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Labor
Baltimore Museum to Sell 3 Blue-Chip Paintings to Advance Equity
“This is done specifically in recognition of the protest being led by museum staff to be paid an equitable living wage to perform core work for an institution with a social justice …
Navigating a Job Search in the COVID-19 Market
The museum field, and cultural institutions in general, have undoubtedly been hit hard by COVID-19. As a result, many museum professionals are finding themselves job searching and …
Museopunks Episode 45: Getting By With A Little Help
Mutual aid systems rely on forms of exchange, sharing support and resources, to enable communities to care for their members in the face of difficulty. In May this year, Museum Workers …
Mind the Accessibility Gap
When we talk about equity, diversity, and inclusion in museums, we have a usual list of groups we mention: Black and Indigenous people, other people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, unhoused …
Museums Have a Docent Problem: Inside the struggle to train a mostly white, unpaid tour guide corps to talk about race.
The volunteer interpretive corps at museums skews largely white, older, and female. How can museums better train these volunteers to talk about race? Should museums rely on volunteers as …
Mutual Aid in a Time of Crisis
The upheavals of 2020 are drawing more attention to a venerable form of community self-help: mutual aid societies. These self-organized support groups arose in the eighteenth century as a …
Do Volunteer Programs Need Reinventing for the Reopened Museum?
Last year, AAM released a popular toolkit on structuring, developing, and supporting volunteer programs—whether starting from scratch or reimagining an existing program. Since the release …
Restarting Teams to Restart Museums
As we develop strategies and protocols that will allow us to safely reopen our museums, we’re faced with a glut of new challenges to consider: How can we welcome members and visitors back? …
COVID-19 and Museum Volunteers
Support Free COVID-19 Resources for the Field The current crisis is taking a distressing financial toll on cultural organizations, and AAM is no different. The Alliance Blog is supported by …
5 Ways to Keep Your Exhibit Project Moving…Remotely
Face-to-face collaboration has always been key to developing exhibitions at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. So, when COVID-19 led to a statewide shelter-in-place mandate halfway through a …
Prioritizing Image Descriptions and Digital Equity at Cooper Hewitt
During this time of crisis, it has never been more important to center access, equity, and inclusion in our response to the unknown. As we adapt quickly and shift our focus online, it is …
Now What?: Project Ideas for Museum Staff Working Remotely
By now, most of us are well into our stints of working from home. But weeks or months in, you might be finding it hard to think of new tasks you can do without access to your physical site. …