Posts
Small Museums
With the Help of MAP, the Manassas Museum Met Its Changing Community’s Needs
Through the Museum Assessment Program, museums gain perspective on how to improve core areas of their operations, with a combination of guided self-reflection and close consultation with an …
From Preservation to Participation: The Journey of Sandy Spring Museum
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Many museums think that serving the needs of more ethnically diverse constituents will lose them “traditional” audience and supporters, but at Sandy Spring Museum (SSM), we’ve found just …
Black History in Our Own Backyard: Building Community in a COVID World
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Lately, at the Neill-Cochran House Museum we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what community means, and the best way we can define it for our institution. This question has become even …
Advocacy is (Always) Essential
Do you have five minutes to take a small action that could make a big impact? I know, it sounds like a cheap sales pitch, and if you work in a small museum, your answer may be no. Whether …
A Small Museum’s Rapid Response Collecting Project for COVID-19
For historians, there is history in the making at any given moment. The life events, triumphs, and tragedies we experience and record help us define our ever-changing world for generations …
A Community Museum’s Plan to Document Gentrification
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This past November, I attended Reimagining the Museum: Conference of the Americas, held in Oaxaca, Mexico. Part of my excitement about attending the conference was that Latin America, and …
Silent No More: The new Lucy Burns Museum speaks to the centennial of suffrage
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Suffragists are recorded as the first in US history to use silence as protest, calling themselves “Silent Sentinels.” US suffragists (rather than British suffragettes) were also the first …
It Takes a Village: How community partnerships made for a winning summer camp formula
For museums with the resources and opportunities to do so, offering a summer camp is a great way to open up the doors to students whose guardians might need the structured daytime hours a …
Leveraging MAP for Capacity Building: The Sierra Mono Museum experience
The Sierra Mono Museum and Cultural Center—a small, rural, nonprofit museum set in the California foothills just south of Yosemite National Park—is today undergoing a one-million-dollar …
The Advantages of Being a Small Museum
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Despite visiting only rarely, I have a strong affinity for New Orleans, the “big sister” of my own hometown: Savannah, Georgia. Both were historically port cities, sites for the global …
Confronting a Painful History: How a museum partnered with its Native community to educate the public about an offensive place name
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The Black Rock Historical Society (BRHS) is a volunteer organization on the west side of Buffalo, NY, formed in 2013 around the two-hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812 and chartered …
2019 Award Winner for Innovation in Museum Education: Wa kuk wa jimor (“Canoe of One Community”)
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The EdCom Award for Innovation in Museum Education recognizes, encourages, and celebrates new, creative ways of engaging with audiences. The Shiloh Museum of Ozark History’s approach …
Latest Stories from AAM
A Q&A with Dirk Hiscock, Designer of This Year’s Winner for Excellence in Publication Design
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Category:
Alliance Blog
After reviewing hundreds of entries every year, the jury for AAM’s annual Museum Publications Design Competition awards only one publication with the Frances Smyth-Ravenel Prize for …
Pushing the Boundaries
Category:
Museum Magazine
The Whitney Plantation Museum confronts the truth of its history in all facets of its …
Beyond the Museum Walls
Category:
Museum Magazine
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2021 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. The Queens Museum serves as a community anchor by embracing porosity, …