TrendsWatch – Page 3 – American Alliance of Museums

TrendsWatch: Building Financial Resilience in a Time of Crisis

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here at the Alliance, we know that COVID-19 is inflicting severe damage on museums. Our sector is just beginning to assess the impact of closures, travel bans, cancellation of major events (including fundraisers), and the implementation of …
Introducing TrendsWatch2018: The Scenario Edition

By Elizabeth Merritt

“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.” —Mary Catherine Bateson TrendsWatch 2018: The Scenario Edition has been released into the wild! This installment of the Alliance’s annual forecasting report …
Capture the Flag: the struggle over representation and identity

By Elizabeth Merritt

“Take down the flag. Take it down now. Put it in a museum. Inscribe beneath it the years 1861–2015.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates The past year has been marked by protests across the globe as communities grapple with issues of race, identity, …
TrendsWatch: Now Live On the Web

By Elizabeth Merritt

Each year there’s a fleeting instant when I’m more or less happy with TrendsWatch—the moment I hit “send” to transmit the text to my editor. Then I open my news feed and see a great story related to one of TrendsWatch themes and IT’S TOO …
Tweeting about the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

Hello future peeps. I’m enormously encouraged by the reception for TrendsWatch 2017. People have been sending me links to great articles related to this year’s topics (empathy, criminal justice reform, artificial intelligence, migration …
Introducing TrendsWatch 2017

By Elizabeth Merritt

It’s TrendsWatchtime! Those of you who know to keep an eye on the CFM page at this time of year may have noticed that this year’s issue quietly made an appearance on the Alliance web site last Friday. You can download your free PDF copy …
Monday Message to CFM’s Followers

By Elizabeth Merritt

Happy Monday, peeps. We’ve quietly “soft launched” this year’s TrendsWatch report on the Alliance web site. I’ll be posting a longer introduction later this week, but I wanted to send this early …
Happiness: Because you get what you measure

By Elizabeth Merritt

“The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.” —Robert F. Kennedy Humans are driven to succeed, so we mold our behavior to fit our definition of …
Labor 3.0: new jobs, or a jobless future?

By Elizabeth Merritt

“The issue is jobs. You can’t get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket, and feeling like somebody.”—Studs Terkel In the last two centuries, labor pivoted from the farm and workshop to the factory and the office. Now, as …
More Than Human: extending the spectrum of ability

By Elizabeth Merritt

“If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of who I am.”—Temple Grandin The year 2015 marked the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which banned discrimination against people …