Cultural Trends – Page 2 – American Alliance of Museums

Pop-Up Museums…On Main Street

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of the themes CFM explored in TrendsWatch 2012 was pop-up culture: the public’s growing appetite for mobile, transitory retail, culinary or cultural experiences. Today’s blog post is by Nate Rudy, director of economic and community …
Psyched about Storytelling

By Elizabeth Merritt

AAM just announced the theme for our 2013 annual meeting in Baltimore, and it is (drumroll, please): Storytelling This is such a great theme, for many reasons. While people who work in, and with, museums can’t seem to agree on how to …
Open Authority & the Future of Museum Ethics

By Elizabeth Merritt

Lori Byrd Phillips is the U.S. Cultural Partnerships Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikipedian in Residence at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. As a museum studies graduate student at Indiana University-Purdue …
When Trends Collide: The New Gilded Age Meets the Rise of the Amateur Expert

By Elizabeth Merritt

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 …
Bridges from School to Work

By Elizabeth Merritt

This week’s guest blog post is by Kelly Pavich, employee representative and trainer at the Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities, established in 1989 by the family of J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott to enhance employment …
SWF ISO Museum Position

By Elizabeth Merritt

This week’s guest post is an interview with future museum professional Paige LaCour, student in museum management at Northwestern University School of Continuing Studies and volunteer at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. …
Advice on the Strategic use of Twitter from a Master Tweeter—Neil Tyson

By Elizabeth Merritt

Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of AMNH’s Rose Center for Air and Space, is an astrophysics rock star. How many museumers get interviewed four times by Jon Stewart? In the first interview, Jon reveals he is a “big fan” of AMNH and the Hayden …
Culture Kettle, my new R&D organization — What’s in it for museums?

By Elizabeth Merritt

This week’s guest blogger is Peter Linett, Partner in Slover Linett Strategies, Inc., and member of the CFM Council. Elizabeth Merritt was kind enough to give Culture Kettle a shout-out in this blog when I announced its founding back in …
The “Realness” of Museums’ Online Communities: A Platform for the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

Colleen Dilenschneider’s posts on Know Your Own Bone are always a “first read” when they pop up on my blog feed. I suggested our recent guest poster, Jonathan Baskin, read her recent post on museums’ use of social media as he organized his …
An Alternate Future for Museums: Part II

By Elizabeth Merritt

Global brand strategist Jonathan Salem Baskin contributes part two in his series of visions about the future of museums. You can read part one here. Museums in 2020: When Communities Got Real The siren call of Facebook and other social …