sustainability – Page 2 – American Alliance of Museums

Ethical Everything: managing the moral marketplace

By Elizabeth Merritt

“To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.”—Douglas Adams Increasingly the press and our peers remind us that each purchase we make and each bite we …
What Do Ethical Consumers Expect of Museums?

By Elizabeth Merritt

An open letter released today calls on natural history and science museums to “cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate change obfuscation.” The letter, signed by scientists and by one former museum trustee & …
Futurist Friday: Building the City of the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

Eugène Hénard, ‘The Cities of The Future’, published in American City, January 1911. I just downloaded a report that looks like a fascinating futurist read. “A Visual History of the Future” looks at how past …
Museums in a Dangerous Time

By Elizabeth Merritt

The Alliance has announced that the theme of our 2015 Annual Meeting will be The Social Value of Museums: Inspiring Change. Believing, as I do that Museums Can Change the World (CFM’s motto), I look forward to the year leading up to the …
Revisiting the Dangers of “Small Good Things”

By Elizabeth Merritt

This past Monday, in my musing, I mentioned Kanu Hawaii–a nonprofit that recruits people to take actions that support “sustainable island living.” They are so good at what they do I signed up as a member–even though …
Towards a Green Future: Environment and Resource Sustainability in Museums

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of my stretch goals at CFM is helping to foster “a futurist in every museum.” To that end, I have been pleased to serve as an advisor to the California Association of Museums Leaders of the Future Program. That program has been the …
A Game for (Future) Good: FutureCoast

By Elizabeth Merritt

The first trend CFM tackled, with the help of futurist and games-designer Dr. Jane McGonigal, was the rise of “gaming for good” and the potential for games-design to make museum experiences more compelling and rewarding. Today’s guest post …
Inspiring a New Generation

By Elizabeth Merritt

Author Neal Stephenson recently launched the Hieroglyph project, to rally writers to reintroduce optimism into science fiction. That is pretty ironic, considering some of the dystopian visions he has painted of our future. But, as he …
Museum Jobs That Didn’t Exist in 2003

By Elizabeth Merritt

(& what that says about the evolution of our field.) A couple weeks ago, I read a post on Coexist called “Eight New Jobs People will have in 2025,” projecting openings for Digital Death Managers, Un-Schooling Counselors, Digital Detox …
A Museum in Every Community?

By Elizabeth Merritt

Accreditation Commissioner Bill Eiland recently stopped by my office to share his concerns about the hundreds of small communities in the South struggling to maintain their culture, identity and population in the face of economic and …