What is included

When you purchase the Imprint Series you will get access to a video recording of influential leaders from the following movements engaged in spirited conversations with the next generation of museum leaders, exploring the implications of these movements for museum practice and the work that lies ahead as we collectively chart a vision for the future. You’ll also have access to the publications and discussion guides associated with these discussions.

Museums For a New Century: 1984, Today, and Tomorrow

In 1984, AAM published Museums for a New Century, which presented the recommendations of a high-level Commission charged with studying and clarifying “the role of museums in American society, their obligations to preserve and interpret our cultural and natural heritage, and their responsibilities to an ever-broadening audience.”  In this session, Marsha L. Semmel, Ellen Hirzy, Robert MacDonald, Melanie A. Adams engage in reflection and spirited conversation with Sam Moore. Learn about the report’s recommendations and how they imprinted museum trends, needs, and social responsibilities. How far have we come since 1984? Where have we stalled? What might a new ‘museums for the next century’ report envision to advance our progress and relevancy?  

Excellence and Equity: The Public Dimension of Museums

Excellence and Equity (E&E), published in 1992, was a bold and profound manifesto, offering a concise roadmap for asserting the educational dimension of museums and a framework to help institutions evaluate their engagement with diverse audiences. Practitioners at different stages of their careers reflect on this initiative’s influence and impact including Marian Godfrey, Bonnie Pitman, Elaine Gurian, and Nico Okoro. As we confront continuing challenges and concerns, what underlying principles of E&E endure? Looking ahead, what must we do now to ensure a future for museums that continues to reflect the institutional aspirations and vision embodied in this initiative? 

Museums and Community

In 2001, as a direct outgrowth of Excellence and Equity, AAM convened a series of civic dialogues about how museums could build social capital and community wellbeing more intentionally. Over 700 community stakeholders participated in six locations around the US. The 2002 report and toolkit Mastering Civic Engagement: A Challenge to Museums captured the field’s struggles to be more relevant and responsive to community needs and posed questions about the challenges museums needed to address to move forward. In this session, Marjorie Schwarzer, in conversation with Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Richard West, and Mariah Berlanga-Shevchuk reflect on the founding impulse for the initiative, its accomplishments, and aspirations for the future.

The Social Work of Museums

The Social Work of Museums, written by Lois H. Silverman and published in 2010, examines museums through the lens of the social work profession and launched a worldwide movement that emphasizes an expanding role for museums as institutions of social service. In this dynamic conversation, Ben Garcia, Lois Silverman, Patrick Lloyd, and Lisa Harper Chang talk about what factors gave rise to this vision, how do museums today best engage human needs, strengthen relationships, empower people in diverse circumstances, and contribute to health and well-being, how do the legacies and realities of unjust and oppressive museum practices inform current approaches, and what can museums learn from innovative social work in libraries and other community settings? 

Facing Change: Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion

In recent years, the US museum field has made progress in overcoming many diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) challenges. Yet, the field has much more work to do as we emerge from the shadows of our complicated shared past on issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and abilities. In this session, Grace Stewart leads Cecile Shellman, Dr. Tonya Mattews, and Stephanie Johnson-Cunningham through a guided discussion about AAM’s DEAI strategy and how previous AAM initiatives laid the groundwork for this important work. How we can make significant strides in a new era of openness, inclusion, equity, and social justice?

So, this year we thought we’d dig a little deeper into the fascinating objects for purchase at museums and go straight to the most knowledgeable source: museum people themselves. We polled our audience of Field Notes, Facebook, and LinkedIn readers and asked them to tell us their favorite things they’ve found in museum stores, whether their own or another’s. Here were some of the highlights:

For Those Whose Hearts Are at Sea

Marlinspike with Monkey’s Fist Knot from the Maine Maritime Museum Store

$29.95

“The coolest item in the Maine Maritime Museum Store is our collection of hand-forged marlinspikes, made on site by volunteers in our active blacksmith forge. Both a tangible reminder of a visit to our historic Percy & Small Shipyard, and a practical tool for today’s sailors!”

For Those Who Need Some Inspiration

“What You Do Matters” Key Tag from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Deanie and Jay Stein Museum Shop

$6.00

“My favorite item that I ever purchased at a museum gift shop was a keychain at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The keychain read, “What you do matters.” Whenever I have a rough day, I look at the keychain and it helps me get through the day.”

For Those Who Love Animals and Ecology

ISM Logo Sea Otter Plush from the Independence Seaport Museum Store

$13.95

“One of my favorite items in the Independence Seaport Museum store relates to our award-winning exhibit called River Alive!, where guests get to learn not only how vital the Delaware River Watershed is and how many people depend on it but also what type of animals call this waterway home. To connect with the exhibit, our store sells plush animals like those who live around the Delaware River, plus they are wearing a branded Independence Seaport Museum shirt (it’s super cute).”

For Those Who Take Afternoon Tea

TMA Exclusive Specialty Teas from the Toledo Museum of Art Store

$17.95

“[I love when a] gift shop has a specialty blended tea.”

For Those With a (Discerning) Sweet Tooth

Cultured Bees MAD Honey – 2 Oz Jar from the Store at the Museum of Arts and Design

$12.50

Recommended by Cedar Imboden Simmers

For Those Who Respect a Craft

Tea Towel Squares from the International Quilt Museum Store

$16.95

Recommended by Sheila Green

For Those Who Prefer Armchair Travel

Museum of Jurassic Technology View-Master Set from the Museum of Jurassic Technology Gift Shop

$65

“My favorite museum gift shop item has to be the View Master set from the Museum of Jurassic Technology. It includes images (and info) of many of their main exhibits, so you can experience their unique collection from anywhere, just by clicking through the slides. It’s a nostalgic and imaginative way to bring a bit of the museum’s particular brand of magic home ”

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“I think it’s important to my well-being to continually be learning and growing in my mind, and imagination helps that. If I don’t have imagination or growth, I think I would be bored and depressed with this life.”

Visiting a museum is an act of imagination. We use our imaginations to imagine what the past was like, how animals live, the experiences of others, and to explore different places.

We also use our imaginations to imagine things in new ways, whether through art or science.

Museum-goers emphatically agree that museums spark our imaginations: 97%!

Each individual, however, uses their imagination in different ways and attributes different outcomes to those imaginative experiences.

In the 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, as well as a broader population sample of U.S. Adults, we wanted to learn more about the role and impact of imaginative learning in museums, and asked respondents a series of questions on the topic. In this Data Story, we’ll share these overall results, and explore more deeply in follow-up infographics.

We first asked respondents: How would you like to use your imagination while learning in museums?

Our answer choices presented an expansive approach to imagination, and respondents were supportive: the average respondent selected four of the answer choices, and only 3% of frequent museum-goers admitted “I don’t really want to use my imagination when visiting museums.”

Immersion in beauty

• Museum-goers: 75%
• U.S. adults: 58%

Mental “time travel” to the PAST

• Museum-goers: 70%
• U.S. adults: 68%

Personal stories that build empathy and connection

• Museum-goers: 61%
• U.S. adults: 54%

Innovative thinking through STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)

• Museum-goers: 47%
• U.S. adults: 55%

Mental “time travel” to the FUTURE

• Museum-goers: 45%
• U.S. adults: 52%

Problem-solving exercises

• Museum-goers: 39%
• U.S. adults: 47%

Brainstorming or idea-building activities

• Museum-goers: 38%
• U.S. adults: 47%

I don’t really want to use my imagination when visiting museums

• Museum-goers: 3%
• U.S. adults: 5%

Additionally, parents and guardians were the most enthusiastic about these answer choices, especially the more STEM-oriented answers around innovative thinking, problem-solving, and idea-building.

To follow-up, respondents were asked what outcomes of imaginative learning experiences in museums they wanted visitors to experience. They said:

Recharge us mentally, as we experience awe, wonder, or beauty

• Museum-goers: 76%
• U.S. adults: 56%

Inspire curiosity to wonder and learn on our own

• Museum-goers: 75%
• U.S. adults: 59%

Broaden our minds to imagine life experiences different than our own

• Museum-goers: 74%
• U.S. adults: 59%

Develop greater understanding of the experiences of people from the past through historical imagination

• Museum-goers: 72%
• U.S. adults: 60%

Promote critical thinking by imagining different possibilities and using evidence to understand what is most likely or the best choice

• Museum-goers: 59%
• U.S. adults: 53%

Build excitement about the new ideas and creativity the experiences spark

• Museum-goers: 59%
• U.S. adults: 52%

Help us imagine a better future, giving us something positive to work towards

• Museum-goers: 49%
• U.S. adults: 48%

None of these

• Museum-goers: 1%
• U.S. adults: 4%

Again, respondents were supportive, with the average respondent choosing nearly ve of the answer choices (and only 1% of frequent museum-goers saying “none of these”).

To help us understand how enthusiastic respondents were about imaginative learning in museums, we sorted respondents into three categories:

• RESISTANT: these respondents answered negatively to one or both of the questions.
• AMBIVALENT: these respondents like the idea of imaginative learning, but are not necessarily seeking it out. They typically chose one to four answer choices to each question.
• ENTHUSIASTIC: these respondents loved the idea of imaginative learning, and chose five or more answer choices to both questions; in fact, 85% of this segment chose ALL of the answer choices in one or both of the questions.

Resistant: Imagination

• Museum-goers: 3%
• U.S. adults: 5%

Ambivalent: Imagination

• Museum-goers: 52%
• U.S. adults: 58%

Enthusiastic: Imagination

• Museum-goers: 45%
• U.S. adults: 37%

Clearly, imagination is popular and generally welcome among our visitors. Nearly half of frequent museum-goers fall in the “enthusiastic” segment. The more ambivalent respondents are also happy to go along with imaginative learning, responding positively (just less enthusiastically). We’ll explore these three segments more in our next Data Story.

Overall, however, this suggests that we can be very proactive talking about imagination in museums. The more we talk about and support imagination, helping visitors to feel good about their own imaginative learning, the more effective we can be in their learning experiences and outcomes.

“Imagination is very important to me…it keeps me interested in the many layers of life’s complexity and quality, opportunities. It inspires me beyond ‘what is’ to ‘what could be.’ It is soul food for my right brain.”

Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Stories are created by Wilkening Consulting on behalf of the American Alliance of Museums. Sources include:
• 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, n = 90,178; 202 museums participating
• 2024 Broader Population Sampling, n = 2,154
• 2017 – 2023 Annual Surveys of Museum-Goers

U.S. demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

*Data Stories share research about both frequent museum-goers (typically visit multiple museums each year) and the broader population (including casual, sporadic, and non-visitors to museums). See the Purpose and Methodology (Update) Data Story from September 5, 2024 for more information on methodology.

More Data Stories can be found at wilkeningconsulting.com/data-stories.

Arlington, VA – The American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the only organization representing the entire scope of the museum community, today announced 1 first time accreditation and 25 reaccreditation awards made at the October 2024 meeting of the Accreditation Commission. Of the nation’s estimated 33,000 museums, 1112 are currently accredited.

Through a rigorous process of self-assessment and review by their peers, these museums have demonstrated they meet standards and best practices, and are educational entities that are appropriate stewards of the collections and resources they hold in the public trust.

Recognized as the field’s gold standard for museum excellence for nearly 55 years, AAM accreditation signifies a museum’s quality and credibility to the entire museum community, to governments and outside agencies, and to the museum-going public. The Accreditation Program ensures the integrity and accessibility of museum collections, reinforces the educational and public service roles of museums, and promotes good governance practices and ethical behavior.

First time Accreditation

• Avenir Museum of Design & Merchandising, Fort Collins, CO

Reaccreditation

• Adler Planetarium, Chicago, IL
• Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
• Brookgreen Gardens, Pawleys Island, SC
• Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL
• Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
• De Saisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA
• Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY
• Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA
• Grout Museum District, Waterloo, IA
• Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, Honolulu, HI
• Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, MA
• Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, KY
• Mary M. Torggler Fine Arts Center, Newport News, VA
• Museo de Historia, Antropología y Arte, San Juan, PR
• National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK
• North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, Bismarck, ND
• Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City, OK
• Paine Art Center & Gardens, Oshkosh, WI
• Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, TX
• Rochester Museum & Science Center, Rochester, NY
• Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, TX
• The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, FL
• USC Museums (Fisher Museum, Pacific Asia Museum), Pasadena, CA
• Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, Decorah, IA
• Wisconsin Veterans Museum, Madison, WI

To earn accreditation, a museum submits a self-study questionnaire and key operational documents for evaluation, then undergoes a site visit by a two-person team of peer reviewers which produces a report for the Accreditation Commission. The Commission uses these materials and its collective expertise to determine whether to grant accreditation.

The Accreditation Commission meets 3 times a year (February, June, and October) and can make one of the following decisions:

• Grant accreditation (usually for 10 years)
• Table its decision for 1 year so specific issues can be addressed
• Deny accreditation due to failure to meet multiple Core Standards
• Defer a decision to gather additional information

A museum’s accredited status is not changed during a period in which a decision is tabled or deferred.

Read more about the Alliance’s Accreditation Program.

About the American Alliance of Museums

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) is the only organization representing the entire museum field, from art and history museums to science centers and zoos. Since 1906, we have been championing museums through advocacy and providing museum professionals with the resources, knowledge, inspiration, and connections they need to move the field forward.

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Press Contact:

Natanya Khashan

media@aam-us.org

Frontline, or front-of-house, staff play a critical role in museums, beyond ensuring guests/visitors have a positive and memorable experience. They are often the first, and sometimes the only, staff a visitor will encounter during their visit. Frontline museum staff face many challenges, including low pay, underappreciation, lack of opportunity, burnout, and stress. Supporting them is essential to ensuring they can successfully perform their duties and represent the museum in a welcoming way.

This tipsheet provides topline guidance on how to best support and train frontline staff.

Providing Ongoing Support:

Developing an engaged frontline staff begins with understanding their individual needs and motivations. Why work in a museum? What areas do they want to grow into? Leaders need to listen, learn, analyze, and implement tools and resources this cadre of staff can use to better serve the visitor.

Provide personalized and ongoing support to frontline staff to help improve their performance and address any challenges or concerns they may have.

For example:

• Treat them as experts in their field. Frontline staff often have useful skills such as verbal and nonverbal communication, problem-solving, technical knowledge, and emotional intelligence. Include them in planning for new exhibitions and events to help prepare for instances with visitors that frontline staff deal with every day.
• If possible, offer flexible scheduling to meet them where they are.
• Offer coverage during a shift so that they can take breaks as needed.
• Have ongoing health and wellness programs available, including mental health support, fitness programs, or access to counseling services, and always maintain open lines of communication.

Recognition and Appreciation:

Implement a formal recognition program to acknowledge outstanding performance. Recognize frontline staff for the work they do to ensure visitors feel welcome and appreciate them for their dedication to their roles in the museum.

For example:

• Introduce an employee of the month award program.
• Ensure public recognition during staff meetings.
• Host an annual appreciation lunch or dinner scheduled during a time when all frontline staff can attend.

Resources and Tools:

• Keep frontline staff up-to-date and in communication with other departments so they can answer visitor questions on upcoming exhibitions, permanent collections, and other museum policies so they aren’t caught off-guard.
• Guarantee that they have access to all of the equipment and technology they need to perform their tasks, such as handheld devices for ticketing or communication tools for emergencies (for example, two-way radios).

Team Building and Collaboration:

Model open communication by being transparent and approachable and foster a culture where employees feel safe to express their ideas and concerns without fear of retribution. This can be achieved through regular team meetings and by scheduling regular one-on-one and team check-ins to discuss progress, challenges, and ideas.

• Foster a sense of teamwork and collaboration by organizing and including frontline staff in team-building activities, group outings, or staff appreciation events.
• Encourage open communication and collaboration among staff members to ease problem-solving and information sharing.

Providing Feedback Mechanisms:

Create feedback mechanisms to let frontline staff give input and suggestions for improving training programs, policies, and procedures.

You can inspire staff to share their ideas:

• During staff meetings
• Through regular anonymous surveys
• Utilizing physical suggestion boxes
• Conduct regular check-ins and performance reviews to discuss their progress, provide constructive feedback, and find areas for improvement.

Developing a Comprehensive Training Program:

Offering hands-on training opportunities covering all areas of the frontline staff’s duties helps them become familiar with their responsibilities and gain practical experience. Keep an updated written handbook with instructions and expectations for reference in their workspaces, if possible. Make sure that frontline staff get the opportunity to visit all the museum’s exhibits and attractions so that they are better able to advise and encourage visitors.

Some areas to cover include:

• Customer service
• Safety procedures
• Other museum policies around diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion
• And other relevant information about the museum

Customer Service Skills:

Train staff on handling and anticipating visitor needs including knowing the location of the restrooms, café, shop, seating, or other areas to rest and reflect. To this end, printed maps and handouts with relevant materials could be a helpful reference for staff to use when explaining or to give to visitors.

Other customer service skills include:

• Effective communication
• Problem-solving
• Being welcoming and inclusive to all
• Conflict resolution, including de-escalation techniques

Safety and Emergency Procedures:

Create safety protocols, including if they must conduct bag checks at entrances to prevent prohibited items from entering the museum.

• Develop evacuation plans, first aid response, and managing emergency situations such as fires or medical emergencies.
• Schedule regular drills and training sessions to reinforce safety procedures and ensure staff are prepared to respond effectively in case of an emergency.

Cultural Competency and Inclusivity:

Provide training on cultural competency and inclusivity to help frontline staff interact respectfully and sensitively with visitors from diverse backgrounds. This includes awareness of cultural differences and the skills needed to interact effectively with diverse groups of people.

• Train staff to recognize and address unconscious biases
• Create an inclusive and welcoming environment for all visitors. There are any number of in-person workshops, online training, and blended learning programs that can serve to teach cultural competency skills.

Dealing with hostility:

Being welcoming does not mean letting others take advantage of your hospitality. To address the issue of some visitors who may not have the same sensibilities or inclusive leanings, leadership needs to be proactive about giving frontline staff the training, support, and resources needed to handle situations where individuals are resistant to what the museum is sharing, and their values are not confirmed by staff.

For example:

• The customer is not always right, but frontline staff need to deal with the situation firmly and confidently without fear of reprisal from leadership.

Continuous Professional Development:

Offer opportunities for workshops, seminars, or online courses, to help frontline staff enhance their skills and stay updated on industry trends and best practices. Make sure they have coverage to take advantage of professional development resources.

• Encourage staff to pursue certifications or other training programs related to their roles in the museum and offer compensation (increased pay, covering costs of certifications) if possible.
• Ask for their help with special projects, from making membership renewal phone calls to redesigning museum wayfinding signage, etc. They can be a real asset due to their knowledge of the visitor experience.

By using these strategies, museums can support their frontline staff in getting the training and support they need. This support can have many outcomes that are beneficial to the employee, the museum, and the visitor, such as increased knowledge, motivation, and employee retention. This way, they are ready to offer top-notch customer service and ensure visitors have a wonderful experience.

Resources

• At the Barnes Foundation, Internal Internships Support Frontline Staff
• Front Line Staff Take Center Stage in Career Advancement
• On the Ground: How Visitor Experience Teams Are Teaching Front-Line Staff to Be DEAI Advocates
• Sharing Human Centered Workplace Practices

And yet, despite their growing presence, Latinos are often poorly understood and represented in American society. National institutions have struggled with how to define this large and heterogeneous group, even including what to call them. Meanwhile, misguided and outdated stereotypes have clouded their image, obscuring their category-defying multinational, multiracial, and multicultural origins in favor of a simplistic story.

Thankfully, a new Smithsonian museum is coming to Washington, DC, to paint a fuller portrait: the National Museum of the American Latino. As the museum works toward a physical home on or near the National Mall, it recently made a major step forward, unveiling its inaugural strategic plan, logo and branding identity, and charter membership drive. To learn what the process of planning the museum has revealed about engaging and representing Latinos in museums, I spoke with Founding Director Jorge Zamanillo (who also happens to be the Chair of the AAM Board). Here’s what he had to say:

Joseph O’Neill: The new vision statement emphasizes that “the lived experience of American Latinos transcends geographic and cultural stereotypes.” What are some of those stereotypes you’re hoping to combat through the museum?

Jorge Zamanillo: The museum has to serve as a trusted cultural ambassador to promote the diverse and authentic lived experiences of US Latinos. It acts to break the stereotype that all Latinos are one race when, in fact, American Latinos represent many races and have roots in more than thirty countries and territories, each with its unique history, culture, and traditions. The museum also includes the rich contributions of Afro-Latinos and Indigenous communities—often underreported or underrecognized—through programs and events. The power of American Latino communities is centered on their diversity, which is the same foundation of America’s narrative of strength, resilience, endurance, and hope.

We aim to show that US Latino culture is more than an annual observance of popular foods and dances. Through outreach, fundraising, and a brand awareness campaign, the museum aims to elevate Latino history and culture. We also aim to create spaces that help bridge divides and dispel misperceptions by offering resources to inform the public about the invaluable contributions of American Latinos, foster a deeper understanding of American history and culture, and connect communities nationwide.

 

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JO: The process for developing the plan involved surveys, SWOT analyses, interviews with key stakeholders, and more. Did any themes emerge from this that surprised you?

JZ: We weren’t surprised to learn that there is a need and desire for a museum like this to represent US Latino communities and their stories. On the contrary, the findings validated the need for a national museum that captures the diversity of the Latino experience in the US and serves as a cultural anchor. Developing this strategic plan helped crystalize our core values for the museum—collective caring, authenticity, accessibility, innovation, and collaboration. In addition to being an iconic destination in the national capital where Latino communities belong, we want to be a home where stories unfold, cultures connect, and, most importantly, everyone is welcome.

JO: The plan mentions a priority to “elevate Latino philanthropy” in the museum’s fundraising efforts. Why do you think it’s important to tap into Latino philanthropy specifically, and what have you learned about doing this successfully?

JZ: The museum must tap into Latino philanthropy to recognize, honor, and empower the Latino community as key contributors to preserving their heritage and culture. By elevating Latino philanthropy, the museum acknowledges the legacy of giving within the Latino community, which has often taken the form of mutual aid, communal support, and grassroots efforts. This builds trust and ensures that Latinos actively secure the museum’s future.

Elevating Latino philanthropy also aligns with the museum’s mission to be a community-centered institution. Latinos will see themselves reflected in every aspect of the museum, from its exhibits to its funding sources. When the community feels invested in the museum’s mission, it creates a shared sense of ownership, pride, and responsibility in preserving and telling their stories.

Furthermore, by focusing on Latino philanthropy, the museum can build a sustainable and diverse donor base that strengthens its impact and resilience. As Latino communities continue to grow and thrive, tapping into their philanthropic potential helps fund the museum’s initiatives while fostering a deeper connection with the very communities it serves.

We find that donors and funders with ties to Latino communities are deeply invested in preserving and representing Latino culture and history in the United States. This is especially true among business leaders and executives who are in positions to make decisions about corporate and foundation support. We also expect similar enthusiasm and support among individual donors through our Charter Membership Program, which serves as a grassroots approach to connecting with and empowering the broader Latino community.

JO: Can you tell us more about the Charter Membership Program and how you think a grassroots funding model like this can be successful?

JZ: Our Charter Membership Program is designed to engage individuals nationwide in supporting and connecting with the museum. This program invites supporters to become founding members, which helps raise essential funds and creates a sense of belonging and shared investment in our mission. Members become part of a national movement to elevate and preserve Latino history and culture by joining.

Grassroots funding is at the heart of this effort. Broad-based community support can create a powerful sense of ownership and pride in the museum. Grassroots funding succeeds when individuals feel that their contributions, regardless of amount, are meaningful and essential to the museum’s mission. This approach also aligns with Latino cultural values of mutual support and collective action. By offering various giving levels and benefits, we aim to make participation accessible to all and show everyone’s support counts.

What makes grassroots funding effective is that it builds momentum through personal connections, stories, and shared values. Through the Charter Membership Program, we’re creating opportunities for people to not just donate but to join a larger community united by a shared vision. We’re leveraging digital outreach, events, and local partnerships to reach individuals nationwide and create a national network of supporters. This approach allows us to amplify the impact of every contribution and sustain long-term engagement.

Ultimately, this program helps us achieve two critical goals: raising the necessary funds to support our initiatives and building a nationwide community of museum ambassadors who are committed to preserving and celebrating Latino culture.

JO: How do the new logo and branding you’re debuting reflect the vision and goals of the museum?

JZ: The new logo symbolizes the museum’s commitment to bringing clarity and insight into the diverse lives, stories, histories, and cultures of US Latinos. The logo’s vibrant colors and dynamic design elements visually represent the diversity and resilience of the US Latino community. The brandmark illustrates how the National Museum of the American Latino will bring US Latino culture and history into focus and become an iconic destination in the nation’s capital. The logo reflects our core vision and goals, centered around preserving the rich history, culture, and contributions of Latinos in the US.

 

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To celebrate the new brand launch, museum supporters are invited to share stories or reasons why the museum matters on social media as part of the #MiMuseo (My Museum) campaign. Personal connections to the museum can showcase how it belongs to everyone and reflect the histories, stories, achievements, and cultural heritage of Latinos throughout the American experience.

JO: Is there any advice you could share for other museums trying to represent and engage Latinos more fully?

JZ: We are learning that authentic storytelling that reflects the diversity and richness of the US Latino diaspora and the American experience is crucial for effectively representing and engaging US Latinos. Our team is visiting communities nationwide to seek input and build relationships with Latino communities through partnerships and collaborative programming. We want to center Latino voices and stories in our museum planning and work.

Since 2023, the museum has hosted ninety-six listening sessions in thirty cities and nineteen rural communities across twenty-two states. These conversations included local leaders, educators, artists, museum workers, and others who support Latino communities or work with Latino content.

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Across the country, millions of children get up and head to their home classrooms. These homeschooled children are primarily learning from their parents and guardians in a rather different environment than children in formal education (like public, private, and charter schools). And they are also a niche audience that many museums specifically serve.

In the 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers we asked parents and guardians of school-age children what types of schools their children attended. Overall, here’s what we found:

• Public school: 72%
• Charter school: 7%
• Private school: 19%
• Homeschool: 11%

Parents and guardians could choose more than one answer, since siblings could be enrolled in different types of educational environments.

The latest data from the National Center of Education Statistics(2) (2021) says 6.8% of households with children homeschool at least one child. Note, however, they are counting all households with children, including those with very young children and infants. This suggests that if the households with children 4 and younger were removed from the calculation, the percentage of homeschooling households with school-age children would likely be in the 8 – 10% range…close to what we found.

In total, 1,178 museum-going homeschooling households responded to our survey…a truly robust sample of this specific audience.(1) Let’s explore what they shared with us.

Characteristics of Homeschooling Families

For the most part, homeschooling families are a lot like families whose children participate in formal education. In fact, a quarter of homeschooling families also have children in public, private, or charter schools, indicating that for some homeschool households, homeschooling decisions are made on a child-by-child basis.

Families choose to homeschool for a variety of reasons, and they hold diverse values.

That said, overall there were significant differences that set homeschool families apart:

• Education. Homeschooling parents and guardians generally have lower levels of educational attainment: they were a third less likely to have a graduate degree, and 70% more likely to have not completed college.
• Political Values. These households were 2.6x more likely to identify as conservative, and only half as likely to identify as liberal, than other parents and guardians. Overall, 35% identified as conservative and 25% liberal.
• Religious Values. While we didn’t explicitly ask about religion, homeschool respondents were nearly twice as likely to cite their religion or faith as giving them hope, suggesting stronger religious ties than other respondents.

There were no meaningful differences by race and ethnicity.

We don’t ask about income or employment status in our research, but data from the National Center of Education Statistics indicates that households that homeschool tend to have lower average income, likely because they are more likely to have a stay-at-home parent or guardian.

Thus, it wasn’t a big surprise to see that homeschool families were much more likely to say their membership makes visiting museums cost-effective, and to cite the cost of museum visits as a barrier to more frequent visitation.

“Cost: at the time it was affordable enough for us to attend.”

“Creates an affordable outing for me to take my kids to.”

Museum Visitation and Motivations

To our surprise, homeschool families don’t visit museums any more frequently than families participating in formal education. Visitation rates are about the same.

This doesn’t preclude some super-users of museums among homeschooling households…just that they are outliers (the same is true for families with kids in formal education).

Generally, their motivations are similar as well in that virtually all parents and guardians are focused on their children’s experiences. That said, homeschool families are even more likely to have laser-like focus on learning experiences for their children (80% versus 66% for other families). But they are somewhat less likely to visit for family time.

Homeschooling families tend to be a bit more critical of museums overall, being somewhat more demanding of additional content and less likely to say museums are doing a “great job” than other families.

“We are interested in genealogy and local history so we are hoping to learn how our membership can assist with that as well as local history for a homeschooling high school elective.”

“[Museums should] offer classes specifically for homeschool children.”

Community Orientation

Homeschool families were generally less enthusiastic about response choices that had a community theme. That is, they were significantly less likely to say:

• Museums contribute to the quality of life in their community
• That visiting museums makes them feel more a part of the community
• That being part of a community of people working to make things better gave them hope

This greater sense of separation from community may be deliberate for at least some homeschooling families. According to the National Center of Education Statistics, the top reason for homeschooling children is concerns about the school environment and other students.

Inclusion

Perhaps the most significant difference between homeschool families and families with children enrolled in formal education is their attitude towards inclusive content. Homeschooling parents and guardians are about 2.5x more likely to fall in the “anti-inclusive” segment than other parents and guardians, as seen below:

Additionally, homeschool parents and guardians were far less likely to identify as an ally of the LGBTQ+ community, only 20% versus 34% of other parents and guardians.

Some of the comments from less inclusive homeschooling parents and guardians were strongly worded. While we have chosen not to share the more offensive comments, the following two quotes provide a glimpse of the sentiments of a significant portion of homeschool parents and guardians.

“Being able to visit AND take my kids without being afraid of extreme wokeness or being told how racist, etc. Things are out of control. Can we please go back to educating society
without this craziness?”

“Any attempt to be inclusive this day and age there are people left out. I don’t want to visit a museum to have varying agendas pushed down my throat.”

Learning Learning Learning

Consistently, homeschool families hammered home how important the learning experience was for their children. In particular, they were significantly more likely to want museums to take a fact-based approach and minimize interpretation and what they articulated as “opinion.” Instead, they wanted to use those facts to draw their own conclusions.

“We used to love the museum–stick to presenting facts, not controversial social or political opinions.”

That said, they were not necessarily seeking a dry recitation of facts. Strong majorities of homeschool families wanted:

• To develop greater understanding of the experiences of people from the past through historical imagination
• To inspire curiosity to wonder and learn on their own
• To see things that inspire awe or wonder

“To see and experience beauty, so we can be expanded in our views of what is possible and have our wonder awakened.”

“Hands-on experiences, this is especially true for kids or tactile learners. Focus on truth and beauty, these things inspire wonder and awe which can lead to a lifetime of curiosity.”

So what have we learned about homeschooling families? Some of the results surprised us, including that homeschool families, on average, don’t visit museums any more frequently than other families. Other results fit into our expectations, including their even greater focus on child learning as well as their “just the facts” approach to content.

There are two areas of concern, however: their lower levels of community connection and their generally less inclusive attitudes. This suggests that, when planning homeschool events, museum educators need to consider more thoughtfully how they are sharing content that reflects different life experiences and worldviews, as at least some homeschooled children may not have been exposed to those ideas yet. Audiences and Inclusion: A Primer for Cultivating More Inclusive Attitudes Among the Public provides guidance for doing just this work.(3)

Skip over related stories to continue reading article

That said, keep in mind that parents and guardians have many reasons they choose to homeschool, and we need to be careful to not make assumptions. While the majority of homeschool families may fall on the anti-inclusive side of the spectrum, a third fall on the inclusive side. Some parents and guardians choose to homeschool because schools are not inclusive enough, or perhaps because their children are gender diverse or transgender and they want to provide a more supportive environment. And others homeschool because their children are medically fragile.

Bottom line, millions of families are choosing to homeschool, making reaching this audience, and these children, important for many museums. Additionally, museums can do a great deal to help these children learn more about their communities and the world they live in.

Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Stories are created by Wilkening Consulting on behalf of the American Alliance of Museums. Sources include:

• 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, n = 90,178; 202 museums participating
• 2024 Broader Population Sampling, n = 2,154
• 2017 – 2023 Annual Surveys of Museum-Goers

*Data Stories share research about both frequent museum-goers (typically visit multiple museums each year) and the broader population (including casual, sporadic, and non-visitors to museums).

1. We did not ask this question of parents and guardians in our broader population sample of U.S. adults, only of frequent museum-going families.
2. See the National Center for Education Statistics “Homeschooled Children and Reasons for Homeschooling” for more information on homeschooling families.
3. You can download a copy at the AAM or Wilkening Consulting websites.

More Data Stories can be found at wilkeningconsulting.com/data-stories.

Following the Annual Meeting’s theme of “Thriving Museums, Healthy Communities,” the sessions explore ways museums can promote individual, organizational, community, and societal well-being. Here’s what you’ll find:

Impact Investing: Putting Your Museum’s Money Where Your Values Are

Across the United States, museums hold an estimated $58B in endowments, which are a critical source of annual funding and support for special projects. These endowments are managed carefully for financial return, but do our financial investments align with our visions and missions? While endowments that fuel many museums and non-profits often operate independently from the museum’s values, impact investing recognizes that this money itself can help promote social and environmental good while the returns benefit museums. In this session, a diverse panel of nationally recognized investment experts and museum staff will define impact investing and shed light on what it takes to make this type of commitment and where to turn for resources.

Presenters:

• Judy Gradwohl, President and CEO, San Diego Natural History Museum
• Laura Callanan, Founding Partner, Upstart Co-Lab
• Lillie Moreno, Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis, John G. Shedd Aquarium
• Noelle Laing, Chief Investment Officer, Builders Initiative, Builders Vision
• Peter L. Bain, Board President, The Walters Art Museum

Museums and Community Archiving: A Collaborative Approach

In this session, attendees will be empowered and inspired to work more closely with community collecting initiatives in their vicinity and beyond. Learn from staff from the Maryland Center for History and Culture’s H. Furlong Baldwin Library, who are exploring how shared stewardship and flexible agreements in community archiving initiatives across the country provide community groups ongoing ownership, voice, and active participation in the archiving of their words, stories, and images. Panelists will present recent findings from this work and share recommendations for meaningful engagement and collaboration with communities through an equity-based approach to collecting.

Presenter:

• Martina Kado, Vice President of Research and France-Merrick Director of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library, Maryland Center for History and Culture

Beyond Financial Sustainability: Nourishing a Healthy Financial Ecosystem

Financial sustainability has long and rightfully been among the primary strategic goals of museums and their staff and boards–but what if the drive for financial sustainability could also be preventing individual, organizational, or community healing, trapping us in ways that exhaust our resources without achieving intended impacts? What if we were to broaden our definition of financial health beyond our own museum’s budgets, embracing our finances as a connective tissue that drives social change across sectors and communities rather than scarce resources to be “balanced”? In this session, members of a museum’s strategic planning team who, together with staff and Board, recently grappled with these exact questions will provide inspiring insights into what good lies in reframing financial sustainability.

Presenters:

• Mirella Rangel, Consultant, Colibri Collaborative LLC
• Nisha Gulati, Associate Director of Digital Strategy, Oakland Museum of California
• Kimberly Ondreck Carim, Chief Financial Officer, Oakland Museum of California
• Hilda Schmelling, Development Events Manager, Oakland Museum of California

Rematriation of the In‘zhúje‘waxóbe/Sacred Red Rock

The session will tell the story of the “rematriation” of the Sacred Red Rock and the positive effect this effort has had on its stakeholders and surrounding communities.

Presenters:

• James Pepper Henry, Director/CEO, First Americans Museum
• Sydney Brooke Pursel, Curator for Public Practice, University of Kansas Spencer Museum of Art
• Diane Lochner, Vice President, PGAV Destinations
• Thomas C. Owen, Vice President, PGAV Destinations

Creating Access, Inclusion, and Belonging through Language

Panelists in this session share how they incorporate Spanish language into visitor and staff experiences. Featuring four case studies from a diverse set of institutions, this session explores the presenters’ motivations and approaches for incorporating Spanish into their work, successful strategies, and challenges they have faced. While the focus of this session will be Spanish, the lessons shared for creating access, inclusion, and belonging are applicable across languages and can shed light on how museums and cultural institutions can effectively communicate with diverse audiences, fostering a more inclusive and accessible environment.

Presenters:

• Eleanor Hill, Senior Evaluation Researcher, Denver Museum of Nature and Science
• Melissa Brito-Alvarez, Manager of Access Programs and Resources, Dallas Museum of Art
• Kerry Butcher, Interpretation Associate, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
• Sean Trujillo, Programs and Interpretation Manager, Museo de las Americas
• Julietta Da Silva, Community and Engagement Manager, Museo de las Americas

F&B/Retail and Rentals that Consider Mission, Community, and DEAI

This well-rounded panel of museum leaders present an engaging presentation regarding food, beverage, event rentals, and retail within their museums. Representing a mix types of institutions, these museum leaders and a leading industry F&B and retail consultant will outline solutions and tactics to address your most common challenges in approaching earned income from ancillary sources through a broadened lens.

Presenters:

• Tracy Lawler, President, JGL Consultants
• Catherine Surratt, Chief Operating and Business Officer, Speed Art Museum
• April Farrell, Chief Advancement Officer, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
• Jillian Jones, Deputy Director, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
• Valarie McDuffie, Chief Financial Officer, Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Natalie Boten, Chief of Staff, Milwaukee Art Museum

Destigmatize Addiction Disorder: Fostering Partnerships for Systemic Change

Through a shared purpose to destigmatize addiction disorder and make social change, in the summer of 2023, a museum, an artist educator, and three organizations serving the recovery community collaborated to impact over 700 individuals. Using this partnership as a case study, this session explores the reciprocal benefits and best practices for supporting road-tested, community-based projects when establishing relationships with new museum audiences.

Presenters:

• Xoe Fiss, Director of Youth & Family Programs, Milwaukee Art Museum
• Patty Bode, Associate Professor & Coordinator of Art Education, Southern Connecticut State University

Healthy Museums, Thriving Careers: Mastering Project Management Essentials

Whether you come from a large institution with a project management office (PMO) or you are an individual contributor who plays a role in shepherding projects of all sizes, there is a wide range of project management methods and tools that can be applied in museum contexts, which can have a transformative impact on the health and well-being of your museum and its mission, business, and employees. In this workshop, learn from a panel of professionals from diverse roles and backgrounds who will share essential project management knowledge that can enhance your professional growth and the organizational health of your museum.

Presenters:

• Kalie Sacco, Director of Member Strategy, Association of Science and Technology Centers
• Barbara Punt, President and Chief Project Manager, Punt Consulting Group
• John D. Shaw, Co-founder, Principal, Museum EXP
• Uma Nair, Management & Strategy Consultant, The Strategic Museum
• Liz McDermott; Head, Digital Media & Content Strategy; Getty Research Institute
• Dean Briere, Interim CEO, Arizona Science Center

Neuroarts 101: How the Arts and Aesthetic Experiences Advance Health and Wellbeing

This workshop provides an overview of neuroarts: the study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the body, brain, and behavior and how this knowledge is translated into specific practices that advance health and wellbeing. This experiential and immersive workshop will include lectures, group discussions, and creative activities.

Presenters:

• Susan Magsamen, Executive Director, International Arts + Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• Karen Alexander, Director of Outreach and Education, International Arts + Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• Keely Mason, Senior Research and Education Associate, International Arts + Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• Alyssa Tiedemann, Senior Research Project Coordinator, International Arts + Mind Lab Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Algorithms & Artifacts: Deciphering AI’s Role in Museums

As museum professionals, understanding the basics of AI and its implications to our industry is crucial. If the museum community can approach AI with a balanced perspective, harnessing its potential while being mindful of its implications, ethical concerns, and informational biases, we have the opportunity to revolutionize how we work and foster innovation. This presentation provides an overview of AI and explores the various opportunities, challenges, and serious concerns that we must face together.

Presenters:

• Jack Ludden, Digital Experience and Innovation Strategist, Balboa Park Online Collaborative
• Nik Honeysett, Chief Executive Officer Balboa Park Online Collaborative
• Uma Nair, Management & Strategy Consultant, The Strategic Museum
• Jonathan Munar, Arts Team, Bloomberg Philanthropies
• Jessica Herczeg Konecny; Lead Technical Analyst, Digital Asset Management; The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Not the F Word You Know: Embracing Failure to Move Forward

In the museum field, we work tirelessly to create safe environments where our visitors can explore, build skills, discover, and learn – but how are we creating safety in our workplace for our staff to push themselves and embrace failure as a positive part of the process that helps us to learn about ourselves as individuals and as team members? This session brings the power of hands-on maker learning to build skills and capacity for work processes that foster a culture of belonging and a “failing forward” approach.

Presenters:

• Jacqueline Eyl, Chief Program Officer, KID Museum
• Annalise Phillips, Managing Director of Programs and Learning Innovation, KID Museum
• Cat Scharon, Sr. Manager of Research and Evaluation, KID Museum
• Adam Maltese, Professor of Science Education, Indiana University

Reducing Carbon Emissions in a Complex Environment

In this session, learn about the Heritage Museums and Gardens’ Strategic Sustainability Plan, which outlines the institution’s strategies and tactics as they aim to become carbon neutral by 2040, along with several related initiatives geared toward enhancing the visitor experience through accessibility improvements and new environmental and sustainable systems.

Presenters:

• Anne Scott-Putney, President and CEO, Heritage Museums and Gardens
• Judith Holt; Board Member, Sustainability Expert; Heritage Museums and Gardens
• Kate Scurlock, Sr. Associate, GWWO Architects

Shields Up! Safety, Security, and Inclusion for LGBTQ+ Programming

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and access–these core values are central to museum standards of excellence yet are not always easy to uphold in an increasingly politicized climate that is often hostile to LGBTQIA+ communities. How can museums continue to safely offer queer-centric exhibitions and events? Join Drag Story Hour leadership and the AAM Task Force for Transgender Inclusion in a workshop exploring safety and security practices around LGBTQIA+ programming. This workshop will empower museum professionals to serve in their roles as cultural stewards and defenders of pluralist ideals with confidence!

Presenters:

• Tony Pankuch, Education and Outreach Coordinator, Cummings Center for the History of Psychology
• Samantha Evelyn Eisenberg, Director of Development, JQ International
• Jonathan Hamilt, Executive Director, Drag Story Hour
• Regan Lopez-deVictoria, Program Coordinator & Grant Writer, Drag Story Hour

Strategy, So what? Using the Strategist’s Toolkit to Help Museums Thrive

Strategic planning gets a bad rap. Hours of meetings. Hundreds of post-its. And at the end, all you get is a fancy document that collects dust on a shelf. So why do the words “strategy” and “strategic” seem to appear everywhere, justifying new priorities, now processes, and even new job titles? Join four senior strategy practitioners as they unpack what it really means to be strategic in a museum context, and how necessary it is to build healthier, more sustainable, and more resilient institutions for all.

Presenters:

• Andrea Kalivas Fulton, Deputy Director and Chief Strategy Officer, Denver Art Museum
• Andrew Cone, Chief Strategy Officer, Whitney Museum of American Art
• Erin Prendergast; Chief, Strategic Initiatives; Art Gallery of Ontario
• Hilary Branch, H E Branch Advisors

60 Ideas in 60 Minutes: Small Museums are Thriving!

In this fast-paced and dynamic session, four small museum professionals showcase how small museums–which face unique challenges but are also hubs of innovation, creativity, and community engagement–are thriving in today’s ever-changing landscape. Watch for an exhilarating exchange of 60 actionable ideas in just 60 minutes, all centered on the theme of small and mid-size museums thriving within their communities. Viewers will leave with a treasure trove of ideas to implement in their own institutions, showcasing the resilience and creativity that small museums bring to the cultural landscape.

Presenters:

• Ann Bennett, Executive Director, Laurel Historical Society
• Allison Schell, Director of Public Programs, Marshall Steam Museum and the Friends of Auburn Heights
• Susan Goganian, Director, Historic Beverly
• Kenny Libben, Curator, Cleo Redd Fisher Museum

Leveraging Permanent Collection Objects for Collaboration and Change

Throughout the museum field, institutions have been grappling with how to address problematic objects in their collection, taking various approaches from removing the works from view, deaccessioning them, or leaving them in place as is while they grappled with how to best address them. In 2021, the Chazen decided to take a path uncharted, entering into a partnership with the artist Stanford Biggers and MASK Consortium to undertake the re:mancipation project–an exhibition that sought to recontextualize an overtly racist sculpture in a way that felt authentic to the Chazen’s mission as a teaching museum, but also honest and inclusive. In this session, take a deep dive into the re:mancipation exhibition planning process to learn how the Chazen approached a project fraught with risk and uncertainty and which has influenced organizational change at the museum.

Presenters:

• Amy Gilman, Director, Chazen Museum of Art
• Mark Hines, MASK Consortium
• Kate Wanberg, Exhibition and Collections Project Manager, Chazen Museum of Art
• Katherine Alcauskas, Chief Curator, Chazen Museum of Art

Confronting Colonialism: Intersections of Scientific and Cultural Knowledge

Natural history museums play a unique and urgent role in helping document and understand the world’s plants and animals during the current biodiversity and climate crises. This work is taking place at a time when museums are reckoning with their past; challenging–and being challenged on–their authority to do this work; and aspiring to consider and apply indigenous knowledge in their collecting, research, and interpretive practices. This recorded session explores this topic through two case studies from different sides of the Pacific Ocean and in different cultural contexts.

Presenters:

• Hae Su Oh, Su Oh Consulting
• Amy Gusick; Curator, Anthropology/NAGPRA Officer; Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
• Miguel Ordeñana; Co-Senior Manager, Community Science; Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
• Migoto Eria, Head of Matauranga Maori, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
• Philip Edgar, Head of Natural History, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
• Gabrielle Crowe, Vice Chair & Secretary of Environmental Sciences, Gabrielino-Shoshone Tribal Council of Southern California

Curating Trauma and Violence: Preparing and Caring for Communities and Staff

In this session, museum professionals from various institutions–a museum focused on the Holocaust, a museum telling stories related to terrorist attacks, and a university conservation lab experienced in working with objects where damage is part of their value–discuss the challenges and opportunities that arise when working with populations affected by trauma and violence. Panelists will impart helpful tools, questions, and prompts that attendees can apply within their organizations and personal practice.

Presenters:

• Stephanie Arel, Professor
• Alexandra Drakakis, Chief Acquisitions Curator, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Ian Kerrigan; Senior Vice President, Exhibitions; 9/11 Memorial & Museum
• Lisa Conte, Visiting Associate Professor of Conservation, New York University–The Institute for Fine Art

Research Insights from AAM’s Museum Board Leadership Survey

What is the state of museum governance today? Hear the results of AAM’s Museum Board Leadership survey, including critical benchmarking data on governance practices, board responsibilities and performance, board culture, diversity, and more. Drawing from the insights of museum board members and directors across the country, this session will share where museum governance is flourishing and where there’s room to grow, and as well as share actionable takeaways for how museums can help their board, and their museum, thrive for years to come.

Presenters:

• Cory Garfin, Senior Research Scientist, Co-Director, Slover Linett at NORC
• Linda C. Harrison, Director and CEO, The Newark Museum of Art
• Jacqueline Jordan, Senior Vice President and Regional Director, Foundation and Institutional Advisors, Northern Trust Company
• Carys Kunze, Research & Data Specialist, American Alliance of Museums

Money Matters: Creating a Path to Financial Sustainability

As museums compete against a growing range of leisure and educational options, they must reevaluate their approach to pricing to demonstrate value while developing more holistic revenue strategies. In this lively and thought-provoking recorded session, panelists will explore how cultural organizations are leveraging pricing strategies to maximize revenue, prioritize accessibility, engage new audiences, and grow membership. Viewers will take away inspiring ideas and concrete strategies they can apply at their own institution to create more purposeful and sustainable earned revenue strategies.

Speakers:

• Rosie Siemer, Founder + CEO, FIVESEED
• Rehn West; Director of Development & Marketing; Nauticus, Maritime Discovery Center
• Mary Bradley; Director of Membership, Visitor and Volunteer Services; Denver Botanic Gardens
• Spencer Jansen, Deputy Director and Director of Membership and Guest Services, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts

Disrupting the Traditional Narrative: Including Oral Histories in Museums

Museums have been guilty of discounting oral histories as “non-academic” or “inappropriate” methods of historical documentation–a trend that contributes to the erasure of Latinx and BIPOC stories and culture. Through a series of case studies from institutions doing exciting and effective work with oral history, this recorded session explores how to engage community members in oral history projects, advocate for the importance of this work in museums, and share research on how the inclusion and prioritization of oral histories in museums can impact the relationships between the museum and its community and staff members of color.

• Asami Robledo-Allen Yamamoto, Project Manager, Latinos in Heritage Conservation
• Sehila Mota Casper, Executive Director, Latinos in Heritage Conservation

Fostering Resilience in Children through Virtual Mindfulness

In the face of an epidemic of anxiety, depression, and physical disease, many museums have been exploring mindfulness practices to support the health of their communities. This recorded session addresses how museums might develop mindfulness programs that address the developmental needs of youth, a currently underserved population in mindfulness-based museum programming. The goal is to prepare museum educators to confidently incorporate mindful movement into object-based learning programs for youth at their museums.

Presenters:

• Jennifer Reifsteck, School and Teacher Programs Manager, National Museum of Asian Art
• Lisa Danahy, Founder and Director, Create Calm Inc

Toward a More Human Museum: Trust and Well-Being for Staff and Visitors

In the current political climate, the work museums are doing to become more human and empathic may be misunderstood both internally and externally, and the latest data by a leading museum research consulting firm already indicates a lowering of public trust in museums. In this recorded session, panelists and attendees will explore the relationship between public trust and the changes the museum field is making, using examples from various types of museums to understand how we can better formulate policies and communicate while building trust among staff, visitors, and non-visitors.

Presenters:

• Gail Lord, President & Co-founder, Lord Cultural Resources
• Susie Wilkening, Principal, Wilkening Consulting
• Lisa Biagas, Chief Human Resources Officer & Title IX Coordinator, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
• John Hampton, Executive Director & CEO, Mackenzie Art Gallery
• Christy Coleman, Executive Director, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation

Log in or become a member today to access all sessions

Jump to:

• About Museums Advocacy Day
• Registration
• Accessibility at Museums Advocacy Day
• Location, Hotel, and Travel
• Congressional Meetings

About Museums Advocacy Day

Who should attend?

Museum professionals, independent professionals, and advocates, including museum studies and related students, who work for and with the museum field, are encouraged to attend, at any stage of your career and in any role at your museum. Museum board members and trustees are also highly encouraged to participate.

See AAM’s Trustee Resource Center to learn more about engaging your board in advocacy.

What can I expect leading up to Museums Advocacy Day 2025, and how can I prepare?

At any time, you can access our breadth of Advocacy and Advocate from Anywhere resources to learn about your legislators, deepen your own advocacy skills, and engage in year-round advocacy for museums.

In the weeks leading up to Museums Advocacy Day 2025, registered attendees will receive materials to help them prepare and learn about their legislators, the legislative process, issues affecting museums, and advocacy tips and best practices.

What can I expect during Museums Advocacy Day, how does the overall event go, and what’s included?

Registration for Museums Advocacy Day includes access to all Museums Advocacy Day programming and events. Museums Advocacy Day 2025 takes place in Arlington, VA (see location information) Monday, Feb. 24, and includes a day of advocacy and policy sessions and opportunities for participants to network and prepare for Tuesday Congressional meetings. Tuesday, Feb. 25 will take place in Washington, DC with advocates on Capitol Hill for Congressional meetings.

More information about programming, events, and registration desk hours will be updated on this page and in emails to registered attendees prior to Museums Advocacy Day.

How can I receive email updates about Museums Advocacy Day?

1. Ensure you are subscribed to AAM emails by filling out this form (it will notify you if you are already subscribed).
2. If you haven’t already done so, add communications@aam-us.org to your Safe Senders list.
3. Sign up for updates about Museums Advocacy Day!

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Registration

When will registration be open?

Registration for Museums Advocacy Day 2025 is open! Register now through January 17, 2025.

How are registration rates determined for Museums Advocacy Day?

The registration structure for Museums Advocacy Day has been designed to minimize barriers to participation while ensuring the event continues to be sustainable. While we estimate participation in Museums Advocacy Day to cost at least $300 per participant, the registration rates below are designed to be as affordable as possible for participants. Among these costs are the development and production of advocate materials, contractor services for meeting scheduling and event registration, and rising costs for event spaces as well as food and beverage. We are grateful to the individuals and our partners whose financial support helps keep registration as affordable as possible and provides advocates access to the high-quality training and resources they need to effectively make the case for museums and have successful Congressional meetings.

I’m not seeing the member rate but think I am a member. What should I do?

To view your individual membership status and your organization’s membership status in your AAM Profile, log in. If your membership is not active, become a member or renew today!

Once your membership is verified, return to register for Museums Advocacy Day 2025 and use the email address associated with your membership.

If you need additional assistance regarding your membership contact our membership team by email at membership@aam-us.org.

I registered but am no longer able to attend.

Below is the cancellations and substitutions policy for Museums Advocacy Day 2025:

All cancellation requests must be made via e-mail museumsadvocacyday@aam-us.org. The Alliance is not responsible for cancellation or transfer requests that are incomplete or are not received. Cancellation requests received on or before January 17, 2025, will receive a refund minus a $25.00 administration fee. The $25.00 administration fee covers the cost of processing cancellations. Refund requests received on or after January 18, 2025, are not guaranteed.

If you become unable to participate in Museums Advocacy Day 2025, please notify AAM as soon as possible, especially so we are aware of impacts to Congressional meetings being scheduled by AAM. Substitutions may be accepted as is feasible. Registrants who are no longer able to attend Museums Advocacy Day may request a substitution by submitting their request in writing email museumsadvocacyday@aam-us.org.

I have a question about registration options, a technical issue, or need more information.

Contact our team at museumsadvocacyday@aam-us.org. 

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Accessibility at Museums Advocacy Day

The American Alliance of Museums is committed to making attendance at Museums Advocacy Day accessible for all. View AAM’s Diversity and Inclusion Policy.

How can I share my accessibility and accommodations needs?

If you require any of the following for Museums Advocacy Day:

• Special Assistance – an aide or personal assistant to help you navigate
• Sign Language Interpreters
• Accessible Housing
• or if you have Accessible Transportation concerns

Please include your accessibility need(s) during your registration, when prompted in the form. Please also contact AAM staff at museumsadvocacyday@aam-us.org with information about your accessibility and accommodations need(s).

If you have additional Accessibility questions, email museumsadvocacyday@aam-us.org.

Location & Travel

Where will the Museums Advocacy Day 2025 programming take place?

Please note a change in hotel/headquarters location for 2025. The Museums Advocacy Day headquarters hotel for February 24-25, 2025, where Monday programming takes place, will be:

Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel
900 South Orme Street, Arlington VA, 22204

Pentagon City is an vibrant neighborhood across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. Near the Pentagon City Metro stop are many retail and dining options.

This hotel has the transportation options below for access to the Metro station and Capitol Hill.

Are rooms available in the Museums Advocacy Day room block at the hotel?

You can book your room by Friday, January 31, 2025 in the AAM hotel block with the group rate at the Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel. Learn how to make your room reservation.

Is parking available at the hotel?

Onsite parking is $32.00 daily. 

What travel options are available in the metro area?  

In the DC Metro area and for the Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel in Arlington, the following transportation options are available:

Hotel Shuttle

• Complimentary round trip airport shuttle to DCA/Ronald Regan National Airport
• Complimentary shuttle to Pentagon City Metro

WMATA – Metro/Bus

• The hotel is located in the vicinity of the Pentagon City Metro, on the Metro’s Blue and Yellow lines.
• WMATA’s website has information on bus routes, train stations, schedules, fares, and SmarTrip cards.

Taxi/ride-share

• It is an estimated six-minute ride from DCA/Ronald Regan National Airport to the hotel.
• Dependent upon traffic conditions and time of day, it is an estimated 15-30 minute ride from the hotel to Capitol Hill.

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Congressional Meetings

How are Congressional meetings scheduled?

After registering for Museums Advocacy Day, AAM will arrange your Congressional meetings on Capitol Hill for you based on the information you provide during registration, including grouping you with any fellow advocates from your state or congressional district.

Access to your Congressional meetings schedule will be emailed to you prior to Museums Advocacy Day 2025, including fellow advocates in your meetings. In some cases an advocate may be making visits in more than one state, in some states or congressional districts there may be delegations of one.

Scheduling is a fluid process, and updates will be ongoing until the time of Museums Advocacy Day. Once you’ve accessed your meeting schedule, it will always be available to you via electronic format as any updates are made.

How do Congressional meetings go, and what can I expect?

• One or more congressional staff may join your meetings. Meetings may range in length from 10-30 minutes, and could take place in individual offices, conference rooms, common office spaces, or even hallways.
• Meetings should generally include introductions, exchanging business cards, sharing relevant stories, making the field-wide asks, engaging with legislators and staff (not just talking at them!), and building rapport.
• Advocates participating in congressional meetings should be prepared to be flexible, polite, and positive when moving around Capitol Hill and meeting with congressional offices.
• Always thank legislators and staff for any ways they have previously supported museums or your museum and for their time meeting with you. Meeting follow-up is a valuable way to cover any information that was not able to be raised during a meeting. Templates will be made available from AAM to help you easily send thank you messages to the offices that met with you.

What should I know about visiting Capitol Hill?

• The United States Capitol Police provides information for general access, awareness, and navigational ease throughout the Capitol Complex. Prior to visiting, review the regulations and prohibitions.
• The Capitol Visitors Center (CVC) provides:
  • Capitol Etiquette resource
  • List of items that are prohibited in the CVC
  • Frequently Asked Questions
• Security is high across Capitol Hill. Carry your photo ID with you at all times during Museums Advocacy Day. Be prepared for security checks when you enter legislative office buildings or the Library of Congress—build time into your schedule to get through security. The less metal you wear, the quicker it will be to enter.
• D.C.’s weather can vary day-to-day. Check the forecast and pack accordingly—and wear comfortable shoes!
• Bring lots of business cards to share and leave with Congressional offices.
• Don’t forget your cell phone charger, or external battery if you’ve got one.

More details will be available soon about hotel room bookings, the proram, and more for Museums Advocacy Day 2025. If you have additional questions, please contact AAM staff at museumsadvocacyday@aam-us.org.

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As the country rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic, how are museums doing? Who is coming to museums and why, how does attendance compare to pre-pandemic norms? What are the barriers to visitation? In this Future Chat, AAM’s Elizabeth Merritt chats with guest Susie Wilkening, principal of Wilkening Consulting, about the latest data from the Annual Survey of Museum Goers.

Transcript

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hello and welcome to Future chat. I’m Elizabeth Merritt, Vice President of Strategic Foresight and founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with CFM, this is the Alliance’s think tank and research lab for the museum sector, and my job is to help you think about the future and learn some of the skills of applying strategic foresight to your work.

Future Chats are a chance for me to share a piece of recent news from my scanning and explore its implications with you.

Normally, when I do a Future Chat, I look at my scanning feed. I pick a story and I share it, and then I bring on stage an expert to discuss it. Its implications and our topic today is museum data. So I went online looking for a recent news story to anchor our discussion but I couldn’t ignore the fact that swamping everything else in my news feeds is the outcome of the US presidential election.

And the elections already influencing how I think about my work how to help museums and museum people over the next 4 years, what data, we’ll need to support that work. So I started thinking about the connection between data and how the election may affect our work.

And here’s one connection, one thing that stresses people out about the future is uncertainty and its partner, fear. And there are a lot of things up in the air right now and that uncertainty may make us anxious about outcomes, it can actually help to identify what we want to know in order to reduce uncertainty and where we can look for that information.

So, we’re going to ground our chat today in a review of some of the data that we collect and share about museums in their audiences. We’ll start by discussing shifts that have happened over the past several years, including emergence, from the pandemic and we’ll talk about how that data can inform our path forward and even in the uncertainties introduced by the election.

With that preamble, I’m so happy to bring on stage, my valued research colleague, Susie Wilkening. She is principal of Wilkening Consulting, trusted research partner of AAM. She helps us and the museum sector understand people’s attitudes and opinions and expectations about museums notably through the data she collects and interprets from the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers [(ASMG)]. Susie has been doing the ASMG for 9 years, 6 years of that, uh, together with me at AAM.

Susie Wilkening:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

Elizabeth Merritt:

I think many of us feel a little bit uncertain now about what the next few years will bring, um,

Uh, can you share with me some of your thoughts as a researcher about how what you’re thinking, as you look at the news and how it might affect your work?

Susie Wilkening:

Sure. I mean we are all feeling that sense of uncertainty. I mean that’s not unusual but I think it’s just been exacerbated by the results of the federal elections last week. So I’m a researcher. And, you know what I want to do is I want to wrap my arms around these patterns that we’ve been seeing for some time and also bring in that new information that we got last week to help us understand the path ahead a little bit better.

And so, what I would love to start with is a poll that I created to gauge how all of you are feeling right now about things, So, I think that poll should be about starting.

Here it is. So, thinking about today’s discussion topic…How are you feeling?

And I think you can answer more than one choice here.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, multiple choice. Pick all that. Apply. And our choices are resolved. Worried, hopeful, was uncertain of the path forward, confused or bewildered, or isolated and alone.

For our results… looking at Susie.

Susie Wilkening:

I don’t I can’t see the results. Can you see the results?

Elizabeth Merritt:

Oh, I can let me tell you what they’re wanting.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. Yes, please do.

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, so far, our front runner at 35 and a half percent is uncertain of the path, forward followed by worried at about 25%, and trailing behind that is hopeful at 14%. And then running a distant next to last and last are resolved at 9% and isolated and alone at 5%.

Susie Wilkening:

And was anybody saying they thought confused or bewildered?

Elizabeth Merritt:

That was 12%. Sorry, I missed that one.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. I’m just jotting that down because you have a data geek.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes.

Susie Wilkening:

So, yes, there’s a lot of uncertainty here. There’s some worries. The better, maybe some considerations, the pathways that make people feel hopeful too. And I think that kind of wraps up how I feel about things as well. Oh there we are. Okay.

So, what I really want to do to help us think about that, path ahead is to look at some of those significant shifts that have been happening with museum audiences over the past several years because that helps us inform the trajectories of what’s been happening.

So, we’re going to look at some very quick attendance trends, since before the pandemic to today. We’re going to look at some shifts in audiences by race and ethnicity and we’re going to look at political values and that how that affects visitation and how that affects the experience in a museum setting.

So, just for a moment before we start.

There’s a really important question which is how do we know any of this stuff? And it’s a methodology question. The really good news is that over the past several years, as Elizabeth mentioned, we’ve been running the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers and nearly 500 museums have participated in the annual survey during that time period. This provides us with both robust data sets of frequent museum-goers, and a frequent museum-goer is someone who’s on the communications list of a museum receives the invitation to take [the] survey and then takes time to do so. So, they’re having that interaction regularly with at least one museum. And those museum-goers, it’s about 100,000 respondents every year.

As well as, [we field at] that the same time, a demographically representative sample of the broader population. And that’s going to be, uh, casual sporadic and non-visitors to museums. So, we have those two data sets that we have every single year we can look at this stuff.

Because of that depth of data, we know a lot about the public and museums and then the museums that participate in the annual survey have even greater insights into their specific audiences.

So, the first thing I want to start off with was looking at some attendance trends, particularly through the lens of the COVID pandemic. So let me just open up some slides right here.

There we go.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome.

Susie Wilkening:

But that’s okay. I’m going to talk you through it.

So, this is from broader population sampling. This is that demographically representative sample of us adults, it’s the very first question, we asked them in a survey, which is which of the following have you done in the past year?

This is how we assess what percentage of us adults have been to a museum in the past year. So, if we look, over on the far right of this screen or this other right-hand side, you see that museums and you see that result, going from 2021 and 2024, there’s a weird year in 2022, because we actually asked previous two years, I don’t think we would have done that in retrospect. We should have that… just, so kind of take that one with a grain of salt, but you can see for all of these activities there’s kind of a … for the most part. There’s an upward trajectory, right? And we see the same thing for museums. So even before the pandemic, we were typically seeing around 25 to 31% of US adults were saying pretty consistently, I’ve … set foot in a museum in the past year.

The good news is that in 2024 when we were in the field, it was 33%. So, we’re actually exceeding, our pre-pandemic norms. People are back at museums.

However, we also know that half of US museums have not recovered their attendance from the pandemic. So why is that happening, and so, that’s when we’re going to look at the frequent museum-goers. There’s people who are on those communications lists, who take our survey.

And when we look at the frequent-museum goers, we’re looking at this in two different ways.

So first, we’re looking at repeat visitation rates. This is you know they’re thinking of this museum that asked them to take the survey. I’m going to pick on a local Seattle museum, the Burke Museum of Natural History, you know, they are on their list.

They received an invitation to take a survey that I think you have [visited] the Burke. How often do I go to the Burke? Okay, so I live in Seattle. I have kids. I probably go there 2 or 3 times a year and so I would mark that off. Alright so what we’re doing here is we’re aggregating. All those individual museum results and looking at them over time. And what we see if you look at that 2 and 3 times a year, it’s a little bit higher but it’s a little bit lower for that 4 plus. And also, if you look at that less than once a year, it’s a little bit lower than that once a year, but all adds up and away that indicates that frequent visitation isn’t quite back where it was pre-pandemic.

And so, people are back at museums, but they’re not visiting as frequently to their museums. We look at one more way, which is similar. It’s a similar question, but it’s just, but it’s also a very different question. This is not about how frequently they’re visiting a very specific museum. This is asking how many different museums did you visit, in the past year?

And so, you know, personally me, I am on vacation and 3 days, I can knock out, 6 museums, but I know I’m an outlier and probably all of you are too.

Most people don’t visit that many museums.

So, you can see these are the results from these frequent-museum goers. And if you look at these results, especially if you’re looking at the 5 or more, the 3 or 4 categories, you can see it’s a little bit lower still than where we were in 2020, which that’s actually a pre-pandemic sample in 2020 because we were in the field January and February of 2020. And so, we’re just not back. People are back at museums but not as frequently. So, if you add up all those repeat visits and that breadth of museum going all those visits, it actually adds up to a lot of visits that we haven’t gotten back since the pandemic.

So that’s that big ship that we’re still continuing the track and we’ll continue to track in the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, to see if we have any more gains that happened in the past year.

Okay, Elizabeth. You ready for me to switch to race and ethnicity or do you have any thoughts about that?

Elizabeth Merritt:

Go for it. Yes, please.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay.

But now, let’s think about by race and ethnicity. What’s really interesting is we’ve been tracking this for several years. And we have seen actually a really big shift happen over the past several years, which is really exciting.

So, first off, let’s think about those frequent museum-goers. Those people who are on this communications list, when we look just at that group of people, it’s a small slice of the broader population.

What we find is that the vast majority of them, 83%, identify as white. Now, that is a big skew, right?

But that said, since 2017, it’s a ball of drop of 10%, it was 92% in 2017. So, we’re seeing this slow progression downward and the percentage are identifying as white because we have more people of color responding as frequent museum-goers.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Just pausing … is there a last slide for that because I’m still seeing the historical data slide.

Susie Wilkening:

In a second. Yeah, we’re gonna move the slides in just a second.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Just checking.

Susie Wilkening:

So, we having a slow shift happening what by race and ethnicity among frequent museum-goers, and it’s slow, and it seems to be pretty steady the more things get a lot more complicated and where we’ve seen them, much more massive shift is with the broader population.

And that’s now I’m going to go ahead and change that slide. And let’s look at those casual and sporadic Museum goers.

The big shift that’s happened here is several years ago. Those two categories who have also skewed disproportionately white. But that’s no longer true.

Casual, and sporadic visitors are actually same as casual visitors. They almost exactly matches the US population by race and ethnicity. And sporadic visitors. It’s pretty close. It’s within just a few percentage points.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And there is a question in chat. Susie, how much do these numbers [correlate with education]? Ethnicity reflect education levels. Do we have any data on that?

Susie Wilkening:

So, it’s really kind of tricky to correlate with, with education. When we have our sample of 20,000, we would need a bigger sample to really be able to do that effectively.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay.

Susie Wilkening:

But 20,000 is a great sample for the US population sample, so we’re not quibbling with that, but yes, some of it is going to be due to increased levels of educational attainment, among people of color overall, because educational attainment is a strong predictor of museum visitation. So, that’s certainly going to be a contributing factor and it’s one of the most significant contributing factors.

But you know, several years ago, this was not true when we looked at casual and sporadic visitors in terms of race and ethnicity. It was still skewing more significantly white. So, we’ve had this massive shift now but someone… I was a casual and sporadic visitor so we’re not seeing this on our email list as much right now or among our frequent visitors but it’s getting there. Now, it may surprise a lot of people is when we look at this non- visitors, because they’re also skews to proportionately white. So, among the white population, we actually have the split where white people are more likely to be that super frequent museum-goer, but also white people are more likely to be that non-visitor.

And so that’s really interesting as well. So why doesn’t it feel this way when we’re standing in the museum, it’s all those frequent visitors who are making all those frequent visits that we can also skew your perceptions.

Okay. So, the last thing is around political values.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes. Actually, before you dive into that data, I want to because there’s been a lot of anxiety about how political values are going to influence attitudes towards museums. I want to remind everybody that overall, we have great news about how the public perceives museums. So, this is all from AAM’s advocacy data. 96% of Americans would approve of lawmakers who acted to support museums, and this is consistently high among respondents who consider themselves liberal, moderate, or conservative.

96% of Americans think positively of their elected officials for taking legislative action to support museums. Three quarters of the public believe, museums are an important part of our civil society.

Republican-led states are among the strongest funders of their own cultural institutions, and museums, and the total economic contributions of museums in 2016 was over 50 billion dollars. Over 725,000 jobs and 12 billion in taxes, on local state and federal governments. And that’s the kind of economic impact that’s appreciated by all across the [political spectrum]. So yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, I mean we have some fantastic news at museums are very much perceived as bipartisan organizations.

So overall people love museums, they love having museums in their communities and they think they contribute positively to our society. So, we don’t want to lose sight of that. Yet.

Individual political values do influence museum visitation as well as that visitor experience.

And so, when we look at who’s visiting museums through that lens of frequency, what we see are some really vast differences by political values.

Among frequent museum-goers, the majority of frequent museum-goers actually identify as liberal.

And not that many identify as conservative. But if you look at casual visitors, we’re at parody. Sporadic, visitors skew a little bit more conservative and non-visitors, skew, more conservative.

So, we do see how those political values seem to be affecting how frequently people are visiting museums or how if they’re visiting museums at all. So, we won’t be very mindful of that.

And there’s something else that we want to keep in mind. And I’ve been saying this for about 5 years and that is, the number one thing that happens. The number one thing that affects how people view the content in a museum, regardless of what you share and how apolitical it is or not.

That political lens is how they view their the content that you’re sharing in museums, [it’s] the number one predictor.

And it’s also the number one complaint. We typically have… about museum content, that content has become political even if the only people who think that content is political are the ones who happen to dislike the content itself, which often isn’t perceived as political by most people that seems like a, a little bit of a circular argument, but it’s actually true. So, you have to grapple with this, whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to deal with political values.

Fortunately, we’ve been asking political values and the annual survey since 2021. So we know a lot about how they influence museum visits and how, and museums that participate in the annual survey know their own audiences political values quite well.

Now, we’re not going to go into today. How it affects that visitor experience.

Except to note that about 20% of museum-goers and the broader population really strongly pushed back when confronted with specific kinds of content.

The things that tend to really create that pushback are things around … inclusive content and history, climate change, public health, civics and civil society, as well as outcomes such as empathy and connection.

And hope… So, those are all subjects and outcomes that museums focus on every day, which makes this particularly challenging. Because we have to really know our audiences including politically to effectively navigate that future.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And what I have heard you talk about, and we’ll be talking about this more in the future. Susie is… a lot of it’s about the language you use in talking about those things. So, it isn’t necessarily the underlying concepts are values. It’s the words you use.

Susie Wilkening:

So, we want…

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, what I’m hearing you say just to summarize, repeat visitation is not back to where it was and that reflects shifts in leisure time.

Susie Wilkening:

Yep.

Elizabeth Merritt:

On audiences are getting more diverse and casual and sporadic. Visitors are reflective of us … by race and ethnicity and we’re continuing to work on that.

Susie Wilkening:

Right.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And museums absolutely have bipartisan support. But political values are influencing how people experience with local content. And we need to be aware of how it does this and how it might affect overall perception of museums.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes, exactly.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome.

Okay. Now, we are going to transition to the other regular feature of our future chats, by giving all of you a chance to talk to each other about this topic. So, what we’re going to do is break you out into discussion rooms and give you a couple of questions. They frame your conversations and then at 3:40, we’re going to bring you back in to compare notes and share some thoughts. Now, both of [the] things before we do this.

First of all, please remember the number one role of future chats is, what is said in chat remains in chat. So please, hold anything that is shared by your fellow attendees in confidence, and don’t [share their] remarks without attribution.

Before we go out into breakouts, a couple of notes. First of all, we’re going to send you out into rooms of 8 people.

But uh, if you find yourself in a room by yourself, or if only a couple of other people, their want to be a big bigger group, you can use the join another feature to move yourself into a room with more people.

Please enable… to allow other participants [in]. See, you can hear … in the rooms.

And warning. If you’re joining us via a mobile device, or you’re using Safari as your browser, it may not support participation in the breakout rooms and you’ll be going, I can’t get in.

If that’s the case, I encourage you to step away for a little while, come back at 3:40, when we reconvene to share thoughts, that’s when Susie, and I are going to discuss our concerns by advice for your museums in the next few years, as well as hearing from you so many things that happen in the chat rooms. Okay? With that online. Sure, there are the assignments. We’re giving you for a breakout rooms.

When you get there, go around the circle and make it a production. Say this is who I am, I’m with this organization and in your introduction to share, 1 thing, that feels uncertain about how the election may affect your museums and your communities.

Then second time, I’m going around the room.

[And] share one thing. You’d like to know something that would help you manage those uncertainties in the next 4 years. So, a piece of information or a piece of data that would help you feel less uncertain about what’s going to happen.

Okay.

We’re gonna break you into breakout rooms now and we will see at 3:40.

Hello, Susie. Welcome back. I you were in one of our many chat rooms with some of the participants.

Susie Wilkening:

I’m back.

I crashed a chat room. It was fun. I had three friends in there. It was awesome.

Elizabeth Merritt:

That’s great.

So, I noticed before we went into breakouts that we had some very vigorous participation going in in the chat, which is a sidebar on your screen. So, I’m hoping that you’ll use that to start sharing some of the ideas that surfaced in your discussion rooms. So please tell us some of the uncertainties you identified and tell us what data would help you manage these uncertainties.

Now, I know it usually takes a few minutes for people to begin to wait in the chat. So, while you’re doing that, we want to feel a second poll and what we want to do is gauge how talking over this with other people. May have changed how you feel. So, maybe if we could put that second poll up,

And it’s going to take a minute to go live. All right, and you’ll see it’s asking you now that we’ve talked about things, how are you feeling? And it’s the same voice choices. So, you’re going to say are you more resolved? Having talked about it, are you more worried, are you more hopeful? Are you more certain of the past forward? Are you more supported or feel more supported or part of a community? So, let’s get a little read on how to discussing it with people. Change may have changed how you feel and Susie, I don’t know if you can see these or should I read out the results to you.

Susie Wilkening:

You should read them out. I am ready with my pen and my paper.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay. So, the front runner at 45%, bopping up and down but it’s over. 40% is people saying they feel more supported and part of a community, and trailing behind that at about 25% are people who say they feel more worried. That’s sad. I feel bad about that.

Susie Wilkening:

Oh, okay.

Elizabeth Merritt:

About 11% though, feel more hopeful that’s great. Uh 10% feel more resolved. About 6% feel more, a more certain path forward, and about 7% are more confused or bewildered.

Susie Wilkening:

Okay. So, it sounds like feeling of support is growing that you’re not alone.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Now.

Susie Wilkening:

But those worries are still persisting. And the because that lack of certainty is still kind of persisting.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, and I’m going to close the poll, which I think we bring it up for you.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, I see it.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay. It’s very interesting. Well, so it seems like a lot of positive but some negative, uh …

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah. Influence from talking to other people around this.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And looking on the right, I’m reading some of the certainties that people are reporting like the impact of tariffs and other economic policies on disposable income uh concerns about how to present inclusive history. That’s something you’re going to be able to speak to.

Susie Wilkening:

I can.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, these are jumping. There’s so much coming in, I’m having trouble focusing before it jumps around, ah, help …

Susie Wilkening:

Okay.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Uncertainties about how the impact will trickle down to education. Will federal funding to public schools be cut. I think federal funding to public schools is only about 10% of the total, is …

Susie Wilkening:

It’s not very much and I think some states are already thinking through like okay, what happens if we just eliminate federal funding, so.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

We could do it on our own. I know that’s the conversation that’s happening in Washington state right now.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Awesome. Um well, Susie with the new administration and the shifts in Congress. What are your concerns for museums? What are your anxieties?

Susie Wilkening:

So, I have 3. And Monique Davis at the Mississippi Museum of Art. She and I had a conversation that’s really helped me kind of solidify what my three big concerns were she was like you need to tell me what my you’re the top 3 are, the first 1 and this is by far the biggest 1.

It is what I call The False Consensus Effect and the empowered far, right? So this is not, specifically, what politicians might do? This is not the political stuff, it’s the empowerment of the far-right.

And what I fear, is going to happen is that they’re going is going to be a narrative that’s created. Where the far right? Says we have a mandate on these 10 issues.

Or 15 issues or whatever many, we have a mandate on anti-DEAI because that’s how the voting came out. We have a mandate against climate change, shifts or or adoptions, because we have a mandate because that’s how the voting turned out. Or, you know, we have a mandate that to ban inclusive history in schools because that’s the voting turned out, alright? And that’s not actually true.

And we know that’s not true. Most people actually want museums to do these things in schools to do these things. And for us to do take climate action because people were not voting in terms of all of those issues, they were voting on what their number 1 priority was, which was …

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes. Which must have been some might have been something else entirely.

Susie Wilkening:

And for many years, probably their family and their family economic future.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And what they perceive to be the better choice in that sense.

So that False Consensus Effect is basically when a small group of people projects, the image that most people agree with them on a topic when the opposite is actually true.

And so, we have to be then double down and really focus on what does the data tell us about what people think about these certain topics that are controversial.

Find you know, what we learned is that most people want to do this stuff and then we need to talk about that really visibly.

So that they can take that rug out from underneath them before they even start with that False Consensus Effect.

Because it’s going to be chilling if we let that happen. So that’s by far my number one.

My number 2 – and this one is a much smaller one, even though it’s actually really big – is the power of executive orders and legislation to restrict what schools people families museums educational institutions everything can do and so it’s not just, you know, within the museums it’s also you know, public health and vaccines, it’s also climate change action, things like that but you know, things like you can’t get this IMLS grant unless you agree to banish, you know, any inclusive Dei content or positions in your Museum. So, there might be some ties and executive orders things like that and they may or may not hold up in court, I don’t know.

But thinking through what are those possibilities that might tie our hands or tie the hands of others or affect us all. So that’s number 2.

And then number 3 is, of course, Very specifically, the future of IMLS, NEA, NEH and those kinds of things. And that’s where we have to really again come together.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And advocate.

And join us in February and go storm Capitol Hill in a good way for museums.

Yes.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, these are all big things to be concerned about.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes, they are. All huge.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Definitely advocacy day. I will have more information about that, but do you have any other thoughts on things museums can be doing to prepare?

Susie Wilkening:

So, we can prepare we are. This conversation is like a great start for preparing. There are lots of things that we can do to think about these things and be proactive and be ahead of them. So, the first big one is to know your audience.

And to figure out, you know, what, where are their values, what are those shared values that you have as a community that you at the Museum can build on? , you know, most people did seem to vote on their economic issues and they don’t agree with the far right on everything. So we want to understand how that’s playing out in your community.

And look to that data and in terms of how people are responding in your community on this issue. So you know and are prepared on those issues before you even put that that information forward in the museum.

Think through in advance and be tactical about The False Consensus Effect and how it will be likely deployed by the far, right.  there’s not a mandate on these issues, remember that and be on the offensive about it. There is a process called disinformation inoculation which you can go through with your leadership with your colleagues. You can do it with your board. You can do it with your volunteers. You can even do it with donors. Even do it with the public where you’re getting ahead of misinformation. You’re getting a head of The False Consensus Effect in a way that you can, then support you doing the work that you want to do. That’s true to your mission and it’s true to history science and art.

Calibrate, calibration is incredibly important.

You want to be effective and think through what that most effective path forward is on lots of issues. And so, and that most effective path isn’t necessarily straight calibration does not mean backing down.

It means being caring. And means being thoughtful. And making this individual choices as museums of what’s going to be it that path for. But remember, the tortoise won the race.

So, we’re going to all, you know, kind of champion tortoises when we’re going to win the race on so many of these issues.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And advocate for museums.

Elizabeth Merritt:

We have a couple of, uh, comments in chat. I wanted to pull forward, someone’s asking. Can you say that list of topics that we see more push back on, one more time.

Susie Wilkening:

Sure. So, there’s right now. We have a bucket I think of it is bucket of topics. Three are topics and two are outcomes. Basically, that seem to be really sensitive to that 20% on the far, right? Who just don’t like them climate change, for sure. Inclusive efforts inclusive, history, inclusion, and art museums.

Sequence. Now we’ve never tested on public health, but I would assume that that’s going to be another one.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Well, okay, but to this point I want to back up and remind people and push back if I’m getting this wrong. Susie, even on those topics, the vast majority of people may support music like climate change. The vast majority of people whether they’re a conservative or liberal support. Museum is teaching about climate change and taking action. So, when you say, it’s a trigger point, it’s a trigger for a very small percentage of highly vocal people. And one of your excellent data stories that I would recommend to people is about how not to give too much weight to a small. Number of people who are very loud. So maybe you could say a word about that.

Susie Wilkening:

Of course. Yes. Yes. About 20%.

Yes, so there’s a data story called, Amplification versus over-amplification. And it talks really specifically about how do you pay attention and make sure you’re amplifying. Push back, that’s valid. And not over amplifying. Push back this coming from a white supremacist position or, or, or anti-science position, things like that. So you can then assess it more fairly and also consider and think through your own emotions as you are dealing with push back, because emotions for yourself, come into big play. As you’re dealing with push back and criticism because we all kind of go when we get criticized about something. So that, that can be really helpful. There’s also another data story. It’s about The False Consensus Effect specifically. And if you go onto the data stories website and search for False Consensus you can…

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah. Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

… find that one really easily as well and it also takes you through those steps of this information inoculation and how to do that, with your teammates or or your leadership or whomever,

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah. I also noticed my former CFM, colleague, Phil Katz is saying, there may also be a False Consensus on the left and middle assuming attitudes about political opponents.

Susie Wilkening:

So…

Elizabeth Merritt:

First of all, yes, I’ve been going through a lot of research that says 1 of the problems that’s causing what political polarization there is in the US is people tend to put a label on the other, whether that’s saying, ooh, your conservative or your label and then the your label fill in here liberal. So therefore, you believe all these things, and it’s way more complicated than that and until that you have a real and open listening conversation with somebody, you don’t know what they believe on, all these different points. And then…

Susie Wilkening:

Absolutely. Well, thank you to another valid point that we tend to make assumptions based on demographic characteristics.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yes, yes. Yes.

Susie Wilkening:

And that we shouldn’t do that, too. I mean, we can, we can understand that big picture. There are certain demographic characteristics, excuse certain way but we can never make that assumption about a person standing in front of us until we start understanding who this person is.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Absolutely. Absolutely. The other point that Phil made is you’re not going to change somebody’s mind by yelling at them.

Susie Wilkening:

Mm.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And one of, I think, one of the skills we have to learn in the in coming years is what is an effective way of reducing polarization and really communicating in a lot of that starts with listening. It’s not going to help to yell at people and say all the same things and think that if we say for the tenth time, they’re suddenly going to hear it, it’s going to be more listening, it’s going to be more understanding. It’s going to be being sensitive to our language. And knowing when certain words or trigger points for somebody else, and the fact that a word means one thing to, you doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean something, uh, else to somebody.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, and civics is a great example of that. We tend to use it as a, as a dictionary describes it. But, on the far right, they use the word very differently and …

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, this is an example of there’s good research out there. Again, we’ll be sharing this in blog posts and talks and coming months about what language is less triggering. So, for example, I was just reading that civics has a negative connotation as you say to some people, but the word community, for them means the same thing and has fewer negative connotations. So fine, I’ll say community, not a problem.

Susie Wilkening:

Right? And but saying, ahead of these language shifts, I’m going to be honest is is very exhausting.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Yeah.

Susie Wilkening:

And the good news is that we tend to be ahead of it, through our coding of, open-ended responses in the annual survey to really help us. Get ahead of like, oh, we start noticing trends.

And we try to share those with you. And through those data stories that y’all are already aware of them. Before it starts percolating up more commonly…

Elizabeth Merritt:

And I will say, for those of you who will be joining us at the am annual meeting in Los Angeles and met Susan. And I do an annual data session where Susie previews, the as yet unpublished data from the current Annual Survey of Museum-Goers. So that’ll be a great place to preview some of the next results.

Susie Wilkening:

And we’ve got some really great themes in this year’s survey that fit in really well with this entire discussion, because one of the big things we’re looking at, is our responsibilities to community.

Curious about is a question about what you know as a responder you’re thinking, here’s this random person who’s taking your survey.

What does that person think that other people in their community?

Think are important. And looking at those Community shared values more perceived to be those shared values.

So, then we can route our work in that a little bit more effectively and then start rebuilding again.

Elizabeth Merritt:

One of the questions in chat. Uh was would we be offering some resources for advocacy am over the coming months and yes, we will. And let me tell you a little bit about that first of all.

Here’s what I hope. You all are taking away from the session. First of all, you are not alone. We’re all in this together when it comes to navigating disruptions I hope that 1 thing you learned from your discussion groups is a lot of other people share these concerns.

And I hope what you’re hearing from Susie from me from a am, is there are things that might help us collectively and maybe you individually feel more in control. One thing you can do is sign up for Advocacy Alerts from AAM. There’s one coming out tomorrow about what the election means. For museums, we’re going to drop in chat, I’ll link you can use to sign up for Advocacy Alert. But the other thing is if you sign up too late to get that one, they’re posted on the Advocacy Alerts page so you can read that, that’s a beginning … series of things that we will be pushing out and coming months about ways that you can engage, information you might need, and how you can help influence your legislators in appropriate ways and [move] things forward.

Susie. How about you any closing thoughts for our participants?

Susie Wilkening:

Well, they should absolutely go to [Museums] Advocacy Day. It’s fun. It’s actually a lot of fun. I actually …

Elizabeth Merritt:

Hey, so there are people who haven’t participated, just give them a little preview of what it would be like and people who have been to advocacy day, could you, could you drop and chat some comments?

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah. I mean it feels it can’t be like very intimidating like oh my gosh, I’m going to Capitol Hill but it’s but there’s a whole day of training.

We give you lots of information, we give you data, we give you lots of ways to make your case.

To your legislative offices and then you get to go wander around Capitol Hill. How cool? Is that? I mean, how amazing is it that we live in this country, we can go walk in the door of our legislator’s office and say what we think.

And so, it’s an amazing experience of democracy. And people are so nice up on the Hill, even when you go into office and they’re like, they’re not, maybe a little bit not as, you know, excited to see you as maybe what I get in Washington state. But, you know, it’s still great experience and you’re advocating for something you care about and lots of people care about, so it’s fun. You should totally go do it.

Elizabeth Merritt:

So, two days here in Washington, DC, Ariel could you find and drop a link into the chat about museums advocacy day, sorry we didn’t have that pre lined up, but when you come, as Susie said, you’ll get training, you’ll get support. You’ll get practice on how to do this and then AAM sets up all these appointments with you. So, we’ll group you… with other people who, also are in the same legislative district for Congresspeople. Or for Senators, you’ll have an appointment. You’ll go to the office building. You’ll be welcome in. You are sat down, and you often talk with aides. Sometimes you actually talk to the legislators and it’s like the best part of participatory democracy after voting.

Susie Wilkening:

Yes. It’s easy. And new friends.

I bring my kid because I want them to learn about it too. It’s awesome. Okay, the other thing you can do is you need data on your organization because how are you going to navigate all these different values that people have? If you’ve never asked them about their values,

And so, you know if you haven’t already participated in the annual survey Museum goers which we do in partnership with AAM, you know, this is a great year to go out and do that. The survey instrument has been vetted by people. It’s a bipartisan survey instrument, we vet across the political spectrum. Before it goes out into the field and, signups are happening right now. It’s the base fee is 1,250, so it’s not very expensive. You can probably do it on a budget. [W]e’re going to put the link in the chat, … and it goes out in the field in January and February my colleague, Jessica does an amazing job, helping every single museum to participate to get their survey out the door and get some good data reports into their hands. By the middle of … spring, so you can then have that information that you need to navigate this effectively and to calibrate for your audience and your community.

Elizabeth Merritt:

And we often write about it, we share it through AAM so that you can benefit from the overall data whether or not your participating.

Susie Wilkening:

Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay, well that’s our chat for today, Susie, it was a pleasure working with you always I’m value. You so much as a research partner and thank you for all you do for the field.

Susie Wilkening:

Well, I love doing this for the field and I love working with everyone at AAM because I love museums. So, we’re going to get through all of this over the next few years together.

Elizabeth Merritt:

Okay, great take care. Be strong and look forward to working with you in the coming year.