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How to Transform a Volunteer Program in Six Steps
Are you taking a second look at your museum’s volunteer program? Maybe you’re struggling with flagging recruitment and retention, questioning how the diversity of your corps aligns with …
A Guided Wellness Workshop for Taking Care of Yourself Before Your Communities
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to join the AAM team for two wellness sessions in the lead-up to May’s Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Given the meeting’s wellness-focused theme, …
Reframing the Collection: How a Literary Catalog Experiment Brought New Voices to Interpretation
The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art (Stanley) is part of the arts ecosystem at the country’s premier university for the study of creative writing. As a curatorial team, we have …
The Pains and Pleasures of Being a First-Generation Museum Person
Every few months or so, there’s a family gathering. From a birthday celebration to a family cookout, my family never seems to have a shortage of reasons to gather. At the time of this …
Meet Marilyn Jackson: A Q&A with AAM’s New President & CEO
At the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, the outgoing Vice Chair of AAM’s board, Nathan Richie, sat down for a Q&A with our new President & CEO, Marilyn Jackson, to help …
Celebrating Deaf Culture: How 5 Leading Museums Approach Accessibility and ASL Year-Round
After I asked my husband to repeat himself multiple times in one conversation, he eventually turned to me and said, “You don’t hear anything I say. Please get your hearing checked.” I …
Guiding Light: How Values Exercises Can Help You Present Challenging Content
When a visitor enters a museum, they arrive with more than just their belongings. They bring their entire cognitive framework to interpret and store knowledge, including their complex …
How Book Bans Might Impact Museums: A Q&A with PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman
This series of Q&As by the author are conducted as independent work and not part of his professional activities. If you follow the news, you’ve likely seen a surge in headlines about …
Faces of Baltimore Museums: Gage Branda
Have you heard about AAM 2024 in Baltimore this month? (We hope so—we’re doing our best!) If so, you might have seen one of our ads for this year’s edition, featuring a lovely …
The Best Museum Gardens, According to Museum People
Gardens can be artful, historic, and scientific—beautiful, educational, and ecological all at once. So they tend to go hand in hand with museums, uniting much of the diverse subject matter …
Toward Equity in Metadata: How Sandy Spring Museum Is Going beyond Reparative Cataloging
Equity: freedom from bias or favoritism Metadata: data that describes and provides context for digital items, which in turn helps users find and discover these resources. Though Black and …
Faces of Baltimore Museums: Rachel Leeds
Have you heard about AAM 2024 in Baltimore this month? (We hope so—we’re doing our best!) If so, you might have seen one of our ads for this year’s edition, featuring a lovely …