Guest Post – Page 7 – American Alliance of Museums

Drawn Together: Drawing Club convenes at AAM Annual Meeting

By Elizabeth Merritt

Scott Stulen is the project director for mnartists.org, one of the programmers of the Walker Open Field Program, creators of Drawing Club and a visual artist. Here he gives us a sneak peek of something to look forward to at the AAM Annual …
Questioning Assumptions: Museums in the 21st Century

By Elizabeth Merritt

I hope you have been following my posts on the Forecast of the Future of Museum Ethics being conducted by CFM and the Institute for Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University. CFM and IME staff are compiling the (copious) input provide by our …
It’s Up 2 You!

By Elizabeth Merritt

The best way to get your message out is through whatever format your audience is already attuned to. This is not always (big shock) a 200 word exhibit text panel. The most effective medium might be video, a blog, a game, or a graphic …
Steampunk, Crowdfunding and the Power of Social Media

By Elizabeth Merritt

Or, How One Exhibit Company Pulled A Brass Elephant Out Of A Hat This week’s guest post is by Peter Overstreet. Pete and his wife, Cat Taylor, founded the exhibit and event design company Aeronaut Productions LLC. Pete was a full-time …
Forecasting the Future of History Organizations and Their Leaders

By Elizabeth Merritt

For three weeks every November leaders and practitioners from the field of the public history meet at the Seminar for Historical Administration to discuss challenges and future directions for history organizations. This week’s blog post …
Museums Innovating in Businesslike Ways

By Elizabeth Merritt

Many people tell us that, in the future, museums need to be more entrepreneurial. It’s hard to find written case studies, however, of museums innovating in businesslike ways. Today’s guest post helps fill that gap, as Karen Coltrane, …
Civic Duty Calls

By Elizabeth Merritt

In this blog post, AAM Director of Government Relations and Advocacy Gail Ravnitzky Silberglied explores why advocacy—like voting, jury service, and paying taxes—is a civic duty that furthers our nation’s democracy and prepares us and our …
Building a Better Fishing Pole: how technology-focused organizations can help their museum community

By Elizabeth Merritt

Many museums are struggling to navigate the expanding universes of social media and digital content with the slim resources available to them in constrained budgets. Fortunately, some entrepreneurial museums are breaking trail—pooling …
Feeding the Spirit Symposium: A Fresh Frame of Reference for Museums-Community-Food

By Elizabeth Merritt

This guest post is by David R. Curry, a member of the CFM Council. As someone who has refined a set of strategies to survive symposiums and conferences (which all too often seem like they could be half as long and twice as substantive) I …
The Backward ABC’s of Museum Data

By Elizabeth Merritt

This week’s blog post comes from Philip M. Katz, assistant director for research at AAM. This was going to be an essay about the power of museum financial and operating data—robust, reliable numbers that can help museums plan for the …