Posts
Curatorial Practice
Zoos and Aquariums: Inspiring visitors, inspiring museums
I’ve been researching curatorial work for social justice for more than fifteen years and curating for more than ten. One of the biggest surprises I’ve had in this work came while I was …
Sharing the Wealth: Museums as Equity Engines
Recently, I’ve been speaking of museums as banks—repositories of enormous wealth of reputation, knowledge, and influence, in addition to the sheer value of their endowments. I’ve advanced …
Collection Ranking: Making deaccessions work for you
For all the objects in a museum’s collection that meet the standard criteria for accessioning—they fit the museum’s mission, are in good condition, and have thorough provenance—a …
Lessons in Cross-Cultural Partnerships for Mid-Sized Museums
On paper, the relationship between Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) and the Dordrecht Museum in the Netherlands looks like a typical museum partnership. For our recent exhibition Life in the …
Read the Winners of This Year’s Excellence in Exhibition Label Writing Competition
Exhibition labels are a primary tool museums use to communicate with visitors, so every word (and punctuation mark!) counts. To underscore this, AAM’s Curators Committee sponsors a …
The Hand of Native American Women, Visible at Last
The Minneapolis Institute of Art is opening a sweeping exhibition of art by Native American women, and in the process has worked to right some of the wrongs in the relationship between …
Taking Native Lands and Lives
Museums have power—the power to tell stories, shape narratives, and influence the lens we bring to bear on the past. That power can be harnessed for healing, as museums contribute to a …
Should These Clothes Be Saved?
The New York Times explores the story of the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, an unofficial collection of ordinary women’s clothing from 20th century America maintained as …
What Can the Museum World Learn From Hilma af Klint?
In Slate, Shirine Saad reflects on the massive and unexpected success of The Guggenheim Museum’s retrospective of the groundbreaking but little-known artist Hilma af Klint, and …
Collecting Girlhood: Why the new activist museum is virtual
The assumption that museums must be permanent buildings with physical collections is no longer sustainable. With decreased funding, increased competition, and the burden of care, museums …
Clean House to Survive? Museums Confront Their Crowded Basements
The New York Times dives deep into the problem of swelling storage and the routes some museums are taking to address it, including the controversial practice of deaccessioning. “It doesn’t …
Through the ephemeral, Tenderloin Museum explores neighborhood’s past
To reconstruct the history of its neighborhood, one particularly prone to turnover, San Francisco’s Tenderloin Museum has undertaken what it calls the “Tenderloin Historical Ephemera …