sustainability – Page 3 – American Alliance of Museums

Finding Community: Engaging Diverse Audiences in a Historic House

By Elizabeth Merritt

In April, 2007, a small but influential group of historic house professionals, association and foundation staff gathered at Kykuit, the historic Rockefeller Estate in Pocantico Hills, NY, for the Forum on Historic Site Stewardship in the …
Artists, Art, and Historic Sites: A Revitalization of the Past Through Present Creativity

By Elizabeth Merritt

Kate Laurel Burgess-Mac Intosh is an independent museum professional whoshares her research on contemporary art/historic site mash-ups on theblog Revitalizing Historic Sites and on Facebook. Sheis Chair of the Young and Emerging Museum …
A Rising Tide: The Changing Landscape of Risk Assessment

By Elizabeth Merritt

In my time heading the Excellence Programs at AAM (including MAP and Accreditation) it was always a challenge to coax, cajole or even gently bully museums into producing well-tailored risk management plans. AAM staff tried disseminating …
The Future of Funding

By Elizabeth Merritt

Everyone wants to know what the next business model for museums may be. Will they morph into hybrid nonprofit/for-profit social benefit corporations? Lose tax exempt status entirely? In today’s post Carl Hamm, immediate past chair of the …
The Future of Development: Crowdsourced Funding

By Elizabeth Merritt

When AAM conducted its 2009 Museum Financial Information survey, a quarter of respondents had a capital campaign in progress. We don’t even have stats on how many museums regularly run annual giving campaigns, but it sometimes it …
Can Museums Help Make Cities More Intelligent?

By Elizabeth Merritt

“Smart cities” is a big topic now. How big? Smart Planet recently reported that investment in smart city infrastructure will hit $108 billion by 2020. Yah, that’s big. What makes a city “smart?” Smart Planet defines it as “the …
The Path to Sustainability—Working Together

By Elizabeth Merritt

This is part two of an essay by Sarah S. Brophy, co-chair of AAM’s PIC Green. You can read part one here.For the museum field, the way to close the distance between activities like Seafood Watch and our present-day reality is to take the …
The Path to Sustainability—Just Get Started

By Elizabeth Merritt

This week’s guest blogger, Sarah S. Brophy, is principal of bMuseand co-chair of AAM’s Green Professional Interest Committee (PIC Green). Part two of this essay will go up later this week—stay tuned! Earlier this month the CFM Blog looked …
Save Museums, Save the World?

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’m cynic when it comes to slogans and tag lines. I basically agree with Ivan Levinson, who wrote that at best tag lines are “like a Japanese haiku – a highly concentrated form of expression that attempts to communicate an essence, a …
Museums as Aggregators?

By Elizabeth Merritt

This guest post is contributed by Allyson Lazar, museum consultant and freelance registrar based in Los Angeles, Calif. You can follow Allyson’s musings at her blog Two Ls and A Y. Reporter Sandra Hughes of CBS ends her video article …