract patterns of biomes—flora, fungi, trees and finally rain. Scents provide olfactory data to complement visual imagery generated by the museum’s LNM (Large Nature Model), sourced from the Smithsonian, the American Museum of Natural History, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Natural History Museum in London as well as data collected by Anadol’s own team of scientists, architects, artists and engineers. The system responds to data emanating from viewers, transmitted by an electronic bracelet that measures heart rate and galvanic skin response indicating emotional arousal while LiDAR sensors on the walls calibrate movement.
Editor’s note: This looks like a great example of using ethically sourced data to create art that would only be possible via the use of AI (rather than replacing human creativity).
Tripling US union membership would shift $1.2tn to workers annually – report
The Guardian, 7-15-26 [Projections]
Tripling union membership in the US would lead to a 14.5% raise for the median US worker, shifting $1.2tn to workers annually and significantly narrowing racial wage gaps, according to a new report released on Wednesday. The report from the Economic Policy Institute notes that union membership rates across the workforce, also known as union density, was once three times as high as it is today. Despite the lower union density, public approval of labor unions has remained high in recent years, with more than 68% of Americans viewing unions favorably in 2025. More than 50 million US workers would join a union if they could. If union density in the US tripled to 30%, the median worker would see a 14.5% raise amounting to $7,700 annually – over $1.2tn annually to workers – or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. It would also narrow the racial wage gap and increase health insurance coverage. These changes would reverse one-third of the rise in inequality since 1979, according to the report.
Some museum context: According to the 2025 Art Museum Director Survey, unionized museums are more likely to find it extremely or somewhat easy to provide competitive pay packages than non-unionized museums (33 percent and 19 percent respectively). Nineteen percent of the 1,431 museums represented in the survey have unionized staff.
Under a new federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid
from NPR, 7-9-26 [Projections]
This month, the U.S. Department of Education began rolling out a new accountability test that most colleges and universities will soon have to pass. The test itself is simple: If an undergraduate program’s graduates don’t earn more than workers who never went to college, that program could be cut off from federal student loans. The same goes for any graduate program whose graduates earn less than someone with only a bachelor’s degree. [Staff at] the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), a nonprofit that studies the careers of arts graduates, worry the new test might lead colleges and universities to preemptively slash low-earning creative arts programs in music, theater, studio art and design. Doug Dempster, the president of SNAAP, says that could lead to a further devaluing of jobs that are critical to a well-functioning society.
What do you think? How might this rule impact undergraduate and graduate programs that prepare students for careers in museum careers with training in art, history, or education?
The new push to transform America’s racist landmarks
Axios, 7-13-26 [Trends]
Years after the backlash against Confederate monuments, new fights have emerged over what to do with remaining physical reminders of particularly hurtful racism — tear them down, preserve them, reinterpret them or return them to communities harmed by them. In Fort Worth, Texas, advocates are turning the former KKK Klavern No. 101 auditorium into an arts and community center named after a Black lynching victim, designed as a reparative justice project. Similar moves are unfolding across the country. The changes are happening at a time when the U.S. is more racially and ethnically diverse than ever — and as the Trump administration pushes federal sites and national parks toward a more “uplifting” version of American history. The clash has put local history projects in sharper relief — as federal interpretation of U.S. history narrows, cities, nonprofits and descendants are countering that by trying to preserve fuller stories on the ground.
Food for thought: how might museums act as organizers and mediators of efforts to create new civic symbols that, as one interviewee in this article puts it, teach understanding, love, and healing.
A One-on-One Date With a Museum’s Treasures
The New York Times, 7-5-26 [Museum Innovations]
Every day at the V&A East Storehouse in London, members of the public take artifacts into their hands, including vintage garments, modern design objects and ancient musical instruments. The Storehouse, which opened a year ago, was conceived as a warehouse for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Britain’s major institution for applied and decorative arts. Visitors can roam the aisles looking at items displayed on shelves, or use the Order an Object service to book some one-on-one time with an artifact. Conservators have assessed every item so that the museum staff knows if it’s safe for the public to to handle; if it’s too delicate, handlers either lay it out so that visitors can get up close, or take them to objects that can’t be moved. The idea has proved wildly popular. Over 660,000 people visited the Storehouse in its first year, and more than 15,000 of them used the Order an Object service.
A new archive of Dispatches
An archive of news stories is available to conveniently browse past roundups – covering from January 2026 onward, and older than the recent 5 weeks on this page.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Center for the Future of Museums Blog shares musings on the future of museums and society, where you’ll read posts authored by CFM director Elizabeth Merritt and guest author posts. If you have a story to share, email us at futureofmuseums [at] aam-us [dot] org.
Explore more resources from the Center for the Future of Museums in the AAM Resource Library.
The new annual TrendsWatch report has been released as the January/February 2026 issue of Museum magazine for AAM members and subscribers. Get a free preview here. It will be available as a free PDF report later this spring.
Dispatches shares summaries of recent news stories illuminating trends and events shaping society, technology, economics, the environment, and policy today. Fuel your museum’s strategic foresight by thinking about the implications of these “signals,” and the kinds of future they might create.
The most frequent categories that you’ll see articles filed under include: Tools for the Future, Museum Innovations, Projects, Trends, and Research.
If you don’t currently receive a weekly AAM email newsletter, you can! The newsletter you’re eligible for depends on your AAM membership status:
- If you haven’t joined as a member within the last year, you can get started with a free subscription to Field Notes here.
- If you’re joining as a new member, or renewing your membership for the first time in over a year, your membership will send you Aviso – our comprehensive weekly member newsletter.
The Dispatches roundup published as a webpage began in January 2026 and will contain the most recent 5 weeks of news roundups.
In February, we made available an archive of contents older than 5 weeks (from January 2026 onward).
From October 2009 through December 2025, Dispatches was sent as a weekly newsletter from our Center for the Future of Museums. In that time, it grew to be an invaluable resource for over 40,000 subscribers!
In recent years, AAM has also sent other in-depth weekly newsletters: Aviso with news and opportunities to AAM members, and Field Notes, a newsletter we began several years ago with stories and insights for museum people which was free to subscribe.
Readers told us they wanted to receive fewer weekly newsletters from AAM. By consolidating content and moving Dispatches stories to the web, we can ensure that just one weekly newsletter hits your inbox.
Join Museum Junction’s Center for the Future of Museums Community, where you can join in the conversation about Dispatches and other future of museums topics!
It’s free to join. If you already have a membership or an AAM profile, you can use that to log in to Museum Junction without creating a new profile.
Here’s how to get started:
- Log in here with your existing AAM profile.
- If you have forgotten your password or need assistance with your login information, contact us at membership@aam-us.org.
- If you don’t have an AAM profile, create a profile and return here to log in to Museum Junction.
- Head to the CFM community! If you haven’t already joined it before, click the Join button.
By joining the community, you can also choose to receive automatic email digests with updates, such as posts from CFM director Elizabeth Merritt with new Dispatches contents. See the next question on how to edit your Museum Junction digest settings.
If you haven’t already, join the Center for the Future of Museums Community on AAM’s free online forum, Museum Junction! See previous question.
To check that you are receiving automatic email digests from the CFM community, or edit your settings:
Visit your Community Notifications (also found under “My Profile” > under “My Account Tab” > “Community Notifications”). Here you can choose to designate an “override” email address if you want your digest emails to another inbox other than your default email. The Communities you have joined are listed there, under Notification Settings.
For each Community, you have the following email digest delivery options:
- Real Time: sends an e-mail every time a new message is posted
- Daily Digest: sends one e-mail to you each day, consolidating all of the posts from the previous day
- No E-mail: allows you to be part of the group without having e-mails sent to you. You can still post and read others’ messages by logging in to Museum Junction.
You cat edit your general Museum Junction opt-in/out email preferences here.
