• A Growing Backlash to DEI

    Do you remember seeing this picture attempting to illustrate the difference between equality and equity? Now it also illustrates the latest battleground in the new culture wars. While a whopping 91 percent of Americans agree on the …
  • Stone Soup

    We’ve reached another milestone in the celebration of the Center for the Future of Museum’s first decade of work: the 10th anniversary of the CFM Blog. I think that the first post on the blog (published February 11, 2009) has …
  • Dealing With Disruption

    Each year I look forward to Museums Advocacy Day as an opportunity to focus my futurist lens on political trends. In the past, I’ve invited attendees to consider the future of nonprofit status in the US, the future of education, and even …
  • Monday Musing: Travel and Tourism

    Among the stories I included in Dispatches from the Future of Museums last week was a piece from Quartz Media speculating that the US could be on the verge of “tourism shock.” I’m worried about the economic impact of such a downturn on …
  • Healing the Partisan Divide

     I want to share some thoughts, post-election, about diversity, inclusion and healing. But maybe not the thoughts you expect. As I listen to museum colleagues talking about the election, I hear over and over again phrases like “I was …
  • Monday Musing: Electoral futures

    In today’s brief musing I want to draw your attention to a piece by Philip Kennicott in yesterday’s Washington Post.In “Would Donald Trump make art great again?” Kennicott pens a short scenario of what the arts …
  • Signals of Change: Questioning Nonprofit Status

     Last November I drew attention to a letter that Senator Orrin Hatch (R Utah and Chair of the Senate Finance Committee) sent to a handful of private nonprofit museums founded by individual living collectors. His goal was to assess whether …
  • Monday Musing: Scrutinizing Nonprofit Status

    Monday musings are my way of sharing “brain blorts”: brief, off-the-cuff thoughts about something I have read recently, both to help clarify my thinking an in the hopes of generating discussion and response. I give myself 15 …
  • Scouting SOTUs

    Someday I hope to hear a president of the U.S. stand up in the chamber of the House of Representatives in the Capitol and give a great big shout out to America’s museums. (Perhaps citing them as critical infrastructure–on a par with …
  • On Cuba

    While I spend a lot of my time reporting to you about trends—things that change quickly or slowly over time, in a traceable direction—disruptive events are equally important drivers of change. Disruptive events come to our attention as …

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