collections stewardship – American Alliance of Museums

Sharing the Wealth: Museums as Equity Engines

By Elizabeth Merritt

Recently, I’ve been speaking of museums as banks—repositories of enormous wealth of reputation, knowledge, and influence, in addition to the sheer value of their endowments. I’ve advanced the thesis that by managing this wealth as a type …
Collection Ranking: Making deaccessions work for you

By Caitlin Podas

For all the objects in a museum’s collection that meet the standard criteria for accessioning—they fit the museum’s mission, are in good condition, and have thorough provenance—a significant percentage meet only one (or none) of these …
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 …
Collaborating with Emergency Responders to Protect Cultural Heritage

By Donia Conn

Protecting cultural heritage collections is crucial to preserving our nation’s history, sustaining the economy, and fostering resilience so that communities can respond to and recover from disasters of all shapes and sizes. Most cultural …
Collections 2030 – What Future for Museum Collections in the UK?

By Alistair Brown

One of the five pillars of the Alliance’s strategic plan is global thinking. We know that US museums can become stronger by learning from their colleagues around the world. Case in point: what can we learn about the future of collections …
Digital Storytelling coming to a museum near you: 3 reasons to use Lume

By Gretchen Halverson

Gretchen Halverson is the Media and Technology Assistant at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The reinstallation of the African galleries at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) in 2013 involved the drastic reduction in the number of …
The Elephant in the Room

By John Fraser

In the January 2018 special issue of Curator: The Museum Journal, several authors explore the issue of ivory and what it means to museums collections today. Here’s a review from the Editor John Fraser and the Guest Editors for the Special …
Digital birds perch at Yale’s Peabody Museum

By Mike Cummings

Mike Cummings is a communications officer at Yale University. He previously worked as a reporter for daily newspapers in Mississippi and Connecticut. This article was originally published on YaleNews, April 7, 2017. Republished with …