The Context for This Collection

At its heart, strategic foresight consists of four essential steps:

1. Know where you’ve been.
2. Understand where you are now.
3. Decide where you want to go next.
4. Figure out how to get there.

Put that way, it seems simple, yes?

But simple isn’t the same as easy. A lot of my time is spent learning and teaching skillful ways to take these steps. One important thing I’ve learned is that this journey is easier when you recruit others to help us along the way. Historians, elders, scholars, archivists, and lore-keepers can help us remember where we’ve been. People actually doing the hard work of whatever needs to be done can offer a shrewd assessment of where we are now, and how well we are doing.

The next step—deciding where we want to go next—is often an order of magnitude harder. Left to themselves, our brains are wired to extrapolate the future as a straight line from the past through the now and forward—resulting in a more mature (and entrenched) version of the present. One of the most important truths about the future is that it isn’t predetermined. At any given point we face many potential futures, some of which are better, and others worse, than we might assume. To help overcome mental myopathy, we can enlist the help of people with well-developed imaginations—storytellers who can paint pictures not just of how the world is, but how it could be.

This is the approach I’ve taken in applying foresight to museum work, most recently in AAM’s exploration of the arc of history, from past to future, of repatriation, restitution, and reparations. The first report from this Next Horizon of Museum Practice project documented how the relationships between museums and descendants of communities whose culture they steward have changed over the last decade, and where that leaves us now. That report shared stories of how some museums were repatriating some collections not because the law said they had to, but because their values told them that such so-called voluntary repatriation was the right thing to do. And it showed how those shifts are changing how museums think and talk about the collections they steward—talking about belongings, for example, rather than objects, or ancestors, rather than human remains, language that reflects deeper changes in the relationships between museum people and descendant communities, and between the living and the non-living.

To help with step three—envisioning where we, as a field, want to go next—I enlisted the help of an amazing working group (credited below) in recruiting a diverse array of writers to share their visions of what preferable futures might look like with respect to voluntary repatriation, restitution, and reparations. The resulting collection consists of fifteen papers by authors writing from the perspective of their communities, academia, and museums (some from the intersections of these three domains). By sharing these visions of potential futures, AAM hopes to provide museum people with the inspiration that fuels change and the courage to disrupt any current practice that no longer serves its purpose. I encourage you to browse the titles, pick a few that catch your eye, and dive in. Share stories that resonate with your colleagues, students, and friends. What elements of these stories do you find compelling, plausible, useful? Which paint pictures of futures that you would like to inhabit?

A Preview of Some of the Papers

The collection consists of:

• Opinion pieces, such as that contributed by Ernestine Hayes, Professor Emerita at the University of Alaska Southeast, writing, from her perspective as someone belonging to the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Lingít nation, of a future in which everything that was taken grows old and dies where it belongs.
• Academic foresight, including a paper by Fabio Mariani, Lynn Rother, and Max Koss at the Provenance Lab of Leuphana University Lüneburg, on digital cataloguing as a reparative practice.
• Speculative fiction, like David Zvi Kalman’s mind-bending story that challenges us to consider whether an object’s provenance can have power equal to or exceeding the object itself.

It addresses museums’ relations with descendant communities from various points of view. for example:

• Victoria Phiri Chitungu and Samba Yonga of the Livingstone Museum and Women’s History Museum, Zambia, exploring a future in which digital repatriation can be a means in which African cultural objects in foreign museums are reconnected with their embedded Indigenous knowledge and communities of origin in Africa.
• Marc Masurovsky, co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project and Director of Research for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust-Era Assets, on a future in which museums treat the provenance of an object as equally worthy of storytelling as its creation, especially in the case of looted or stolen works.
• Laura Van Broekhoven, drawing on her experience as director of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford to envision how museums can be part of a process of societal healing by enabling community-led work towards reconciliation and prioritizing listening, cultural care, and epistemological equity.
• Jessica Harris, President, Descendants of Enslaved Communities at the University of Virginia, describing a future in which a future in which descendants of enslaved communities have an equitable, reparative seat at the table as we strive toward true repair and stronger museums.

This collection caps the second phase of this Next Horizon project. I’m hoping to tackle the fourth key step in foresight—figuring how to get to our preferred futures—in stage three. Please reach out to cfm (at) aam-us.org if you might be interested in hosting a workshop on this topic at your museum or conference, and please, please share ideas about partners and potential funders for this important work.

Yours from the future,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight & Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

Gratitude and Acknowledgements

This project has been made possible by the generous support of the David Berg Foundation.

And by the wise guidance of the Next Horizon Working Group:

• Antonia Bartoli, Curator of Provenance Research, Yale University Art Gallery
• Kalewa Correa, Smithsonian APAC curator of Hawai’i and the Pacific
• Michael Glickman, jMUSE Founder and CEO
• Jane Pickering, William & Muriel Seabury Howells Director of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Boston, MA
• Brandie Macdonald, Executive Director, Indiana University Museum of Archeology and Anthropology
• Stephen E. Nash, President and CEO, Archaeology Southwest
• Ashley Rogers, Executive Director, Whitney Plantation
• Noelle Trent, President & CEO of the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket
• Nii O. Quarcoopome, Curator &, Department Head of Africa, Oceania & Indigenous Americas at Detroit Institute of Arts
• Richard West, Founding Director & Director Emeritus Smithsonian NMAI

The program kicks off on October 29 at 1 pm ET with a keynote by one of my favorite futurists. The next day, at 1:30 pm, you’ll have the choice of four fantastic Big Idea talks, one for each of our four session tracks. Today I’m previewing these speakers to encourage you to register (if you haven’t already) and, for those already planning to join us, to help you choose which of the Big Idea talks to attend. (Though not to worry, the recordings will be available to registrants until January 31, 2025, so you can catch up on the ones you missed.)

First, our keynote speaker: Last year Dr. Jane McGonigal launched the Summit with a pep talk on building urgent optimism for the future. This year I’m so happy to introduce you to Rob Hopkins—a futurist, time traveler, and imagination catalyst trainer based in Totnes, England. I fell in love with Rob’s work through his marvelous podcast From What If to What Next, where he shared provocative, optimistic challenges such as “What if we loved politicians?” and “What if we decolonized economics?” (The podcast, alas, came to a close in 2024, but I highly recommend the archived episodes, which you can find on any major podcast app.) Much of Rob’s futures work and his practical activism focus on combating climate change and building resilient futures.

On to our Big Ideas speakers:

You may already know Sree Sreenivasan, former Chief Digital Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and now co-founder and CEO of Digimentors, a social/digital/AI training and consulting company. For the past year, he’s been teaching his “Non-scary Guide to AI” workshops and working with clients on AI policy, strategy, and scenario planning. In writing up his speaker text for the Summit, I was intimidated by the other accomplishments in his bio: In 2015, Fast Company named him one of the hundred most creative people in business. In 2004, Newsweek named him one of the twenty most influential young South Asians in America, along with Kamala Harris, M. Night Shyamalan, and Norah Jones. (I know, right!?!?!) In 2020, the President of Italy awarded Sree the knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy for his role in promoting US-Italian relations. Sree is going to enrich the AI Adolescence track with his observations on “AI & Museums: Beyond the Hype and the Backlash.”

While most of the sessions in our “Net Zero” track look at practical ways museums can reduce their carbon impact, Dr. Susan Clayton is going to make sure we don’t lose track of the psychological cost of the climate crisis. As the Whitmore-Williams Professor and Chair of Psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio, Susan’s research explores people’s relationship with the natural environment and how climate change affects mental health and well-being. A fellow of the American Psychological Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology, she was a lead author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In her talk, Susan will address how climate change affects our psychological well-being, including threats to identity and grief over environmental losses, as well as how museums can help mitigate this damage.

I confess that writing about Culture Wars for TrendsWatch left me feeling pretty discouraged. One thing that lifted me up out of that funk was the work of Mathieu Lefevre, CEO and Co-founder of More in Common. Mathieu’s work at More in Common focuses on understanding the forces driving us apart, finding common ground, and bringing people together to tackle shared challenges. At the Summit, he will deconstruct some of the factors contributing to the “polarization illusion,” including the role of the media, social media, and the “polarization industrial complex.” Mathieu has some ideas about what we can all do to stem the tide of polarization and the critical role museums can play as convening places and community spaces.

If researching topics for TrendsWatch has taught me anything, it is that for any challenge in the world, there are amazing people working to find solutions. The current loneliness epidemic is a case in point. Dr. Jeremy Nobel is an actual doctor—a primary care physician and public health practitioner with faculty appointments at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Medical School. (He’s also an award-winning poet. Not that I’m going to get an inferiority complex or anything. Yikes.) Jeremy is the founder of the Foundation of Art and Healing, and his 2023 book Project UnLonely looks at how we can heal the current “crisis of disconnection.” At the Summit, he’ll draw on his work to offer some insights and strategies for how museums can play a role in that process of healing.

I hope to see you at the Summit next week. If you haven’t snagged tickets yet, register now and start planning your agenda for the day.

Warmest regards from the future,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Merritt

VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

American Alliance of Museums

If this post piques your interest, join me on October 29 & 30 at the Future of Museums Summit to hear from other colleagues on the challenges and opportunities around the use of AI in museums–one of four tracks in this virtual conference. Early Bird Registration is now open.

–Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

The robots are coming for us! Actually, they are already here and have mostly slipped into our daily lives without much fuss . . . until about late 2022 when an artificial intelligence (AI) company launched ChatGPT and, suddenly, AI seemed to be everywhere.

In the beginning

In early 2023, a colleague at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) returned from a conference and shared that there was a lot of talk about how to keep proprietary information safe from AI crawlers. This initial concern led us to a deep dive into AI to gain a better understanding of what it is and isn’t, how staff at the Carter might use it, how they shouldn’t use it, and how to provide them with some basic AI literacy.

We started with immersing ourselves in articles and webinars to get a better feel for the broad scope of AI—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and how it is already being applied in the museum field. What became clear early on was that AI is just another tool in the toolbox, and we started to think about it within the context of a SWOT analysis, or strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

After several months of reading, watching, listening, and thinking, we took a proposal to the Carter’s Leadership Team: to create a cross-departmental working group of staff to develop guidelines for the use of AI tools at the Carter. This was at about the same time that AAM’s TrendsWatch report came out with an article on “AI Adolescence,” which provided reinforcement for our proposal.

The Leadership Team had many questions about AI, including how other museums are using it, how or if staff are currently using it, if a Carter policy should focus on a particular platform, and who should be part of this working group. It was decided to start by holding departmental discussions on how staff are already using AI, if they are, how they think they might use it if the opportunity arose, and how they would never use it. The takeaways from those group discussions were threefold:

• Concerns about privacy, copyright, and authenticity were paramount.
• Current usage of AI was primarily of text or image generation.
• Most staff were not aware of AI applications outside of generative.

Armed with a list of staff who already had an interest in AI technology and others who might be important stakeholders for their departments, our Leadership Team approved a working group of nine people representing Archives, Collections, Development, Education, IT, Marketing/Communications, and Retail.

The AI working group

During our informal conversations with staff before starting the working group, it became clear that reflecting on personal AI use would be a crucial first phase. Many staff members did not realize how frequently they interact with AI in their daily lives, from using voice assistants like Siri and Alexa to relying on recommendation algorithms on streaming platforms. Understanding the ways in which AI tools have already become interwoven into our work platforms was another layer to be explored.

As a working group, we wanted to explore these themes in a way that encouraged discussion while being respectful of varying bandwidths. To do so, we used discussion boards in Basecamp to facilitate asynchronous interaction much like you would see in online pedagogy. The boards were spaces for staff to engage with current trends, share insights, and reflect on their personal views and use of AI.

To guide the discussions, we read three general-knowledge, popular news resources: “This is how AI image generators see the world” and “AI can now create images out of thin air. See how it works.” from the Washington Post; and the Wall Street Journal’s “Beginner’s Guide to Using AI: Your First 10 Hours.” To focus on AI applications in museums, we read two fantastic resources in addition to AAM’s “AI Adolescence” article: AI: A Museum Planning Toolkit, from the collaborative Museums + AI Network, and “Developing responsible AI practices at the Smithsonian Institution.”

Through these fruitful discussions, we built a collective knowledge base as a jumping off point.

The shift from policy to guidelines

Through our readings and discussions, we soon recognized the need to shift our focus from strict policy rules to more flexible guidelines, and also to develop a public statement that affirms the Carter’s commitment to transparency and best practices, along with literacy resources for staff. This decision was influenced by several factors:

1. Institution size and digital footprint: As a midsize museum with a comprehensive and competent digital presence, we realized that imposing rigid policy rules might not be practical given the rapidly changing AI landscape. It was essential that we develop guidelines that are adaptable and responsive to new developments in AI technology, and that we support the creative and ethical use of AI tools.
2. Collecting focus: Our museum’s focus on art, archives, and library collections, as opposed to scientific or historical collections, shapes our approach to AI. The application of AI in these areas differs significantly, and our guidelines need to reflect these unique considerations.
3. Information literacy: We identified a gap in AI literacy among our staff. Enhancing AI literacy therefore became a priority, as it empowers staff to make informed decisions and engage more effectively with AI tools.

To develop our guidelines, we continued our group discussions with close readings of existing resources from leading institutions, sourced by our Head of IT, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Shedd Aquarium; Dallas Museum of Art; and digital agency ForumOne. These examples provided valuable insights, pointing us toward crafting guidelines that are both relevant and practical for our context.

Coming soon!

The next phase of our work involves drafting and finalizing our guidelines and public statement on AI use at the Carter. This will include clear, actionable recommendations that reflect our commitment to ethical AI use, transparency, and continual learning. We will also develop comprehensive literacy resources to support staff in understanding and engaging with AI technology.

Our goal is to create a dynamic framework that can evolve alongside advancements in AI, ensuring that the Carter remains at the forefront of innovation while upholding our core values and mission.

Yours from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight & Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, American Alliance of Museums

As we look toward the future, museums are uniquely positioned to play a pivotal role in early childhood education. At Miami Children’s Museum, we have always believed in the power of playful learning and interactive experiences. Today, I am thrilled to announce the launch of the Museum Playful Learning Collective, the first national collective of museum-based preschools, and to invite your museum to join this dynamic group. This initiative, born out of our passion for early childhood education, represents a significant step forward in how museums can help build a better tomorrow.

The Impetus for Creating the Collective

The idea for the Museum Playful Learning Collective stemmed from our ongoing commitment to educational innovation and excellence. Over the years, Miami Children’s Museum has pioneered various programs that integrate play-based learning with curriculum standards. As the only institution to host an on-site K-5^th charter school, we have witnessed firsthand the empirical benefits of such an approach. Our charter school is accredited by Cognia, holds a STEM accreditation, and has received an A grade from the Florida Department of Education for more than sixteen years.

Recognizing the profound impact of our educational model, we sought to expand its reach. The Museum Playful Learning Collective brings together museums across the country to collaborate, share best practices, and develop a cohesive framework for museum-based preschools. Together, members aim to create an environment where children can thrive through hands-on, interactive learning experiences that museums are uniquely positioned to provide. Additionally, the collective is open to members who do not work in a museum school but are intrigued by the learning style and standards of museum educators, and seek ideas on how they can incorporate those into their schools.

The Importance of the Preschool Collective

The Museum Playful Learning Collective is more than a network of museum-based preschools and those interested in learning more about how children learn in museum programs. It is a movement to redefine early childhood education. By bringing together museums from different regions, we can explore an approach to preschool education that emphasizes the importance of play, exploration, and creativity.

In addition to the collective’s ten foundational members, another twenty have been added since the collective’s launch. Together, the members span children’s museums, science museums, preschools, and more. The collective aims to identify commonalities among these varied institutions to redefine early childhood education in museums.

The collective is accepting new members across the country, aiming to share insights on the advantages of museum-based preschool education, the alignment of educational frameworks within museum programs, and the best methods to measure kindergarten readiness in cultural institutions. This collaborative effort will demonstrate the effectiveness of museum-based preschools in fostering cognitive and social development.

The museum-based preschool programs of the collective prioritize playful and interactive learning experiences for young children. Studies have shown that children who engage in play-based learning exhibit better problem-solving skills, higher levels of creativity, and improved social interactions​. These skills are not only crucial for academic success but also for personal development and lifelong learning.

The Role of Museums in Early Childhood Education

Museums are beacons of experiential learning, offering unique opportunities for families to engage in exhibits sparking curiosity and fostering a love for learning. By integrating preschool education within museums, we leverage resources to create enriching experiences that go beyond the classroom settings.

Early childhood is a critical period for cognitive, social, and emotional development. The preschool years lay the foundation for lifelong learning, and it is imperative that we provide children with a stimulating and supportive environment. Museums, with their diverse collections and interactive exhibits, are perfectly suited to offer such an environment. Through play-based learning and interactive demonstrations, children can engage in museums, deepening their understanding and enhancing their learning outcomes.

The natural link between early childhood education and museums has been explored individually, such as in the CFM guest post “When Preschool IS the Museum.” In it, the author envisions a future where museums, public education, and resources better deliver what children in the community need. We are proud to share that the Museum Playful Learning Collective is helping achieve that vision.

Support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services

We are also proud that the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the leading source of federal museum and library funding, is supporting the Museum Playful Learning Collective through a Museums for America grant.

“High-quality early childhood education is critical to the success of future generations and advances the agency’s emphasis on championing lifelong learning,” said IMLS Deputy Director of Museums Services Laura Huerta Migus. “We know that museums and libraries provide a unique environment for children to grow into engaged members of their communities. It is our hope that this collective will develop and share practices that empower more museums to offer preschool options.”

Building a Better Tomorrow

The launch of the Museum Playful Learning Collective marks a significant milestone in our journey to enhance early childhood education. At Miami Children’s Museum, we are committed to enriching the lives of all children by fostering a love of learning, and the collective will play a crucial role in achieving that goal with one of our key audiences, preschoolers. By creating a collaborative environment and exploring the advantages of museum-based learning for our young learners, we can help shape the future of education and build a better tomorrow for our children.

Visit the museum’s research site to learn more about the Museum Playful Learning Collective or to sign up to become a partner. The collective’s first newsletter will go out in early September, so interested potential partners are encouraged to sign up by the end of August to be on the mailing list.

Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

Building partnerships with groups historically excluded from museum spaces is often problematic because of institutionalized power structures, traditions of harm, and systemic barriers. So how can museums—historically extractive by design—shift their practices to empower these groups through restorative action?

That’s the question that has guided the Clyfford Still Museum (CSM) in Denver as it has worked alongside representatives from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State to bridge regional and cultural divides, using the Museum’s collections as the starting point to build community, foster authentic connections, and open reciprocal pathways for communication.

What follows is a shared telling of the initiative’s origins by Bailey Placzek, CSM Curator of Collections and Catalogue Raisonné Research and Project Manager, and Michael Holloman, enrolled Colville Tribal member (sńʕaýckstx/Lakes) and Associate Professor of Art and Coordinator of Native American Arts Outreach at Washington State University. The text functions as a dialogue between our voices, with initials indicating who is writing when.

Background

Bailey Placzek (BP): American abstract expressionist painter Clyfford Still (1904–1980) spent three formative summers in and around Nespelem, Washington, on the Colville Reservation as a young art instructor at Washington State College (WSC [now Washington State University]) between 1936–38.^[1] While there, Still assisted in founding the Nespelem Art Colony for WSC community members and students. He paid minimal sums to Tribal members to sit for portraits and led a variety of classes for program participants. CSM has three paintings on canvas, more than eighty-five drawings and sketches on paper, nearly twenty documentary photographs, and other archival ephemeral objects documenting his time and the people he met in the area (many of whom he identified by name with inscriptions).

In 2021, CSM began developing You Select: A Community-Curated Exhibition, which highlighted various communities that influenced Still during his life, including the Colville Confederated Tribes. As part of this exhibition’s development, CSM reconnected with Michael Holloman, who had previously been in touch about CSM’s opportunity to engage the living descendants of the individuals Still depicted in his portraits and the larger Colville Tribal community.^[2] You Select opened a pathway to explore that possibility through object interpretation.

Big Idea

With the support of our new director, Dr. Joyce Tsai, and alongside CSM’s former archivist, Erin Shafer, I was eager to learn more about the historical context of our collection materials, meet the family members of the individuals in the Colville artworks, and potentially uncover new information and perspectives about this body of work. However, Holloman encouraged us to step back from any predetermined outcomes or timelines and focus on open-ended in-person introductions that could lead to long-term collaborations. Acknowledging that Still’s own association with Colville was transactional—like that of so many other white artists working in Native communities at the time—we sought to revive a relationship with the community that would be reciprocally generative instead.

Michael Holloman (MH): In the past, authority has rested with museums, which have too often dictated to Tribal communities what was needed and what could be gained by collaborative partnerships.^[2] Here, we sought to structure our engagement around laying a foundation for the Colville Tribal community to present to CSM what they envisioned important outcomes might be for a partnership, so Tribal members could participate and be recognized in their own history.

This emphasis on self-determination is crucial for engaging with Native tribes, who have historically fought for their sovereignty and right to assert agency over their own culture and shape their history, representation, health, and homelands. In fact, at the same time Still paid members of the Colville Confederated Tribes to sit for portraits, the Tribes were working to do just this, establishing a council of Tribal leaders to replace a federally appointed Indian agent to oversee their affairs.

BP: We designed an itinerary to visit the reservation that focused on laying the groundwork for possible future conversations. Rather than focusing on deliverables and deadlines, we dedicated the trip to introduction, listening, and sharing, understanding that building a trusting and open relationship would take time.

Holloman connected us with John Sirois (sʔukʷnaʔqín/Okanogan sp̓aƛ̓mul̓əxʷəxʷ/Methow ps’quosa), the Colville Tribe’s Traditional Territories Advisor, to arrange visits to the Tribal agency headquarters, Colville Tribal Museum, and the surrounding Nespelem area. Planning our trip with an appointed representative was critical to our success. Sirois and Holloman also helped us understand and ensure we followed appropriate cultural protocols and etiquette.

Sirois reserved a large meeting room at the Lucy F. Covington Government Center in Nespelem, where we could facilitate an open-house-style gathering. We provided him with a list of the families of people Still depicted in the 1930s, and he invited any relatives still living in the area to stop by the government center during a three-hour time block. As the descendants came in, we introduced ourselves, gifted them with high-quality reproductions of artworks and archival materials connected to their relatives, and showed images of related works from our collection to encourage discussion.

We opened the conversations by emphasizing that we were there to introduce ourselves, share our resources, learn about the descendants’ history, and listen to their reasons for engaging with CSM. These open-ended, unrecorded conversations provided space for residents to reflect upon their own personal experiences with their family members or places depicted in Still’s artworks, without fear or uncertainty of how the CSM would use their recollections. (They also revealed that some of the information in our collections records was inaccurate.)

Reflection

“The drawings bring out personal experiences that people can remember; they give us a sense of our history.”

It was moving to watch people look at the reproductions of portraits we brought and recognize family members. Diedre Williams (wal’wáma/Chief Joseph Band of Nez Perce) was particularly emotional upon seeing the young face of her grandfather. She shared her memories with us and was excited to learn she could take the reproductions home. Later, she graciously recounted her memories for our use in You Select:

“I remember my grandpa sitting in his chair as I stood behind him watching our favorite show, Superman. It was on one of those old black-and-white TVs with long antennae. Back then we lived very modestly but wanted for nothing.”

We left Washington with an overwhelming sense of objects’ power to connect people across cultures and time. I gained wholly new perspectives on Still’s works after experiencing the place and context of their creation—matching the lines of Nespelem’s hilltops to his colorful landscape studies and envisioning streetscapes as they looked nearly a century ago. Our departure also brought the fragility of these relationships into focus; how could we truly hold ourselves accountable to this place and its people as museum representatives, given the weight of past harms?

Back in Denver, we reexamined our current collections practices, assessing how our outward positions on “authority” and “access” were inwardly demonstrated through internal data management standards. Whose perspectives on an object were we treating as critical, and thereby worthy of entry into our collections management system? When we experienced these objects in their original context outside the museum’s galleries and storage rooms, they helped foster collective memory, a sense of belonging, and joy. How could that be translated into our cataloging policies?

MH: Sometimes individuals and institutions change only when they are forced to, given no other options but to respond to changing times and requirements. But nonetheless, this pressure to change can afford genuinely transformative opportunities. Committed individuals can inspire an organization to shift their actions through their own devotion to change. My relationship with CSM initially began with my participation in a single public program but has grown over the years. The work that started there has blossomed into an institution-wide initiative over a long period of time.

Federal Indian policies of relocation and the establishment of rural reservations away from non-Native communities have created a physical and cultural divide. Museums, in turn, are challenged to create and strengthen relationships with Tribal partners to help bridge those divides. This requires commitments of time and treasure. Direct, face-to-face encounters are crucial to developing healthy relationships and habits. We are used to relying upon technology to bridge vast distances, but it cannot replace direct communication within one’s museum or with Tribal communities.

BP: This project broadened our institutional priorities beyond simply hitting deadlines and deliverables. We slowed down, became open to the project’s evolution, and redefined what success meant to us. It was challenging to come to terms with the idea that we may not have any concrete results or answers to present after the trip, but it also opened up possibilities for the future. CSM leadership’s unwavering support for this open-ended approach has been crucial.

“What’s next?”

BP: After our visit, we invited Colville Tribal members to visit CSM in Denver. Later that fall, we hosted a panel discussion with Shafer, Sirois, Holloman, and me to introduce the initiative to our own local community. During the visit, Sirois, Holloman, and visiting Colville resident Jewie Davis (wal’wáma/Chief Joseph Band of Nez Perce) saw Still’s original artwork and archival materials. Later that evening, we asked them, “What’s next?” They looked at each other and expressed a desire to extend our partnership to Tribal youth. Now, more than three years into the initiative, we have returned to the reservation three times at the invitation of our advisors to pursue these goals and are excited to share outcomes in upcoming posts on this blog.

MH: In subsequent visits to the reservation, CSM offered opportunities for Tribal members and government representatives to address the harms of the past and to interrogate the Museum’s intentions for this partnership. The Tribal Council and the broader community, however, were more interested in developing relationships that could benefit their communities in the future. We will outline the details of those partnerships in our upcoming posts.

With patience and a professional willingness for structural change, building collaborative networks with Tribal communities offers tremendous benefits for museums. I recently witnessed the repatriation of a Chilkat blanket and other cultural objects from the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington, back to the community of its origin in Southeast Alaska. During a transfer ceremony at the museum, a Tribal elder (Yanÿeidí) emphasized the need to recognize that the museum is now part of the blanket’s living history. He said that the museum’s role in its story is not just about colonial extraction and appropriation, but also its commitment to restorative work. These commitments are what can, over time, shrink the distances between seemingly disparate communities.

BP & MH: CSM does not possess any Tribal cultural objects, particularly those that would necessitate federal repatriation responsibilities. Yet beyond the framework of NAGPRA, there exist other models museums can use to create meaningful partnerships and empower Indigenous communities. When CSM staff first traveled to Nespelem in 2022, it was an important step towards the museum’s investment in a shared relationship with the descendants of Still’s sitters from the Nespelem Art Colony in the 1930s. CSM does not see this partnership as a discrete event but a starting point for a living, reciprocal future, bridging past and present into a shared artistic celebration for all.

Authors’ note: Stay tuned for future posts about our collaborations with Colville Tribal youth and the Colville Children Curate (title TBD) exhibition opening in September 2025.

^[1] While culturally distinct and diverse, the twelve bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation include the Chelan, Chief Joseph Band of Nez Perce, Colville, Entiat, Lakes, Methow, Moses-Columbia, Nespelem, Okanogan, Palus, San Poil, and Wenatchi. The bands share cultural practices and 1.4 million acres of land in northeastern Washington.

^[2] CSM first engaged Holloman during the development of Clyfford Still: The Colville Reservation and Beyond, 1934–1939, which was installed at CSM from May 8–September 13, 2015, and was accompanied by an exhibition catalog of the same name. Curated by scholar and art historian Patricia Failing, this installation was the museum’s first (and only) exhibition dedicated to Still’s Nespelem artworks. Failing conducted extensive research in the Coville area as part of her research and we are indebted to her foundational study of Still’s Nespelem works.

^[3] One of the main intentions of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was to encourage continuing dialogue between museums and Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations where none previously existed.

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–Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

In January of 2024, the Bullock Texas State History Museum launched two new apprentice positions in an effort to provide starting points for future museum careers. These positions are full-time, entry-level jobs with benefits starting at a minimum wage of sixteen dollars an hour. The positions split duties, with twenty hours spent in Visitor Services and twenty hours spent assigned to a specific department matching a successful candidate’s interests. Intentionally, the positions remain open-termed without an end date. The Bullock’s goal in offering these positions is to serve as a steppingstone for museum professionals to rise in their skills and leadership potential.

The concept developed in response to what Bullock department heads were seeing in the hiring process—an increase in applicants with relevant academic degrees, but little to no proven museum skills or experience that met the position requirements. This correlated with what many colleagues have been hearing from museum program graduates, who report that their prior short-term internships (or lack thereof) do not provide enough experience to get to the interview stage in a competitive job market.

It took several years of internal discussions and researching state classifications (the Bullock is a state-governed museum) to develop a unique hybrid job description we thought would best entice a substantial, diverse, and multifaceted pool of applicants. We posted the job in the fall of 2023 and the response was gratifying—twenty applicants with bachelor’s and master’s degrees who were currently working primarily in retail and restaurants, but eager to put the theoretical aspects of their education to work. We interviewed nine applicants, using a matrix approved by HR to score them on a points system, and offered positions to two, who both accepted.

After seven months, the apprentices’ progress and growth are measurable; they are attaining hands-on skills in interactions with the public and in our Exhibit Technicians and Registrarial teams, respectively. The supervisors are also growing in their management and teaching skills and have gained dedicated and eager team members who are actively moving department projects forward.

We anticipate that this model will continue to be mutually beneficial overall. Among the advantages:

• On paper and in practice, the value of what an institution does to serve its mission becomes clear, since the positions are full-time and fully integrated into the departments, rather than a few hours a week for a semester.
• Apprentices practice skills needed in the field daily, and while they may work on various projects, they see them develop from start to finish.
• These positions entail deep conversations between different departments, which encourages sharing from colleagues about other museum roles. The participation of apprentices in regular intra- and interdepartmental meetings further enhances their understanding of museum operations and proves effective in tracking the progress of upcoming exhibits and projects. Such updates also fill potential information gaps resulting from a schedule that is divided between two departments.
• The title “apprentice” sets expectations to learn from practice and conveys permission to pose questions, carrying more influence than a title of “intern.”
• Being entrusted with problem-solving on tangible projects encourages initiative and critical thinking as apprentices weigh the options; fallback support from supervisors is available when needed.
• Learning the jargon and vocabulary that is used, whether specific to the institution or industry-wide, goes beyond the theoretical. This instrumental knowledge aids apprentices in discussing their ideas and projects with precision in an environment that positions them as colleagues.
• Through front-line customer service work, they see and hear how behind-the-scenes roles impact visitors’ experiences each day.
• Apprentices now see themselves in the field, are learning their strengths and passions, and can imagine a career path ahead. This opportunity allows them to evaluate how their skills align with their professional interests and to re-prioritize their focus according to what they see is needed to be successful.

For future apprentice positions, the museum plans to prep supervisors more thoroughly on the administration expectations for their roles and the goals of their apprentices. We’ve realized that it would have been beneficial to have more immediate supervisor involvement and support earlier in the position creation process to collectively set defined measures of success and levels of acquiring skills. Administration meeting regularly with supervisors has alleviated some of those concerns.

Apprenticeships in the trades are certainly not new. In a multitude of museum environments, they offer advantages above the internship level, especially as so many internships remain unpaid or are unavailable after graduation. Providing entry points for future leaders to gain quality experiences while earning a salary with benefits is worth the planning and long-term investment.

For each Chat, I’ll recruit a guest to help me pick apart a recent signal of change (it might be a news story, a research report, even a photograph), examine its implications for our lives and our work, and create a safe space for museum people to trade thoughts and share experiences.

Which, not incidentally, creates an opportunity to share with you some of the fascinating people inside, around, and outside the museum sector who I meet in the course of my work.

For the first Chat, on Wednesday, August 14, from 3-4 p.m. ET, I’ll be joined by Marcy Rockman to explore a recent signal related to changing climate risk. Marcy is an archaeologist with experience in national and international climate change policy. Her research focuses on “landscape learning,” which explores how humans gather, remember, and share environmental information.

After about 20 minutes of introducing our signal and sharing some thoughts on what it might mean for the world, and museums, we’ll send attendees off into small breakout groups with questions to guide discussion. When you re-enter the main room towards the end of the hour, you’ll be invited to share insights, stories, ideas that struck you as being particularly useful and inspiring.

This event is free and open to all (AAM member and nonmember alike). I hope you will join me both to test the format, and to dive into this critically important topic. Register now for the August 14 event, and I hope to be chatting with you soon.

Yours from the future,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation.”

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals identify “good health and well-being” as critical elements in creating a peaceful and prosperous future. Within that broad mandate, the need to foster mental health is partic­ularly acute. The stigma attached to mental illness inflicts additional damage through bias and exclusion, and if people do seek help, they may face finan­cial, geographic, or social barriers to accessing care. COVID-19 may amplify this challenge in the coming decades, with long-term impacts including increased rates of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. A deep body of research has already documented the role museums can play in a resilient and equitable infrastructure of health writ large. The stress test of the COVID-19 pandemic showed that museums can be essential partners in a network of support for mental health as well.

The Challenge

In Western society, the theory and practice of mental health has been shaped by history, philosophy, and traditions that view the mind and body as separate entities. Only recently have we begun to recognize the duality of body and mind as false, and to acknowledge that people experiencing mental illnesses should receive the same respect, compassion, and access to care as people coping with physical challenges.

This welcome step toward a rational and caring approach to mental illness comes none too soon. Mental health has been declining in the US since the early twentieth century. Some research suggests one culprit is a cultural shift from intrinsic to extrinsic goals. Other contributing factors include the cumulative effects of racism and discrimination, the rising number of people living alone, and (especially for teens) the dark side of social media, including bullying and body-shaming. Whatever the cause, by 2018, one in five Americans were experiencing challenges to their mental health, and one in twenty faced serious mental illness.

Then came the additional stress, isolation, and fear induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, one in every three Americans reported they were suffering from depres­sion, and anxiety and depression severity scores were one and a half to two times higher than they were in 2019. The pandemic’s effects on mental health were particularly severe for people disadvantaged by or excluded from existing networks of support, including women; people who are unmarried; low-income households; children age eleven to seventeen; LGBTQ+ youth; people who identify as Black, Native American, and Asian or Pacific Islander; and people already experiencing mental illness. Medical historians tracking mental health in the wake of other large-scale disasters, including the Chernobyl nuclear acci­dent in Ukraine (1986), the SARS pandemic (2003), and Hurricane Katrina (2005) have found long-term increases in the rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other mental health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic will likely have a similar long-term impact on mental health. This damage to individuals translates into damage for critical systems as well. The past two years have been particularly hard on front-line workers, with one result being that many essen­tial personnel, including health care workers and teachers, may leave their professions, further weakening our ability to support community needs.

Over the course of the pandemic, as museums were forced to close their doors to the public, many museum workers experienced layoffs, furloughs, and financial stress. Others scrambled to move their work online or fill different roles. Reopening brought its own challenges, including increased workloads and the stress of enforcing safety policies with occasionally hostile or combative patrons. The results of a survey conducted by the Alliance in March 2021 reflected the toll this has taken on people working in the museum sector, with respondents rating the pandemic’s effect on their mental health and well-being at an average of 6.6 on a scale of zero to ten (ten being the worst). Fifty-seven percent of respondents were worried about burnout, and, perhaps in consequence, fewer than half were confident they would be working in the sector in three years.

The Response

In Society

Pre-pandemic, America was making slow but measurable progress in improving attitudes towards and support for people experiencing mental illness. Many businesses are making voluntary improvements to policies, procedures, and benefits, for example, by offering mental health days or explicitly defining “sick leave” to include time taken to tend to mental health. Increasingly, employees are encouraged or required to use all their vacation time. And human resources staff have learned that it isn’t enough to simply offer mental health support through an employee assistance program; it’s critical to actively cultivate the use of these services by, for example, educating staff on the benefits, simplifying the enrollment process, and pro­viding assurance that personal information is kept private.

We are making progress at the federal level as well. The Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 and the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 required large-group employer insurance plans to cover mental health services at the same level as medical and surgical interventions. Still, many people fell through the holes of existing safety nets. When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed in 2010, more than forty-eight million people in the US were uninsured, and many individual and small-group plans did not cover mental health treatment at all. ACA has expanded coverage and access to mental health care and seems to be improving outcomes.

But ACA cannot address some fundamental barriers to mental health treatment, including the stigma attached to mental illness and lack of accessible treatment in some communities. Paradoxically, by making things worse, the COVID-19 pandemic may have sparked prog­ress on those fronts, in particular by accelerating the adoption of telemedicine by practitioners and the public. Between January 2020 and February 2021, mental health televisits increased by 6,500 percent. (That is not a typo.) In addition to connecting to a medical practitioner for a traditional visit over the internet, people in need of counseling can now choose from a burgeoning number of mental health apps to access therapy and cope with stress, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, or obses­sive-compulsive disorder. Early assessment suggests these digital interventions can be effective and reach people without access to traditional care.

The pandemic may provoke a profound cultural shift as well. The past two years have brought conversations about mental illness out into the open in daily conver­sation, the press, and social media, as people struggled with their own mental health or to support friends and family facing similar challenges. It is possible that this mass shared experience will have a long-term effect for the better, helping reduce the shame, ostracism, discrim­ination, and marginalization attached to mental illness. Our national challenge is to build on these advances, making permanent changes that support remote access to appropriate care, elevating the importance of mental health, and destigmatizing mental illness.

In Museums

A large body of research documents that engaging with art (through viewing, making, or museum visits) has tangi­ble psychological benefits, reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression as well as reducing social isolation and loneliness. Building on this work, any museum can find ways to explore and illuminate the experience of mental health in ways consonant with their missions.

Science museums often tackle the topic head-on, as the Museum of Science, Boston, and the Science Museum of Minnesota did in recent major exhibitions. Historic houses and sites, of which there are an estimated eigh­teen thousand in the US, also have a compelling oppor­tunity to address the topic, because many of the people challenges. (To name just a few from what would be a very long list: Abraham and Mary Lincoln, Nikola Tesla, Eugene O’Neill, and Winston Churchill). This provides an opportunity to surface and normalize the experience of mental illness, even though that conversation may not be the content visitors expect. Staff may need to navigate public expectations as they reframe how a site interprets the history and current impact of mental health.

Any museum can use the human element behind its topic—art, science, music, literature, natural history, or other—to address mental health in some part of its interpretation. Simply acknowledging the fact of mental illness as an important component in the lives of notable people can help to destigmatize the topic and recognize a range of conditions as part of the human experience.

Sometimes museums can also help with struggles that are not just individual, but traumas shared by a community. Many museums have stepped forward to take on this role in the wake of disasters, for example, by fielding teams for rapid response collecting to help the community remember and process what has happened. Some museums are specifically created to help communities memorialize, contextualize, and process the impact of tragic events. These museums often take a trauma-informed approach to their exhibit design and offer programming to support the healing of their communities.

While museums contribute unique strengths to the infrastructure of mental health, they rarely have staff who are experts in dealing with mental illness or in commu­nicating around a topic that can be very sensitive and upsetting. For this reason, museums that address mental health skillfully and powerfully often draw on the exper­tise of hospitals, university research departments, and social service organizations.

During the pandemic, museums had to look to the safety and wellbeing of their own staffs to create a stable base from which to help their communities. The same AAM research referenced above that explored the damage inflicted by the pandemic on people working in the muse­um sector also documented what museums were doing to care for their employees. Some of the actions most appreciated by staff included providing clear communica­tions about information and decisions, offering a flexible work schedule, and including staff in decision-making. These lessons can help museums lay the foundation for a healthy work culture in post-pandemic times as well.

During the COVID crisis, museums also looked beyond their walls to support the mental health of their communities in many creative and generous ways. Some created outdoor art installations to boost the spirits of people in nursing homes and hospitals. Others provided online art therapy programs or used their collections and connections to offer mindfulness and meditation experiences online or via podcasts. The success of these programs may ensure they continue to be offered even as the pandemic fades.

Museum Examples

Helping Communities Process Shared Trauma

After the Champlain Towers collapse in 2021, HistoryMiami staff gathered and preserved hundreds of letters, artworks, and personal items placed by friends and families of victims on an impromptu “Wall of Hope” near the site of the disaster. The Orange County Regional History Center (OCRHC) filled a similar role after the Pulse Nightclub mass murders in 2016, creating the One Orlando Collection from thousands of objects left at public memorials or donated to the museum. The Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum are both dedicated to the long-term work of helping their communities memorialize and process the impact of local tragedies.

Creating Networks of Collaboration

The National Museum of Mental Health project is a “museum without walls” that works with artists, cura­tors, mental health professionals, and people with lived experience of mental illness to create touring exhibits, as well as collaborating with community, local, and national not-for-profit, for-profit, governmental, and education­al entities interested in creating positive mental health outcomes.

Making Art Therapy Accessible Online

During COVID lockdowns in Ontario, the Art Gallery of Windsor partnered with the local branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association to offer online art therapy programs to support mental health and wellbeing. The National Museum of Qatar worked with art psychother­apists, psychiatrists, and physicians to create and pilot a telehealth art therapy program for children to counteract the effects of social distancing and isolation. The Tampa Museum of Art provides both virtual and in-person ses­sions for Connections, its free mental healthcare commu­nity art engagement program.

Partnering with Community Health Organizations

In 2015, the Tate Modern collaborated with a range of mental health organizations, including arts networks, art studios, and community service providers, to produce workshops and installations celebrating positive mental health to mark World Mental Health Day. In 2017, Utica Children’s Museum merged with the ICAN Family Resource Center, a nonprofit dedicated to providing “individualized and non-traditional services and care to the highest risk individuals and families with social, emotional, mental health and behavioral challenges.” ICAN is in the process of building a new facility that will house the museum together with family services, using trauma-informed approaches to design exhibits and programs to create a welcoming space for all children. Some of the staff at the newly reopened museum will have degrees in social work and will draw on ICAN’s clinicians and social workers for additional training.

Addressing Mental Illness Through the Lens of Mission

In 2017, the National Building Museum opened Architecture of an Asylum, an exhibition exploring the evolution of the theory and practice of caring for the mentally ill through an examination of the history of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC. The exhibit traced how reformers such as Dorothea Dix helped foster the development of a more humane and compassionate approach towards caring for people with mental illness. In 2020, Kew Palace opened George III: The Mind Behind the Myth, an exhibit that used historic and contemporary displays to challenge contemporary attitudes towards mental ill health. Members of the public contributed objects and recorded videos documenting their own per­sonal mental health stories. Working with the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), a suicide prevention charity, Kew staff provided items, including beer coasters and postcards, designed to support public conversation, and trained staff on how to talk about mental health and suicide in a museum setting.

Explore the Future

Signal of Change:

A “signal of change” is a recent news story, report, or event describing a local innovation or disruption that has the potential to grow in scope and scale. Use this signal to catalyze your thinking about how museums might support mental health in the future.

Brussels doctors to prescribe museum visits for Covid stress

The Guardian, September 2, 2021

Doctors in Brussels will be able to prescribe museum visits as part of a three-month trial designed to rebuild mental health amid the COVID pandemic. Patients being treated for stress at Brugmann hospital, one of the largest in the Belgian capital, will be offered free visits to five public museums in the city, covering subjects from fashion to sewage. The results of the pilot will be published next year, with the intention that the initiative can be rolled out further if successful in alleviating symptoms of burnout and other forms of psychiatric distress. The alderman responsible for culture in Brussels said she had been inspired by a scheme in Quebec, Canada, where doctors can prescribe up to fifty museum visits a year to patients. In the Brussels pilot, accompanied visits will be prescribed to individu­als and groups of in-patients at Brugmann hospital.

Implications:

Ask yourself, what if there was more of this in the future? What if it became the dominant paradigm? Write and discuss three potential implications of this signal:

1. For yourself and your family and friends
2. For your museum
3. For your community

Critical Questions for Museums

• What groups, on the museum’s staff and in its communities, are at high risk from stress, isolation, and other factors that can damage mental health?
• How can museums combat the stigma, prejudice, and discrimination attached to mental illness?
• How can museums foster mental health among their own staff and volunteers, create a healthy work culture, and support people in managing mental illness for themselves and their families?
• How can museums equip their staffs with the training, tools, and support they need to address the topic of mental health safely and effectively?
• How can museums play a meaningful role in the network of support and services that address mental health in their community?

A Framework for Action

Inward Action

To create a healthy work environment inside the museum, museums may want to:

• Create a work culture that does not stigmatize mental illness. This includes paying attention to the language used in the workplace, training people to recognize and avoid inappropriate or disrespectful terminology.
• Teach managers how to provide appropriate sup­port and assist the people they supervise in access­ing help.
• Have leadership set an example by being open and honest about any challenges they themselves face, and by creating a safe space for others to speak up about their needs.
• Use regularly scheduled surveys to gauge levels of stress among staff and detect early warning signs of burnout.
• Offer staff training around mental health, helping everyone to recognize signals of colleagues who may be in distress, offer appropriate non-judgmen­tal support, and help people to access assistance.
• Implement employment practices that foster stability and resilience. Review the security of employment, e.g., the use of short-term contracts or part-time work that does not include benefits, which can add significantly to employee stress and disproportionately impact front-line workers.

Outward Action

To foster mental health, support people experiencing mental illness, and combat stigma, museums may want to:

• Develop relationships with community resources and agencies, such as health and counseling cen­ters, hospitals, and academic research programs, to explore how the museum can learn from and contribute to their work.
• Familiarize themselves with the research on how arts engagement can foster mental health and assess how to integrate such engagement into their exhibits and programming.
• Provide training for staff and volunteers to support their engagement in the topic of mental health, including how to interface with the public around sensitive and potentially triggering issues and how to manage the personal impact of this work.
• Design safe spaces for the public to explore chal­lenging and potentially uncomfortable or disturb­ing subject matters. This might include warning visitors about content, providing them with choices to engage or not engage, and providing places designed to support reflection and processing of difficult emotions.
• Consider how the museum will continue to support communities and individuals who collaborate with your organization around mental health. Think about what any given project will produce—infor­mation, resources, relationships, etc.—that will continue to benefit these groups after an exhibit or program concludes.

Additional Resources

• The Recovery Room, created by Rachel Mackay, Manager of the History Royal Palaces properties within the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, shares resources related to work­ing with staff and the public around mental health. These include Our Stories, Our Visitors, Our Selves: a model for looking after front-facing teams when telling chal­lenging stories, 10 Tools for Supporting Front of House [Staff], and a video on mental health and front-of-house
• The Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance, a free membership organization based in the UK, provides information, training, and peer support. Its resources include toolkits, fact sheets, case studies, research, and evaluation.
• Contemporary Collecting: and ethical toolkit for muse­um practitioners (London Transport Museum, 2020). This toolkit explores some of the ethical judgments that contemporary collectors make and offers case stud­ies, reflection, guides, and further information. One of the chapters addresses the issues inherent in collecting around topics that might prompt or relate to a per­son’s experience with trauma or distress.

“Ageism is a prejudice against our own future selves and takes root in denial of the fact that we’re going to get old.”  —Ashton Applewhite, author and age-activist

By 2030, one in five Americans will be over the age of sixty-five, and in some states that figure will top one-quarter. By 2034, older adults will outnum­ber children in the US population. As the AARP has pointed out, in the past seventy years our primary focus, as a society, has been on meeting the needs of families with children. This focus has shaped every aspect of our lives, from the design of buildings, transportation systems, and neighborhoods to the policies behind zoning and human resources. The unintended result has been the creation of physical and social systems that isolate and marginalize peo­ple as they age. This separation is unhealthy for people of all ages. Younger people are deprived of valuable wisdom and expertise, as well as role models for their future selves. Isolating older people from society creates grave risks to their mental and physical health. Museums can play a vital role in creating “age-friendly” communities that support physical activity, social connection, and intellectual stimulation, as well as providing pathways for elders to con­tribute to their communities and to following generations.

The Challenge

A woman born today in the US can expect to live to be eighty-one years old, a man seventy-six, and those averages are rising with time. Though Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) have long expressed their intent to work until age sixty-eight, the COVID-19 pandemic has impelled a wave of early retirements, meaning many people face a decade or more of “post-work” life, while continuing to want opportunities for meaningful engage­ment and to give back to their communities. This stage of life is not without challenges. Even though the Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects people age forty or older, those who want to remain in or rejoin the workforce often face discrimination in hiring and on the job. Forty percent of people over the age of sixty-five have some kind of disability—whether that involves mobility, cognition, hearing, vision, or barriers to independent living. About 20 to 25 percent of older adults have mild cognitive impairment, and about 10 percent experience dementia (though that rate seems to be falling over time).

Regardless of underlying health or ability, everyone who lives to grow old in the US at some point joins the ranks of people subject to the pervasive, corrosive bias of ageism, a form of discrimination that itself contributes to depression, cognitive decline, ill health, and (perverse­ly) a shorter life span. And ageism combines with other “isms”—racism, sexism, homophobia, and class prejudic­es—to create a toxic brew of intersectional damage.

It is increasingly common for older Americans to face these challenges without a network of family or social support. In the US, 27 percent of adults over the age of sixty live alone (more than double the figure for adults age twenty-five to sixty), and social isolation has a nega­tive impact on health as severe as smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day. Older Americans are also much less like­ly than their counterparts elsewhere in the world to live in a household without young children, which contributes to generational isolation as well, denying children access to the care, mentoring, and role modeling that can be provided by older adults. The safety net woven by family relationships will fray even more in coming decades, as the US birthrate drops. In 2010, there were, on average, seven potential caregivers for every senior. The AARP expects this number to drop to four by 2030, and to fewer than three by 2050. Nearly 90 percent of Americans over the age of fifty want to “age in place.” However, the lack of family caregivers, and the absence of any nationally funded and organized substitute, will make it difficult for people to remain in their own homes rather than moving to assisted living facilities. In any case, by the end of this decade, 54 percent of seniors will not be able to afford either assist­ed care or independent living, precipitating crises in both housing and health.

Meanwhile, we’ve created communities and environments both online and in real life that seem almost intentionally designed to make it hard for elders to remain actively engaged with the world. Only 1 percent of housing stock in the US features universal design elements such as no-step entrances, single-floor layout, and space designed to accommodate wheelchairs. Some developers create “senior communities” for people over a given age, ranging from housing co-ops to entire suburbs. Though these environments may address challenges of physical accessibility and social isolation, they can become “age bubbles” that isolate residents from a richer spectrum of community assets. The internet can, theoretically, con­nect the housebound to the world, but it comes with its own set of challenges, as digital design often features illegible text, tiny icons, and other age-unfriendly features.

Museums have room for progress in becoming age-friendly as well. Though there is a widespread assumption that older individuals are among the most frequent visitors to museums, research shows the opposite to be true. In the US, fewer than a quarter of people age sixty or older visit a museum in any given year. (Older adults may seem to make up a larger share of the audience because those that do go to museums tend to be frequent visitors.) Many aspects of traditional museum design are age-hostile, including the lack of seating, sensory overload, and barriers to physical accessibility. Even museum programming can add to generational segrega­tion, if older people are funneled only towards offerings (like passive lectures) that museum staff believe they will want.

More than 60 percent of people over the age of fifty-five engage in some sort of volunteer activity, formal or infor­mal, and the opportunity to volunteer is one of the major benefits nonprofits provide to society. Copious research documents that volunteering helps individuals expand their connections, feel good about themselves, improve their physical well-being, combat social isolation, reduce stress, and learn new skills—benefits that are particu­larly helpful in supporting healthy aging. In museums, volunteers typically outnumber staff by a factor of six to one, performing a wide range of work including stocking the gift store, preparing research specimens, working as greeters, planning and running fundraising events, and giving tours. However, the benefits afforded by volun­teering are often not equitably shared with a museum’s community. Historically, the corps of museum volunteers have skewed towards older adults with the time, inclina­tion, and financial resources that enable them to volun­teer. As a result, their demographics typically mirror that of museum personnel (both staff and board)—which is often disproportionately white, well-educated, and rela­tively well-off. Volunteerism can exacerbate inequality if, as in many museums, it is only accessible to people who are already comparatively privileged.

The Response

In Society

There is growing consensus that the most robust solution to the isolation of aging is to bake better design into the landscape and infrastructure of towns and cities. In 2006, the World Health Organization introduced a framework for age-friendly cities that encompasses eight domains: health care, transportation, housing, social participation, outdoor space, respect and social inclusion, civic par­ticipation and employment, and communications and information. As of 2017, over five hundred cities around the world had signed on, pledging to make their com­munities better places to grow older, and AARP has worked with WHO to extend this practice to 207 commu­nities in the US. As is invariably true of inclusive design, creating age-friendly communities is good for every­one—increasing access to employment, arts and culture, critical services, community participation, and affordable housing. As AARP points out, “Age-friendly communities foster economic growth, and make for happier, healthier residents of all ages.”

In Museums

Museums play many roles in making communities age-friendly as places of social connection, employment, mental and physical engagement, and as influential forces in combatting ageist stereotypes. Since the early 2000s, museums have helped fuel the creative aging movement—using the power of arts engagement to foster healthy, active aging and improve the lives of older people. Research from the Seeding Vitality Arts initia­tive of Aroha Philanthropies documents that sustained, meaningful arts engagement supports healthy aging, increases the self-confidence and mental engagement of participants, and fosters social connections.

Museums also step in to meet the needs of the many people experiencing health-related challenges as they age. Programming specifically designed for people with dementia and their caregivers has been shown to reduce levels of depression and improve cognitive functioning and overall quality of life. Engaging with art through viewing, making, and movement can help people coping with Parkinson’s disease or other debilitating illnesses to maintain their mobility and social connections.

Museums are also an important component of age-friendly communities regardless of the specific programs they offer. Recent research shows living in a community with various cultural resources confers a five-year advantage in cognitive age, with museums and similar cultural organizations providing the biggest boost to cognitive health. (However, that benefit is skewed by race, with Black populations experiencing less protective benefit from museums, pointing to the need to improve equitable access to museum space.)

The museum sector is still searching for a good model to reconcile the tensions that sometimes arise between volunteers (often older individuals) and paid staff. Some of the approaches being tried include creating a long runway (even a decade or more) to implement structural changes in volunteer programs, and including volun­teers in the process of addressing DEAI and social justice goals. Others focus on creating an organizational culture, backed up by appropriate procedures, that foster a vol­unteer corps that is diverse with respect to age, race, and other elements of personal identity.

Museum Examples

Fostering Age-Friendly Design

Recently, the Design Museum and the Design Age Institute launched a project to establish a new infrastruc­ture for collaboration and co-creation around design and aging. Designing a World for Everyone will bring together researchers, designers, innovators, and policymakers to share the latest research and insights into how design can be used to transform public spaces, cities, and communi­ties to support the aging population. Associated program­ming includes The Wisdom Hour, a creative storytelling space celebrating positive stories of aging, facilitated by This Age Thing. Over the course of a year, the project will place local community groups at the heart of the deci­sion-making process, respond to the needs and concerns of underrepresented groups, and create social impact by removing and reducing barriers to participation.

Cultivating Social Connection

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix partnered with Arizona State University to create virtual programming for senior com­munities who could not visit the museum in person. The initiative produced two Senior Wellness video series, one for active seniors and one for people in memory care. Teams of music therapy students from ASU developed music therapy interventions that complement virtual tours of MIM’s galleries, with a focus on physical skills (drumming, dancing, and other movement), cognitive skills such as attention and memory, and psychosocial components related to self-expression through music.

Creating Intergenerational Connections

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson’s Stay Gold program supports the intergenerational LGBTQ+ community, connecting generations through creativi­ty and making and using contemporary art to explore relevance and meaning in the lives of the participants. In 2018, older adults from Stay Gold proposed creating an intergenerational version of the teen School of Drag per­formance. Local drag performers taught the workshops and a youth drag performer emceed the show. During the pandemic, museum staff adapted the Stay Gold programming to an online format, offering artmaking prompts inspired by LGBTQ+ artists to maintain the con­nection so badly needed during this time of heightened isolation. This work was supported by a Seeding Vitality Arts in Museums grant from Aroha Philanthropies.

Cultivating Creative Aging

In 2016, Aroha Philanthropies launched a major multi-year initiative, Seeding Vitality Arts, to foster creative aging programs in a variety of settings, including museums. In 2018, the American Alliance of Museums partnered with Aroha Philanthropies to support a museum-specific cohort through Seeding Vitality Arts in Museums (SVA), providing twenty organizations with training and resources to develop and implement high-quality, intensive arts learning opportunities for older adults. The resulting programs included an Expressive Movement workshop at the Anchorage Museum building on Indigenous knowledge and life­ways; “Viva la Vida” artmaking at the National Museum of Mexican Art; and traditional drumming and Mardi Gras beading at the Louisiana State Museum. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced museums to close their doors, leaving elders at even greater risk of isolation, the SVA museums reinvented their work to engage with participants over remote platforms. The Olana State Historic Site, for example, remastered its plans for a place-based eight-session playwriting workshop. Kicking off with a virtual tour of the historic house, participants spent more time on research using digital documents, and seven professional actors read the finished student scripts over Zoom.

Meeting the Needs of Older Audiences

In 2014, noting that only 3 percent of older adults in New York City visit senior centers, the Museum of Modern Art created the Prime Time Collective, a diverse group of adults ranging from sixty-one to ninety-four years old, to help identify and address financial, physical, informa­tional, and attitudinal barriers to participation in museum programs. In the past decade, the museum has part­nered with community organizations to offer specialized programming for LGBTQ+ older adults, individuals and caregivers coping with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s dis­ease, and for teens and older adults to come together (for example, the 2016 program Act Your Age). In collabora­tion with the Martha Stewart Center for Living, the muse­um launched a “social prescription” program, in which physicians and social workers can write a prescription for art programming at MoMA. For housebound seniors, the museum offers online programming in partnership with the Virtual Senior Center.

Supporting Older Adults with Dementia

Since 2010, the Frye Art Museum has partnered with the Alzheimer’s Association and the Seattle nonprofit Elderwise to develop and implement participatory arts experiences for people living with dementia and their care partners. In the ensuing decade, the museum has fostered a large community of practice by offering professional development to individuals engaged in similar work, and conducting research that adds to the growing body of literature documenting the contribution of arts engagements to healthy aging. One of the signa­ture programs of this effort is the annual Creative Aging Conference, an interdisciplinary exploration of topics related to art, creativity, and aging.

Explore This Future

Signal of Change:

A “signal of change” is a recent news story, report, or event describing a local innovation or disruption that has the potential to grow in scope and scale. Use this signal to spark your thinking about how museums might support age-friendly communities in the future.

Creating an Age-friendly City

In 2021, the Purposeful Aging Los Angeles Initiative (PALA) issued rec­ommendations to advance its goal of making the Los Angeles region “the most age-friendly in the world.” One of the recommendations is to make all tourist attractions and buildings in the Los Angeles region age-friendly. “As new building construction occurs (and buildings are updated over time), it is critical that they provide welcoming, functional environments for all genera­tions. This is especially important for stadiums, museums, studios, conven­tion centers, major public facilities, and other tourist attractions that draw a high-volume of visitors, including older adults. The County and City will partner with these institutions/facilities, as well as the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, USC School of Gerontology, and other partners to develop a ranking system for major regional tourist attractions. We anticipate generating awareness of, and attention around tourist facilities that have taken steps to become age-friendly.” (Emphasis added.)

Explore the implications of this signal:

Ask yourself, what if there was more of this in the future? What if it became the dominant paradigm? Write and discuss three potential implications of this signal:

1. For yourself, your family, or friends
2. For your museum
3. For the United States

Critical Questions for Museums

• What aspects of conventional museum design and operation pose barriers to access for older audiences?
• How can museums elevate the power, voice, and status of older individuals, helping to create a culture that honors, values, and empowers elders?
• How can museums promote the creation of age-friendly communities and integrate themselves into a seamless network of support?
• How can museums make volunteer opportunities accessible to a broad diversity of older individuals?
• How can museums address ageism in the steps they take to promote diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in their own work cultures?
• How can museums shift older adults from the group least likely to use museums to one of their biggest audiences?
• How might museums bolster their own sustainability by serving older adult audiences better?

A Framework for Action

To help create age-friendly communities, museums can:

• Inventory barriers to access or use. This might include physical barriers (including stairs, ramps, handrails, and restrooms), comfort (includ­ing seating, acoustics, lighting, and readability of signage), cultural or social barriers (including attitudes and behavior of staff and ageism reflected in marketing, exhibits, and programming), and transportation (including availability and location of parking and access to public transpor­tation). Ensure that digital design is age-friendly as well.
• Provide age-equitable opportunities for employment and volunteering. Consider training managers and human resources staff on how to avoid ageism in hiring and employment, establishing a working group of paid and volunteer staff to identify how to value and support older volunteers, including age and ageism in the muse­um’s DEAI plans and policies, and addressing age-related stereotypes and assumptions in DEAI training.
• Assess how older adults are repre­sented in your content, from exhibits to marketing, and work to ensure that elders are both seen and valued.
• Identify older adults in your com­munity who are “culture-bearers” and give them platform, power, and authority to transmit the knowledge, experience, skills, and stories that they care for.
• Design programs and services that actively foster intergenerational connections: In addition to creating rewarding relationships, dialogue between older adults and youth has been shown to be an effective tool to reduce ageist attitudes and behaviors.

Additional Resources

• Museums and Creative Aging: A Healthful Partnership (AAM, 2021). This report, authored by Marjorie Schwarzer, opens with an overview of aging and ageism in our country, docu­ments actions being taken to foster positive aging, profiles the work of museums providing creative aging programming, and shares lessons learned from the Seeding Vitality Arts in Museums initiative, fund­ed by Aroha Philanthropies, now known as E.A. Michelson Philanthropy.
• Age-Friendly Standards for Cultural Organizations (The Family Arts Campaign, 2017). These standards are designed to help cultural organizations provide a welcoming and pos­itive experience for everyone, regardless of their age, and to facilitate intergenerational interactions.
• Global report on ageism (World Health Organization, 2021). This report outlines a framework for action to reduce ageism for use by governments, the private sector, and civil society organi­zations, and includes a toolkit for the Global Campaign to Combat Ageism.
• The Old School Anti-Ageism Clearinghouse is an online compendium of free resourc­es to educate people about ageism and help dismantle it. It includes information about and links to blogs, books, articles, videos, speakers, and other tools (workshops, handouts, curricula, etc.) accessible to the general public.

“Given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed—it needs to be transformed.”

Twenty years into the new millennium, the US is still struggling to create a P-12 education system that provides each child with the support they need to become a healthy, well-balanced, self-sustaining adult. Copious research suggests that the system we inherited from the last century, with its focus on age-based cohorts and standardized curricula, is poorly suited to foster criti­cal thinking, problem-solving, synthesis, innovation, creativity, teamwork, and collaboration—skills widely seen as essential for thriving in the twenty-first century. The COVID-19 pandemic has added to these challenges by exposing the fragility of our educational infrastructure, widening existing educational disparities and demonstrating that alternate forms of learning can be better, more effective, and more accessible for some. Museums have been living the educational future for decades, providing the kind of self-directed, experien­tial, social, and distributed learning that is proving to be both effective and resilient. Building on these strengths, the museum sector can play a vital role in rebuilding and transforming P-12 education to be better, stronger, and more equitable for all of America’s children.

The Challenge

Like so many US systems, from finance to justice to government, the existing education system is structurally inequitable in its design. As currently consti­tuted, our public and private systems of education reinforce and perpetuate advantages based on race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, ability, and socioeconomic status. This structural inequity exists not only because of zip-code-based allocation of resources (which could theoretically be fixed by giv­ing more and better access to historically marginalized groups), but because the system is fundamentally designed to favor a specific, narrow range of abilities and learning styles. To paraphrase education critic Sir Ken Robinson, the whole system of public education has been created in the image of higher education, and treats primary and secondary school as a protracted university entrance exam. “The consequence,” he explains in a TED talk, is that “many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not [brilliant and talented], because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized.”

In the past decade, top-down educational reform has largely focused on creating a common set of standards and doubling down on standardized testing. These efforts have been, at best, unsuccessful, and may have actually made things worse for both students and teachers. The Common Core standards, introduced in 2010, have cost billions of dollars without resulting in any measurable improvement in results. Many critics feel that the empha­sis on testing has disempowered and demoralized teach­ers, helping fuel a chronic shortage of qualified, skilled educators, especially in low-income communities and hard-to-staff roles.

We already knew that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for many children, and the COVID-19 pandemic threw that into stark relief. While prolonged disruption set back student learning overall, the effect was especially severe for Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities. Low-income families were less likely to be able to provide the internet access, devices, and dedicated, quiet study space needed for successful online learning. As of spring 2021, nearly one-fifth of households with school-age children did not have consistent access to the internet for education, and this lack of access was highest for Latinx, Black, and mixed-race households, with predictable results. A study by the consulting firm McKinsey sug­gested that students of color lost three to five months of math learning over the 2019-2020 school year, compared to one to three months lost by white students. A metada­ta analysis by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that pandemic learning disruptions were also particularly severe for students learning English as a second language, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, and students who are caregivers for their families.

The pandemic was devastating for educators as well, placing them in the role of front-line emergency responders with limited training or support. Teachers found themselves working even longer hours, learning how to teach online, and in many cases juggling both in-person and online teaching simultaneously. While teacher turnover actually declined in 2020 (because, heroes), the pandemic took a heavy toll on morale, with one-third of teachers saying it has made them more likely to leave teaching or retire early. Almost twenty-five thou­sand people quit the public education sector in August 2021, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that the annual turnover rate for experienced educators and school principals will rise to 42 percent.

But the pandemic also surfaced important signals of potential positive change. While distance education was a disaster for some children who thrived in traditional schools, it proved to be a superior option for some kids disadvantaged by the established system. A number of students, including some with ADHD, autism, or other neurodivergent conditions, found it easier to concentrate when they were not around classmates. Teachers who work with the online learning platform Edutopia reported that some “shy kids, hyperactive kids, and highly creative kids” are doing better with remote learning than they did in physical classrooms. Others noted that some students who have been the victims of physical or verbal bullying at school found home to be a safer space for learning. (Some of these beneficial aspects of remote learning mirror strategies that promote health and wellbeing in the workplace as well, including being flexible about where, when, and how work gets done, and revisiting what constitutes a reasonable workload.)

How can we take what we learned from pandemic-era innovations and use it to improve education long-term? How can we use this disruption as an opportunity to build back better and stronger, transforming the systems we know to be damaging to so many young people?

The Response

In Society

Pre-pandemic, the US was already shifting away from the top-down, federally driven reform efforts charac­terized by No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Guided by the 2015 successor to NCLB, the Every Student Succeeds Act, states began promoting flexibility in setting goals, making improvements, and supporting students through a wide range of approaches. As the KnowledgeWorks Foundation observed in a 2018 report, “These shifts, some of which have been gaining ground for several years, are creating a more decentralized environment in which changemakers of every stripe have increasing ability to influence public education—and in more ways than before.” The disruptions created by COVID-19 demanded innovation and flexibility, and it is widely recognized that education will not simply reset to pre-pandemic norms. Having been essentially drop-kicked into the future, schools have begun to build the infrastructure they need to support distance learning and online instruction. These efforts were given a boost by funding from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 and the American Rescue Plan to improve broadband access and close the digital divide. The extended pandemic educational experiment bol­stered teachers’ confidence in trying out new ideas for how to teach, collaborate with their colleagues, communicate with fam­ilies, and use technology to engage with students. Now more than two-thirds of teachers surveyed in 2021 say they intend to incorporate tools they adopted during the pandemic into their ongoing teaching repertoire.

This extended, forced experiment in remote learning accelerat­ed some shifts in education policy that were already underway. In 2012, thirty-six states had already disconnected “seat time” (time spent in the classroom) from the awarding of education­al credit. States are waiving seat time in many different ways (including basing credits on mastery of material and allowing for individual seat-time waivers) and for students with many different needs (including those who have fallen behind, those who excel, those who don’t do well in traditional academ­ic environments, etc.) Asynchronous distance learning can be used to reinforce this trend, empowering students to spend as little or as much time as they need to master the material, and to be evaluated on outcomes rather than facetime.

The pandemic also accelerated parents’ search for edu­cational alternatives. Prior to 2020, the US had already seen a slow but steady growth in homeschooling and in the number of students attending charter schools. The COVID-19 pandemic supercharged this trend. Homeschooling is projected to increase by at least 10 percent, and charter school enrollment rose by over 7 percent. Non-charter public school enrollment dropped 3.3 percent, representing 1.5 million students. As school funding follows students, such shifts in enrollment will create a sizeable drain on the public education system.

In Museums

The seminal AAM report Building the Future of Education: Museums and the Learning Ecosystem (2014) chronicled the steady evolution of museums from “informal” educa­tional extras to critical players in mainstream education. In addition to supporting schools, teachers, and learn­ers with content, field trips, and after-school programs, museums are experimenting with ways to be the prima­ry education provider for some children. The past two decades have seen the creation of a growing number of museum schools of various forms, including schools that operate museums or use museums in their community as classrooms and learning locations, schools co-locating in museum space, and museums founding and operating schools. As we point out in the Building the Future report, museums are preadapted for the next era of education, as they are already expert in the kind of self-directed, experiential, distributed learning that fosters the twen­ty-first century skills of critical thinking, synthesis of information, innovation, creativity, teamwork, and collab­oration. They bring these strengths to museum-school partnerships of all types.

The pandemic gave museums the opportunity to demon­strate their educational expertise by stepping in to fill many of the gaps created by the fragility of tradition­al education systems. Over the past two years, many students lacked critical resources for successful online learning: quiet space, good internet connectivity at home. mentors to help with technology and assignments. Many museums responded by creating study halls and pro­viding learning mentors. When some schools needed more room to practice safe physical distancing, local museums, closed to the public, made their buildings and grounds available as classroom space for months on end. Museum educators turned their time and talent to creating virtual field trips, online classes, curricula, and lesson plans to support teachers and parents who were trying to provide a rich learning experience for children cut off from normal schooling. These efforts introduced many teachers to the wealth of digital resources provided by museums, and taught museums that they can serve educators and students across the country, not just in their geographic communities.

Like teachers, museums may make long-term changes based on what they learned during the pandemic. Many museums found that their digital offerings reached people who were unlikely to visit the museum even in normal times, because of time, distance, or other barriers to accessibility. (These anecdotal reports are bolstered by data from the Culture and Community in a Time of Crisis project, which found museums of all types reached significant numbers of non-museum-goers through dig­ital experiences.) Museums may also decide to continue some of the place-based learning innovations sparked by the pandemic. For example, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, which provided space for students engaged in virtual learning, has decided to launch a new museum charter school focusing on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). Classroom teach­ers have told the Pacific Science Center that they want virtual field trips implemented during the pandemic to stay, because it is an efficient use of class time, simplifies logistics, and can more easily be customized to teacher and student needs.

Museum Examples

Museums Supporting Pandemic Education

During the pandemic, some museums, closed to the public, have hosted schools needing more space. The Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac housed students from Treffert Way for the Exceptional Mind, a public charter school that “seeks to teach to children’s individual strengths and emphasizes experiential learning.” The Louisiana Children’s Museum in New Orleans gave exclusive access to its building and grounds to pre-K and kindergarten class­es from the Langston Hughes Academy, a FirstLine charter school whose students are 98 percent Black and 74 per­cent eligible for free lunch. Sixth graders from Woodstock Elementary in Vermont found themselves studying at Billings Farm and Museum, in close proximity to the museum’s exhibits and award-winning herd of Jersey cows.

Many schools went virtual, leaving students in need of quiet spaces with good internet connections to support successful virtual learning. Many museums responded by adapting some of their space as in-person learning labs. The Great Lakes Science Center hosted learning camps during the summer of 2020, with museum staff leading STEM-based activities as well as helping students com­plete online work assigned by their schools. The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History’s Little Scholars program allowed first- through fifth-graders to do their virtual classes from inside the exhibit halls. The museum provided laptops and Wi-Fi, and museum facilitators were on hand to answer children’s questions and help them get online. The Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami created the Pods Program to host kin­dergarten through fifth-grade students accessing virtual school, with museum educators providing homework assistance and technical support.

Museums Providing Formal, Credentialed Learning Experiences

Futures-oriented organizations such as KnowledgeWorks, Big Picture Learning, and Ashoka envision the future of education as being distributed across the community, with learning taking place in a variety of organizations that are empowered to grant formal credit to students. In 2013, Vermont launched the Flexible Pathways Initiative (Act 77), giving secondary school students the right to create personalized learning plans that include educa­tional experiences outside the formal school setting. Now some museums in that state, including Shelburne Farms and the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, are marketing programs as place-based learning that can integrate into personalized learning plans and meet proficiency-based graduation requirements. During the pandemic, The Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan worked with teachers and homeschool parents to award extra credits for free, independent field trips to the museum’s planetarium programs.

Four Kinds of Museum Schools

Schools Using Local Museums as Classrooms

Some examples include the New York City Museum School (a magnet school in Manhattan for grades nine through twelve), Normal Park Museum Magnet School (a magnet school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for kinder­garten through eighth grade), and The Museum School of Avondale Estates (a public charter school in Decatur, Georgia, for kindergarten through eighth grade). These schools build their curricula around “learning expe­ditions,” using their local museums as extensions of classroom learning, enabling students (either as a full grade level or a single class) to structure learning around in-depth interactions with exhibits and artifacts.

Schools Creating Museums

The John Early Museum Magnet Middle School (a magnet school in Nashville, Tennessee, for grades five through eight) and The Webb Schools (a private school in Claremont, California, for grades nine through twelve) have created full-fledged museums that engage students in the process of creating exhibits, curating collections, and conducting research. The Webb Schools’ Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

Schools Hosted on Museum Campuses

The Manchester Academic Charter School middle school is sited on the campus of the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum and makes extensive use of its Museum Lab. The Dr. Charles R. Drew Science Magnet Museum Site houses grades three through eight at the Buffalo Museum of Science. The Lincoln Nursery School is integrated into the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and the Wonder School preschool collabo­ration uses the Columbus Museum of Art as one of its campuses.

Museums Creating or Co-Creating a School

At the Grand Rapids Public Museum High School (GRPMHS), students work with staff of the Grand Rapids Public Museum to catalog and research collections and curate exhibits while using the museum exhibits for place-based learning. GRPMHS, which was one of ten schools internationally to receive the XQ Super School grant in 2016, is an ongoing collaboration between the Grand Rapids Public Museum, Grand Rapids Public Schools, Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University, Grand Valley State University, the City of Grand Rapids, Downtown Grand Rapids, Inc., XQ Super School, and the Parent Teacher Community Council.

The Henry Ford Academy is a public, tuition-free charter high school hosted by The Henry Ford. Founded in 1997 and developed in partnership with The Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Co., it serves five hundred students grades 9-12 split between The Henry Ford’s Museum of American Innovation and historic Greenfield Village.

For a map identifying museum schools across the US, visit the website of the National Association of Museum Schools.

Explore the Future

Signal of Change:

A “signal of change” is a recent news story, report, or event describing a local innova­tion or disruption that has the potential to grow in scope and scale. Use this signal to spark your thinking about how museums might engage with the education system in the future.

Are Microschools the Future of Online Learning?

WGBH, June 28, 2021

The coronavirus pandemic dramatically changed the way tens of millions of kinder­garten through twelfth-grade students “do school,” and for some families, it was the push they needed to find alternative educational models tailored to their students’ unique needs and interests. An Arizona-based company called Prenda is helping parents to set up “microschools” in their homes for small groups of students. During the pandemic, Prenda’s enrollment multiplied by four times, and the company now supports more than four hundred microschools. Starting this fall, the New Hampshire Department of Education will partner with Prenda to provide learning pods, in multi-age small-group settings, to help up to five hundred students who struggled with setbacks during the pandemic.

Explore the implications of this signal:

Ask yourself, what if there was more of this in the future? What if it became the domi­nant paradigm? Write and discuss three potential implications of this signal:

1. For yourself, your family, or friends
2. For your museum
3. For the United States

Critical Questions for Museums

• Working with traditional schools (public and private), how might museums help create better educational experiences for all students?
• How can museums provide alternative educational pathways for learners who aren’t well served by the current system, including homeschooled students?
• How can museums capitalize on their expertise in fostering twenty-first century skills like critical thinking, prob­lem-solving, synthesis, inno­vation, creativity, teamwork, and collaboration?
• How can museums ensure they are recognized, val­ued, and supported for the essential roles they play in education?

A Framework for Action

To embed themselves in the educational infrastructure of their communities, muse­ums may want to:

• Invest in their capacity to work with schools: for example, by dedicating one or more full-time staff positions to developing and sustaining museum-school partnerships.
• Develop resources that help educa­tors, parents, and students integrate museum assets into school curricula (with particular attention to research documenting what educators want from digital museum resources).
• Build learning networks that connect diverse educational nodes: museums, libraries, after-school programs, and schools. These learning organizations can work together to reinforce each other’s efforts, meet the needs of all learners, and provide formal credit for learning that occurs across the community.
• Double down on digital. Museums can help bridge the digital divide in educa­tion by providing internet access and teaching digital skills as well as enrich­ing education with their own digital learning materials and experiences.
• Create permanent “learning labs” to serve diverse learners, including public school, charter school, or homeschool students needing internet access, equipment, quiet, and mentoring to support successful online learning, as well as home-based learners looking for classroom space.
• Consider joining the growing number of “museum schools,” whether by offering a home for an independent school in museum space, helping a school create its own student-run museum, or starting their own schools run by museum staff.

Additional Resources

• Shaping the Future of American Public Education: What’s Next for Changemakers?, Katie King and Katherine Prince (KnowledgeWorks Foundation, 2018). This paper presents four scenarios of educational changemaking to explore how and why education changemakers might influence American public education over the next decade.
• Building the Future of Education: Museums and the Learning Ecosystem (American Alliance of Museums, 2014). This white paper summarizes the content and ideas coming out of a 2013 assembly of over four dozen educational policy experts, practitioners, funders, education innovators, reformers, student activists, and others shaping the conversation about US education, convened by the American Alliance of Museums and hosted by the National Building Museum in Washington, DC.