Economic Trends – American Alliance of Museums

Research Roundup: SurveyingThe Employment Landscape

By Elizabeth Merritt

With today’s post, ACLS Public Fellow (and CFM Futurist-in-Training) Dr. Nicole Ivy launches a new occasional feature on the blog: a roundup of recent research relevant to her work and (we hope) to yours. As part of my wonderings about …
Revisiting the Future of Museums in the New Gilded Age

By Elizabeth Merritt

I recently reread a 2011 post by my former colleague Erik Ledbetter on the effect the “New Gilded Age” may have on museums. He wrote “The decline of the middle class and the reemergence of a true American plutocracy will …
Futurist Friday: Economic “Ifs”

By Elizabeth Merritt

The Economist just released the 2015 edition of “The World If“– a companion to their annual compilation of predictions. I’m working through it today, and you can, too.The editors pose one of my favorite questions: …
The Sustainability “Myth”

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here’s something I’ve been wondering about: are social service and cultural nonprofits really the same species? Sure, we’re united by our 501(c)3 tax-exempt status, but beyond that, what’s our family resemblance, and is it …
More on the Wacky World of Museum Economics

By Elizabeth Merritt

“Food should be more expensive.” That’s a core message of the locavore/sustainable food movement, and it doesn’t resonate so well with most folks. It sounds ridiculous on the face of it—who wants to pay more for food? But proponents of …
Lost Pleasures

By Elizabeth Merritt

“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer.” –Clement Freud There was an interesting bit of math tucked into the calorie count regulations released by the FDA late …
What’s a Good CEO Worth?

By Elizabeth Merritt

This is part three in an ongoing series of essays sharing my thoughts on museum economics, training and compensation. Catch up with parts one (The Museum Sacrifice Measure) and two (What is the Fair Market Value of a Museum Job). I had …
You Go First

By Elizabeth Merritt

“We’re right on the edge but we need a little push Dancing on the tightrope wearing it thin Instead of closing our eyes and jumping in” –Jessica Andrews Sometime change is painful. Very painful. Giving up …
Monday Musing: Looking to Hawaii for the Distributed Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

Futurist William Gibson observed “the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.” In CFM’s report “Tomorrow in theGolden State” we looked to California for glimpses of the unevenly distributed future of demographic …
Revisiting the Borgias

By Elizabeth Merritt

This Throwback Thursday post revisits an issue I touched on back at the beginning of the financial crisis, in 2009: how the decline in traditional funding sources and the increasing inequality of wealth in American are shaping the behavior …