community engagement – American Alliance of Museums

Mementos de Memoria: A Museum Becomes an Ofrenda

By Manuel Ferreira

This article first appeared in the journal Exhibition (Fall 2026) Vol. 45 No. 2 and is reproduced with permission. If you don’t read the journal, become a member to receive your digital copy of the full upcoming issues. My love, I was so …
Curating Plague in a Noisy Age: An STS Approach to Public Health Exhibitions

By Chia-Hsin Chen

This article first appeared in the journal Exhibition (Fall 2026) Vol. 45 No. 2 and is reproduced with permission. In the post-COVID era, museum audiences bring more than just curiosity to our exhibitions. Many come already saturated by …
Touching Rice Grass: Southern Paiute Worldviews as an Antidote for Brain Rot

By Ian Ford-Terry, Andrew Anderson, Robin Anderson, and Nathan Harper

This article first appeared in the journal Exhibition (Fall 2026) Vol. 45 No. 2 and is reproduced with permission. Entering the Las Vegas Valley, the whole desert landscape seems alive with incredible electric lights, flashing signs, …
We Will Not Be Erased: Community, Artifacts, and Telling LGBTQ+ Histories

By Adrian Cardwell & Jennifer S. Landry

This article first appeared in the journal Exhibition (Fall 2026) Vol. 45 No. 2 and is reproduced with permission. In the summer of 2025, the Irving Archives & Museum (IAM) and Badge of Pride premiered Badge of Pride: From Silence . . …
Contested Figures in Museum Praxis

By Julia Peristerakis and Isabelle Masson

This article first appeared in the journal Exhibition (Spring 2026) Vol. 45 No. 1 and is reproduced with permission. If you don’t read the journal, become a member to receive your digital copy of the full upcoming issues. As a museum …
Designing Low-Carbon-Footprint Exhibitions

By Douglas Flandro

Working as an exhibition designer, I hear from many museum employees that their least favorite part of the process is watching an exhibition come down knowing most of the exhibition materials are headed for the landfill. This level of …
Toward Equity in Metadata: How Sandy Spring Museum Is Going beyond Reparative Cataloging

By Allison Weiss

Equity: freedom from bias or favoritism Metadata: data that describes and provides context for digital items, which in turn helps users find and discover these resources. Though Black and white residents numbered almost equally throughout …
In Praise of Mission Creep

By Elizabeth Merritt

My focus this year is on exploring the ways museums serve as essential infrastructure for their communities: improving education for our children, creating livable communities for our elders, fostering mental health, helping prepare for …
We, the Aged, Are an Integral Part of the Community

By Ken Gorbey

In April, while on a visit to New Zealand, I convened seven highly-respected Kiwi colleagues in Wellington to discuss creative aging. I asked two questions of the participants: How might our museums be more sensitive and responsive to the …
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 …