Every year, AAM staff and partners go back to the drawing board to develop a theme for our Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. What theme will be big enough to resonate with all the areas of museum work but specific and relevant enough to weave them together and spur timely conversations?

This year, the answer came in a single word: trust. For years, our field has reveled in our “superpower” of being among the most trusted institutions in society. Even amidst a growing crisis in the credibility of public institutions, AAM’s research has found as recently as January 2025 that the public continues to view museums as highly trustworthy—second only to friends and family, and significantly higher than researchers and scientists, news organizations, and the government. And despite some demographic variations, this pattern holds true across all segments of race and ethnicity, political beliefs, and attitudes toward inclusion.

But why is this, exactly? What do we do that’s different from other informational or educational sources, and what might this unique status mean for our ability to help society reckon with issues like misinformation and polarization? These are the questions our field will address at AAM 2025 in Los Angeles. Through a wide range of programming—including hands-on workshops and learning labs designed to teach tangible tools for putting theory into practice—we will explore how we can use our trust to cultivate a healthier society, and how we can maintain our credibility proactively against threats that might undermine it.

As usual, this annual issue of the magazine serves as a preview of some of the fantastic sessions you’ll be hearing during the meeting. Speakers from across the program have written articles exploring the many dimensions of trust across museum operations, from community collaborations in curation and exhibitions, to relationships between staff and leaders, to transparent financial disclosure and storytelling. These are just a small sample of the nearly 300 presentations on the program this year, selected by dedicated museum peers on our Content Advisory Committee, who had their work cut out for them in a record-breaking year for submissions. Clearly, our field is eager to come together to talk trust.

This meeting couldn’t be coming at a more pivotal time. Amidst executive orders and directives that have put museums’ funding, freedom of expression, and ability to promote fairness, access, and inclusion into question, these issues of trust are at the heart of the matter. How can we respond to this changing environment without losing our communities’ confidence, and how can we lean into our widespread credibility to weather the storms of culture wars? While the full impacts of recent developments remain to be seen, I’m confident that having these conversations now will help us develop a solid foundation as we collaborate on our fieldwide response. The deeper we know ourselves and the mark we leave upon the world, the steadier we stand, the higher we rise.

2/21/2025