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Research and Reports

Learning from the Double Diamond: How Divergent and Convergent Thinking Can Improve Collaboration and Problem-Solving in Museums

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By Dana Mitroff Silvers
Have you ever been in a meeting and thrown out an idea, only to have a colleague start listing all the reasons it won’t work? Or maybe you’ve thought of one in your head, only to …

Report: Cultural Institutions’ 2022-2023 Investment Policies, Practices, & Performance

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By American Alliance of Museums
Download the report Introduction In 2023, the American Alliance of Museums, Fiducient Advisors, and The Morton Arboretum conducted a national investment benchmarking study aimed at …

External Pressures on Museum-Going: A 2023 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Susie Wilkening
This visual Data Story is based on findings from the 2023 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, a national survey of American museum visitors from AAM and Wilkening Consulting. Every year, the …

Leisure-Time Shifts in a (Mostly) Post-Pandemic World: A 2023 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Susie Wilkening
There have been a lot of changes in how people live their lives over the past five years, largely (but not exclusively) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While some of these shifts may benefit …

Museum Visitation—Frequency vs. Incidence Gaps: A 2023 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Susie Wilkening
When we plot out certain demographic characteristics, we find that who visits museums frequently (and the gaps we discover) can be very different than who visits museums at all (the …

Museum Visitation: A 2023 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story

By Susie Wilkening
It's been 3.5 years since the COVID-19 pandemic devastated museum visitation. For some museums, visitation is back to normal. For others, well,…

Say Cheese! A Candid Snapshot of the Museum Sector

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By Elizabeth Merritt
Last month AAM released the results of our fifth “snapshot” survey of the field. These snapshots, which started as a means of checking in on museums and museum workers during COVID …

2023 Annual National Snapshot of United States Museums

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By American Alliance of Museums
The 2023 Annual National Snapshot of United States Museums survey, conducted by AAM and Wilkening Consulting, was fielded March-April, 2023. Over 300 museum directors responded to this AAM …

Responsibility

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By American Alliance of Museums
As the pandemic struck, like Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy in Oz, museum workers found themselves cast into a completely new reality. Lengthy closures and stay-at-home orders unmoored us …
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Museum Philanthropy & Fundraising Tipsheet

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By American Alliance of Museums
Category: Financial Sustainability
This tipsheet summarizes the transcript of a webinar presented by Charles Katzenmeyer, Eowyn Bates, Amy Burt, Shannon Joern, and Ginevra Ranney. It was developed with the help of ChatGPT. …

Speaking the Audience’s Language: A Q&A with James Heaton

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By Adam Rozan
Category: Alliance Blog
At some point in the pandemic, I was working on a project, and I needed a museum-based definition of a term relating to audience development and museum work. I started by flipping through a …

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