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Center for the Future of Museums Blog
The Center for the Future of Museums Blog shares musings on the future of museums and society.
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Supporting the Mental Health of Museum Staff
I’ve been in close communication with some of the museum directors using CFM resources—including TrendsWatch reports and the AAM Strategic Foresight Toolkit—to inform their planning and …
Releasing TrendsWatch into the Wild
Heads up! The 2023 edition of CFM’s annual forecasting report is now available as a free PDF download. TrendsWatch: Building the Post-pandemic World explores how museums can emerge from the …
An Afrofuturist School Program Empowers Children to Envision the Future
Futurism is a powerful tool to share with kids—equipping them to think about the world they want to live in when they grow up, challenging them to make it better. Today on the blog, …
Finding the Future at #AAM2023
I’m taking a short break from prepping my materials for #AAM2023 to share a preview of what The Future will be up to in Denver. For me the conference starts on Thursday, May 18, with the …
Virgil Ortiz Revolt 1680/2180: Runners + Gliders
Today on the blog, Pueblo artist Virgil Ortiz tells us about his use of futures-inflected storytelling to illuminate the past, as embodied in his latest project, Revolt 1680/2180: Runners + …
Emerging Issues in Legislation
Forgive me for being biased, but I think Museums Advocacy Day is one of The Best Museum Events in the US every year. What’s not to like about hundreds of people descending on the …
A Short Rant About Quiet Quitting (or, Why Heroism Can Be Toxic)
One of the things that fell to the cutting room floor as I edited this year’s TrendsWatch was a short rant about the phrase “quiet quitting.” In the published version of the essay on …
Designing a Collaborative, Distributed National Museum of Mental Health
While I’m compiling my fantasy guest blog list to build out the themes of CFM’s newest report, TrendsWatch: Building the Post-pandemic World, generous people from inside and …
Chatting About Museums with ChatGPT
Two months ago, the research and development lab OpenAI released ChatGPT, an interactive “chatbot” powered by artificial intelligence. Chatbots aren’t new (I’ve been writing about …
Forecasting 2023
In 2023, we, as individuals and organizations, are faced with choices that will determine what the post-pandemic future will look like. Will we try to rebuild a version of 2019, in so far …
An Example of Strategic Foresight in Museum Planning
In March, the Alliance released my major pandemic project: The AAM Strategic Foresight Toolkit, a comprehensive guide to applying the skills of futures thinking to museum practice. Over 300 …
What is Mastodon and Why Should You Care?
I joined Twitter in 2009, soon after the launch of CFM. That was the first social media account associated with AAM, and trying out this new realm was part of CFM’s work exploring emerging …