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 ”

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.

So, this Halloween, we decided to pose a challenge to our Field Notes readers and Facebook followers: pitch us a title for a horror movie set in a museum. With well over two hundred responses, the competition was stiff, but here were a few in particular that got the greenlight from the museum community:

In either case, you would be right, but you wouldn’t be thinking big enough, say Kylie Peppler, Maggie Dahn, and Mizuko Ito, authors of the Wallace-Foundation-sponsored report The Connected Arts Learning Framework: An Expanded View of the Purposes and Possibilities for Arts Learning. While they agree with both of these arguments (which they dub “art for art’s sake” and “art for academics’ sake”), they believe neither one gives enough credit to the full impact an arts education can have. Such exposure can not only enhance students’ artistic and academic development, they say, but impact other areas of their lives, like personal relationships, emotional well-being, and career development. For that matter, the impact doesn’t stop at the individual student, but can spill over into communities and society more broadly, as networks and relationships build, civic engagement increases, and areas for social progress come to the fore. In that light, artistic and academic growth are only small parts of a bigger holistic system of learning that the arts feed into.

This bigger system has a name in educational research circles: the connected learning framework. However, as the report’s authors explain, the term is not yet widely known in out-of-school or arts education, despite its alignment with many of the goals and outcomes its practitioners pursue. To bring the framework into wider use in our sectors, they have adapted it into a new subgenre they call “connected arts learning,” in the hopes of giving educators useful new language for describing and extending their impact. Here’s a brief summary of the framework and how museums can use it (and already are).

What is Connected Learning?

“Connected learning describes how educators and researchers can create meaningful learning opportunities by building relationships, basing learning on youth interests, and providing opportunities linked to real-world issues and communities,” the authors write. It takes a big-picture view of the role of learning in our lives, looking beyond acquiring information and skills for their own sake to the way these activities build our interests and develop our identities as we grow. In this way, connected learning emphasizes the “why” of education and asks whether the structures and practices in place are optimal to nourish those outcomes.

Connected arts learning, in turn, “describes meaningful art education that connects young people’s interests in the arts to present and future opportunities by building relationships and networks, both within the arts organization and extended to the broader community.” While it is a universal framework encompassing the needs of all young people, its emphasis on the role of culture, community, and identity is especially helpful for determining how to support those from marginalized backgrounds. For that reason, the authors center education scholar Tara J. Yosso’s concept of “community cultural wealth,” which “focuses on the ways young people from historically minoritized groups can derive power from within their communities, rather than being pushed to assimilate into dominant cultural norms.”

In other words, if connected learning negates the idea of learning in an educational vacuum, connected arts learning negates the idea of learning the arts in a cultural vacuum. Instead of leaving their communities behind to learn skills and knowledge developed in other cultures, students learn to look deeper into their communities and unlock the beauty, opportunities, and resources that exist around them.

How does this translate into concrete programs? The authors identify five general approaches they came across in their research, which are not mutually exclusive but often overlap within one program:

1. Culturally Sustaining Arts: Basing arts learning on the cultures and identities of the learners and community.
2. Future Forward Arts: Preparing or involving youth in the workforce or civic life by helping them build relationships with working artists and activists.
3. Networked Arts: Embedding arts learning in social networks that include youth, family, and educators.
4. Doing Well By Doing Art: Supporting mental health and overall well-being by explicitly responding to students’ social and emotional needs.
5. Youth Voice Arts: Giving students a platform to develop their perspectives, leadership abilities, and voices in public by combining activism and art.

Already, there are countless examples of museum programs that take these approaches, whether or not the educators in charge are aware of the connected learning framework. For example, the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library has helped Iowa youth develop employable skills and practice activism through a monthslong project to build a replica of the Berlin Wall (Future Forward Arts, Youth Voice Arts). The Museum of Children’s Art has enrolled Oakland teenagers in a yearlong Community Futures School, where they lead discussions of oppression and its solutions, analyze futurist texts, and work with professional mentors to create artworks that combine technology and Afrofuturism (Culturally Sustaining Arts, Future Forward Arts, Youth Voice Arts). The Hammer Museum has hosted fourth-through-sixth-grade classes from underfunded Los Angeles schools for weeklong Classroom-in-Residence programs, opening a supportive space for students to reflect on heavy topics like grief, and supported their teachers with months of professional development to incorporate art into lessons (Networked Arts, Doing Well By Doing Art).

How Can Museum Programs Incorporate Connected Learning?

While you’re likely already working with elements of connected learning in your programs, studying the framework and the body of research behind it can help you enhance your impact. In particular, you might uncover aspects of your program design that are undermining your goals by minimizing the role of student interests, relationships, and opportunities. Peppler, Dahn, and Ito provide a rubric for assessing how well your program aligns with connected learning in these areas, as well as a series of questions you can ask to bolster each one. Here is a summary:

Stoke Interests

Even when educators aim for broad impact on students’ lives, they “still sometimes try to get kids interested in arts learning without first discovering what interests those kids already have,” the authors write. Instead of trying to “get young people interested in art,” connected arts learning uses art to explore what they’re already interested in. This means finding ways to collect input from students and develop the curriculum to follow their passions, rather than developing it in isolation based on outside sources. To accomplish this, one organization the authors interviewed relies on a youth council, an external evaluator, and informal conversations with students. An example insight: Whereas staff thought youth would be interested in experimenting with cutting-edge technology like virtual reality, they learned they were really more eager to experiment with the humbler medium of podcasting.

To center learners’ interests in your program, the authors recommend asking these questions:

• How do you incorporate youth interest and voice into programming?
• How do young people drive decision-making?
• How do you include learners’ identities and cultural backgrounds?
• How are the arts leveraged to engage learners?
• How are new interests supported in collaboration with professional artists?

Build Relationships

The traditional arts education paradigm tends to minimize relationship-building, consisting mainly of short-term engagements where educators lead students in individual projects during a confined class time and encourage them to practice on their own. Connected arts learning, in contrast, endeavors to build long-term relationships with youth and their families that extend beyond the classroom and allow for collaboration. This includes welcoming families and communities into both shaping and participating in the learning experience—not only in special events or projects, but day to day.

The authors suggest asking:

• How do you cultivate affinity-based networks of support?
• How do you support learners in working collaboratively with others?
• In what ways are relationships among young people, artists, and families accounted for in your programming?
• How are channels of communication kept open to support and sustain arts learning?
• In what ways are inter-generational relationships incorporated and leveraged to connect youth to arts opportunities?

Provide Opportunities

Traditional arts programs don’t think far beyond the classroom walls, measuring success by learner’s achievements within the program itself, and rarely introducing them to opportunities that extend beyond it. Connected arts learning flips this on its head, intentionally cultivating opportunities for learners outside of the classroom, whether connecting them with mentors, providing them with career training, or giving them chances to perform, exhibit, or engage in civic life.

Ideally, these opportunities are not just arts-related, but allow participants to explore any interests they may have. They are also not just career opportunities, with the goal of getting students on a stable financial path, but have the broader goal of helping them develop a meaningful life. (As one staff member interviewed tells the authors, “A lot of college and career readiness is based on the presumption that low-income students have to get set on a path much earlier…. I’d also like to strive for something where they can have the time to explore, just like a student of any income level.”) Finally, when these opportunities include professional work, like internships, apprenticeships, or leadership positions, students are ideally paid.

Questions to ask:

• What types of arts opportunities are communicated and offered to young people?
• How do the goals of the arts program connect young people to opportunities beyond the program itself?
• What are the values of the class or program and how are those values embedded in the arts experience?
• In what ways are young people matched with inspiring opportunities that align with their arts interests?
• How do you support networking that can connect youth to opportunities in and outside of the arts?

Given these numbers, there’s a good chance you’re currently wondering: What does it take to attract audiences? Is it a culturally relevant exhibition? A free or discounted admission day? A lively after-hours program? An Instagram endorsement from a K-pop icon? Of all the sundry strategies you’ve seen floating around, which are worth the hype?

Luckily, a large-scale research project recently wrapped which might provide some hints. The Wallace Foundation’s Building Audiences for Sustainability Initiative began back in 2015, when the foundation, troubled by data showing a steady decline in participation at cultural organizations, awarded forty-one million dollars worth of grants for organizations to experiment with new strategies for building audiences. Between that year and 2019, the grantees undertook a wide variety of projects to pursue various target audiences, united by their use of a continuous learning framework emphasizing research, evaluation, and iterative thinking throughout the process. After the grant work ended, Wallace engaged researchers from the University of Texas at Austin to analyze and produce a thorough report of the results, which it published earlier this year.

As the report’s author Francie Ostrower explains, many of the participating organizations went into the initiative earnestly hoping to find the “magic bullet” to building audiences. Sadly, however, they did not uncover any clever “one weird trick,” but instead confronted the many nuances to the practice: Are you trying to grow your audience by numbers, or diversify it by demographic characteristics? Are you satisfied with attracting one-time visitors to special offerings designed to lure them in, or are you more after repeat visitors who will engage with your core offerings? Do you expect these new visitors to contribute to your financial sustainability directly, or is just their attendance enough to attract contributed income and plant the seeds of future support?

In other words, there seems to be no one universal strategy for success, and building a sustainable audience long-term may mean taking the time to wrestle with critical, challenging questions first and foremost. But not all hope is lost for those craving some immediate, actionable takeaways. In studying the results, the researchers did observe some revealing general patterns in what consistently worked, what sort of worked, and what consistently did not work. (One caveat, however: The grantees for this particular project consisted of large performing arts organizations, so while the major takeaways likely carry over to our field, there may be some differences between the contexts.)

What Worked: Rethinking Marketing

When you look at your institution’s marketing and communications, you likely see compelling imagery, evocative copy, and tantalizing offerings. But is that what the rest of the world sees?

For virtually all of the organizations participating in the initiative, the answer turned out to be a resounding no. Given the opportunity to seek external feedback through research methods like focus groups, they learned that their marketing was appealing to people who already knew the art form or subject matter well, but not to those with less exposure.

“Images that we thought, from years of being in the arts, were the most appealing…really meant nothing to many of the audience members,” concluded one of the participants interviewed for the report. Another theater discovered its core strategy of hyping “world premiere” performances meant little to most audiences, despite the supposed cachet of premieres in the industry. A dance company learned common artistic lingo, like “mixed rep” or “non-narrative,” confused the majority of the public. At best, these opaque marketing strategies were irrelevant to audiences; at worst, they felt actively unwelcoming, as if they were being “talked down to” about their lack of prior knowledge. As one organizational participant came to see it, it was like they were a restaurant trying to attract diners without posting their menu online.

The antidote, participants discovered, was to post the menu—metaphorically speaking. They learned they needed to say more upfront about what to expect from their experience, both in terms of basic details like price and descriptive information about the contents. (As market research from the study showed, this most often amounted to grasping “a story” behind the production, though not necessarily a detailed plot summary.) Adapting communications to be more “welcoming, informative, and responsive” proved to be the most consistently effective practice throughout the initiative.

One strategy that proved especially effective, for the organizations that pursued it, was producing video trailers giving a firsthand preview of their productions. However, it sometimes took some tweaking to get the tone right—one participant discovered its first attempt at a video promoting an event series aimed at younger audiences read as too “bougie,” leading it to switch to a format interviewing attendees about their experience. Beyond videos, the participants generally succeeded with more refined used of digital communications, such as targeted emails to certain audience segments.

What Sort Of Worked: Off-Site Offerings

If you can’t bring more people to your museum, can you bring the museum to them?

More and more of our institutions have tested this premise in recent years, “distributing” their experience to outside venues like community centers, storefronts, or food markets. Evidently, a similar strategy is on the rise in other cultural organizations, as many of the participants in the initiative based their projects around performances at venues other than their own.

Did it work? Yes and no. First, the bad news: Most of the organizations found the logistics of taking their show on the road were much more burdensome than anticipated, citing challenges like “ensuring an adequate power supply, fire safety, loading a set away from the shop, and obtaining necessary permits.” (While some of these might be particular to the performing arts, it’s not hard to imagine the equivalents for staging museum exhibitions or programs away from the main building.) Furthermore, they consistently found that the strategy did not attract off-site audiences to on-site programs. Those were reasons enough for some organizations to abandon their off-site programs, particularly when they found they were not reaching their target audience effectively to begin with.

But others, despite experiencing the same challenges, considered their experiments a success. They may not have gained new regulars at their venues, but they did engage—and engage with—new communities and formats, and that came to seem like a victory in itself. For example, one participating opera staged a series of small-scale performances at a local restaurant, initially hoping many of the patrons would be moved to book tickets to a mainstage performance. But staff soon realized it was “naivety” to think the chain between taking in a tableside aria and “buy[ing] a ticket to a three-hour opera [to] come sit in the dark with us” could be so short. Nevertheless, “We realized that the conversion to the mainstage…was not necessarily the metric of success, that engaging with them in the form that they wanted to experience the art was okay, and that it still expanded the art. It still expanded the audience,” explained an interviewee.

Another unexpected outcome of these experiments was the discovery that “off-site” might be just a state of mind. Instead of going to the trouble to leave their comfortable, accommodating homes, some participants found just as much success from making tweaks to their own spaces to create a different atmosphere. For instance, one theater that originally went looking for a more intimate setting to stage its performances realized that it could achieve the same effect on its own turf by blocking off some areas with curtains and lowering the lighting. The same likely applies to museums—maybe more people would come to your party (or program, or exhibition, or so on) if you dimmed the lights and played different music (literally or metaphorically).

What Didn’t Work: Crossover Programs

Surely there are untold numbers of future museum fans lurking among the public, and all they need is a good hook to bring them in. Then they’ll keep coming back. Right?

Wrong, at least going by the findings of Building Audiences for Sustainability. A majority of participants pursued special “crossover programs” designed to lure their target audience in, hoping this would translate to them attending core programming once they got to know the organization. For example, one symphony arranged a series of performances where indie musicians played with its orchestra, hoping this would serve as a “gateway drug” for millennials to attend main season performances. But repeatedly, the organizations that undertook this strategy saw no success.

As anyone who’s experienced a blockbuster program or exhibition likely already knows, fair-weather fans can haunt museums as much as sports teams. If you’re a natural history museum that lures an audience of jewelry lovers in with an exhibition on rare gems, you should not expect them to come back for your next one on bird calls. (But fear not—survey data points to a worldwide “birding boom” since 2020.)

But while such “crossover” strategies were a confirmed failure in the initiative, on the basis that the attendees did not in fact cross over, that doesn’t mean the programs were inherently worthless. As with off-site programs, the participants realized such one-off successes were still a way to extend the mission and enhance the overall vitality of the organization. (Those jewel hounds still learned something about science, didn’t they?) You just may need to rethink your strategy to one built on attracting many occasional supporters instead of a smaller number of loyal supporters. Or, scary as it may sound, you may need to rethink what your “core offerings” are in the first place, and whether you want to change them to meet the audience where it is.

If so, you’re not alone. Between the long-term effects of the pandemic and the ongoing push to create more welcoming cultures, an increasing number of museums are rethinking the program models they’ve inherited, which are often many decades old and informed by outdated assumptions. Long-prevailing hallmarks of these models, including arduous training programs, intensive time commitments, and inflexible scheduling, are leading to declining ranks and stagnant demographics, many volunteer managers believe. Meanwhile, undefined reporting and authority structures are leading to tension and confusion, in some cases, as the organizational charts of museums evolve.

Still, there are compelling reasons for museums to engage volunteers, not only for the benefit of the institutions, but for the public themselves. Volunteer opportunities can be a meaningful chance to explore curiosities, interact with the community, make friends, and build skills. So, the question is: How can we design programs that maximize these positive outcomes, working with the goals of museums today and welcoming more (and more diverse) people in?

There may not be easy, one-size-fits-all answers, but between the growing body of successful examples, there is an emerging general framework. To figure out what that looks like, I spoke to two of the most knowledgeable sources I know: my AAM colleague Susan Zwerling, who wrote our Designing a Museum Volunteer Program toolkit (now in its second edition), and Elisa Kosarin, CVA, a longtime volunteer engagement consultant. With thanks to them, and the many volunteer managers who shared their experiences in publications I reviewed (see a selected list at the end of this post), I identified a basic six-step process for transforming a volunteer program.

Step 1: Talk to Stakeholders

Just because you have a mandate to “restructure” or “diversify” your program doesn’t mean you’re ready to start. Without agreed-upon parameters for what those words will mean in your case, you may not create anything but disarray. Instead of rushing into change for change’s sake, it’s best to start by talking with stakeholders about what you’re seeking to change, why you’re seeking to change it, and what the new vision for the program should be.

What stakeholders should you talk to?

• Board and leadership. Supportive and aligned leadership will give you the organizational pull to ensure change moves smoothly from concept to execution. In the best of cases, all sides will be on board with change, and these conversations will be about defining what change to prioritize. In more difficult cases, where you may need to do some convincing, program managers suggest emphasizing the opportunity to extend impact and align with organizational goals through program adjustments, as well as the liability for the museum’s reputation and visitor experience if it does not embrace change.
• Staff. Leadership and volunteer managers may not be fully aware of the staff needs that could use community support, especially in departments that haven’t traditionally worked with volunteers. For that reason, it’s a great idea to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment across the organization. Preferably in a structured, synchronous format, ask each department where they could ease their burdens and generate a list of potential volunteer opportunities in the areas they identify. Supporting public programs, helping in the garden, packing art supply boxes? Collecting protest ephemera or supporting voter registration drives? It’s all been done! Think big and think outside the box.
• Volunteers themselves. If possible, there is great value in getting your existing volunteers’ input, for several reasons. First, it avoids blindsiding your corps with any changes and can minimize the chances of a public backlash, as some museums have experienced when they’ve overhauled their programs. Second, it gives you the important perspective of the people who volunteer themselves, who may be more open to change—and more brimming with novel ideas—than you expect. If you have a smaller advisory group on your corps, like a volunteer board, you might consider starting with them.

What questions should you ask these stakeholders?

• Who are you trying to include? Remember, there are many kinds of diversity, including race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, age, ability, economic status, national origin, languages spoken, and many other aspects of identity. As with diversity initiatives for audiences, you’re not likely to have much success if you try to be vaguely “inclusive” to all these categories at once, since different demographics will require different strategies. Instead, it’s best to define what aspects of diversity are lacking in your corps and what types would be most significant and realistic for your museum to gain. (For example, if you live in a city that’s 70 percent Latinx but your volunteers are all white, or a city with a median age of 35 but your volunteers are a median of 65, those could be good places to start.)
• What should volunteers do? There are multiple ways to transform a program, whether that’s tweaking existing opportunities, replacing those opportunities with others, or simply adding new opportunities. What departments will you assign volunteers to going forward, and what will they do in them? (This is where your needs assessment will come in handy.)
• Who should volunteers report to? Many institutions do not have a defined place for their volunteer programs on their organizational chart, which is one reason why power struggles and miscommunications can occur. Where should your program go? The field is divided on that issue. Some museums structure theirs within a dedicated volunteer management department, some nest them inside education and interpretation, some put them in visitor services, and some assign them to human resources, among other options. There may not be one right answer, but try to choose the one that will be least siloed and have the strongest relationships with the rest of staff.

Once you’ve spoken to these stakeholders and established the answers to these questions, you might consider putting them into a formal document, like a strategic plan for volunteer engagement, so you can share and cite those findings as you embark on the next step.

Step 2: (Re)design Your Roles

Now that you’ve identified lots of organizational needs that volunteers can support, and a vision for where you do and don’t want them to be working, your task is to narrow down this list and define specifics. (Think convergent vs. divergent thinking.) What are the best, most manageable ideas for new roles, and what will it take to get them up and running?

To maximize the impact of these new roles, and successfully recruit new people your current structure may be excluding, here are a couple questions to keep in mind:

• How long should the assignment last? Museums tend to automatically envision long-term or indefinite volunteer positions, with significant training upfront, but this level of commitment is likely to deter people with busier or less predictable schedules. (In fact, research suggests organizations that offer more flexible positions have had less trouble with recruitment and retention post-pandemic.) As you (re)design your roles, think about how you can vary their length and duration, giving people the ability to build their engagement over time. Assignments can be:
  • One-time, such as supporting a special event or one-off pilot program
  • Episodic, such as serving on a gala committee or assisting with an exhibition installation
  • Regular, such as working a welcome desk or conducting educational outreach
• Where should the work take place? Another important aspect of flexibility is where the volunteers work. Do they need to be on site for their assignment (at the museum or another location), or can their work be fully or partially virtual? When possible, removing the need to commute to a specific location can make opportunities more attractive and feasible, particularly to those who have disabilities, those who live farther from your work site(s), or those who have limited free time. Even if some of the work for a role requires being on site, you might be able to reduce the burden by making parts of it virtual (or virtual-optional), like training, meetings, or administrative work.

To allow for this flexibility, you may be able to create multiple roles, even within the same departments or supporting the same needs. You might have some regular volunteers who sit at your welcome desk weekly, for example, while others greet visitors during public programs or popular exhibitions, and some speak to visitors from home via digital kiosks.

Step 3: Revisit Your Training

Once you know what roles you’ll be offering, and on what basis, it’s time to consider what training you’ll require for them and how you’ll administer it. This can be equally important to attracting diverse volunteers as varied durations and responsibilities. Long, detailed trainings—like the crash courses that are typical of many docent programs—can discourage would-be volunteers, not only for the sheer time (and sometimes money) they require, but for the sense of psychological commitment they impose. While you want your volunteers to feel well-prepared for their roles, you don’t want them to feel like they must undergo an elaborate initiation to join you. Make it easier for them to say yes to your program by providing efficient and flexible training appropriate for what the role will require. Consider:

• Time commitment. Can you reduce the length of trainings by distinguishing essential from supplemental information? Can you minimize the amount of information volunteers must learn by dividing their areas of responsibility?
• Location. Can you make trainings less demanding by offering them in fully or partially virtual formats, or hybrid/virtual-optional?
• Scheduling. Can you offer asynchronous trainings that volunteers can complete on their own time, or a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous? Can you schedule trainings outside of typical work hours, or offer alternatives for those who cannot make those times?

When aiming to increase diversity, you should also consider what training you might provide your corps to help them cultivate a welcoming environment and potentially discuss issues of identity with visitors.

Step 4: Rethink Your Recruitment

At this point in the process, you should have a new range of opportunities that are appealing and feasible to people with a variety of life situations. Now the only remaining question is how to reach those people and tell them about the opportunities.

Particularly if your museum and/or its existing program reaches a limited demographic, this will require thinking beyond traditional marketing or word of mouth. While it’s always a great idea to share opportunities through the museum’s communication channels, or to ask staff and volunteers to spread the word to their networks, this may not reach those outside of the demographics you’re already serving. Instead, you’ll need to think in terms of broad, proactive outreach to the community. Here are some strategies suggested by program managers at the International Spy Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art:

• Build a list of referral sources, such as young professional organizations, retired teacher associations, disability service organizations, and community centers. Reach out and ask if they can help communicate the opportunity to their members and patrons.
• Go out into the community. Visit gathering places like libraries and community fairs and tell people about your opportunities and the benefits of volunteering.
• Connect with local colleges and universities. Besides being full of people who are looking for skill-building opportunities, and can likely help with any age diversity goals, higher-learning institutions are a great way to connect with international students, who can help you diversify the languages spoken and national origin among your corps.

Step 5: Communicate Your Changes

Once you’re ready to unveil your revamped program, it will be important to communicate the changes carefully to your stakeholders, particularly existing volunteers. Ideally, you want to avoid alienating them during the transition, making it clear that you value their past contributions and welcome them to join the new structure going forward, if they are willing to embrace it.

Here are some suggestions from Justine Gregory Dodson, who overhauled Denver Art Museum’s volunteer program:

• Communicate what you’re changing (and why) as often and in as many venues as possible, such as newsletters, meetings, and learning management systems.
• Identify key stakeholders to communicate with one-on-one and address any misapprehensions with, such as volunteer leaders and known champions or challengers of change.
• Find ways to honor the past contributions of volunteers at your museum, such as plaque displays in your building or an “emeritus” program for those who retire from the program.

Step 6: Evaluate Your Changes

As with any new or updated program, you don’t want to stop developing once you’ve implemented the changes. Look for opportunities to gather feedback and data on how the revamped program is working. If your museum has a research and evaluation team, or the means to engage independent evaluators, this would be a good opportunity for partnership. If not, consider informal feedback mechanisms, like basic surveys, check-in conversations, or comment cards. Be sure to take any findings to heart and make any necessary adjustments that arise—they can make all the difference in your program’s success.

Further Reading

While this framework covers the basics of transforming your program, there are many more nuances to consider as you do so. Here are some AAM publications that will help you along the way:

• Rethinking the Status Quo by Jenny Woods, Brandi Shawn-Chaparro, and Abbey Earich
• Designing a Museum Volunteer Program by Susan Zwerling (Purchase required)
  • How Can We Make Volunteer Programs More Inclusive and Accessible? By Susan Zwerling and Kia Hunter
  • Do Volunteer Programs Need Reinventing for the Reopened Museum? By Susan Zwerling and Marcie Keller
• Questions an Organization Should Ask When Transitioning a Volunteer Program by Susan Zwerling, Jenny Woods, Justine Gregory Dodson, Mary Fernandez, and Brandi Shawn-Chaparro (AAM members only)
• Museums and Equity: Volunteers by Elizabeth Merritt
• How Volunteer Programs Are Embracing Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion by Elisa Kosarin
• How the National Air and Space Museum Took Volunteering Virtual by Elisa Kosarin

Get your copy of the Designing a Museum Volunteer Program Toolkit today!

With spring upon the Northern Hemisphere and its trees and shrubs abloom, we thought we’d ask our Field Notes subscribers to share the inside scoop on their favorite museum gardens, as they previously did for cafés, bathrooms, and stores. (Subscribe now to join the next poll!) Here were the ones they mentioned most often across hundreds of responses.

The Courtyard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA)

Recommended by Kate Nardin, Ryan Beckman, Lizette Gradén, Elizabeth Wiecher Pierce, Tammi Edwards, Kristin Crawford, Monica Gomez, T.C. Steele State Historic Site, Maddie Mott-Ricci, Christine Melville Harvey, Margaret Isham, Jen Kretser, Karrie Porter, Sean Blinn, Catherine Caverly Taraviras, Lisa Sheley, Hailey Conneely, Eric L. Mundell, Ann Barnard Toftness, Ruaidhrí Belfry Crofton, Gavin Culbertson, Meg Donaldson Carson, Fabiana Chiu, Del Baker Robertson, Sarah Gretchen Titus, North Andover Historical Society, and Amy Littlewood Frasco

 

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The beloved central space of this idiosyncratic Boston museum manages to be both a perennial and a seasonal delight. Thanks to dedicated horticulture staff working mostly out of a temperature-controlled nursery, the Courtyard boasts blooms year-round, with almost-monthly rotating displays in categories like orchids, chrysanthemums, and nasturtiums.

The Huntington Botanical Gardens (San Marino, CA)

Recommended by Leah Melber, Alyssa Cordova, Karen Graham Wade, Kathy Arnold, Elizabeth Wiecher Pierce, Sylvia Bruner, Joseph Kolasinski, Catherine McCarthy, Akeia de BarrosGomes, Sunny Spicer, Kelli Walsh, Mar AceMehia, Sarah Jane Cox, L.E. Brown, Eric L. Mundell, Holly Deakyne, Julie Steiner, and Martin Fox

 

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Stretching over about 130 acres, the Huntington Botanical Gardens feature eighty-three thousand living plants between sixteen themed gardens, including a Jungle Garden, Chinese Garden, Shakespeare Garden, and Palm Garden. The Huntington also operates a laboratory for botanical conservation and research.

Desert Botanical Garden (Phoenix, AZ)

Recommended by Kim Baker Nickels, Cheryl Thornhill, Angela Watts, Joseph Kolasinski, Karrie Porter, Rox Adams, Kathy Wells Clark, Jen Kretser, Sean Blinn, Sharol Buck, Gavin Culbertson, Melissa Kershaw, Catherine McCarty, Patricia Ann Raynor, and Martin Fox

 

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“Think the desert is all dirt and tumbleweeds? Think again,” declares this Arizona institution. Throughout more than fifty thousand displays of cacti, trees, and flowers across 140 acres, the Desert Botanical Garden proves the beauty of desert plants rivals any others’.

Storm King Art Center (New Windsor, NY)

Recommended by Hassan Najjar, Catherine Bergmann, Sarah Braverman, Molly Phillips, Kathy Greif, Joan Lessing, Jennifer Rubin Garey, Renée Compagna, Melanie Fraticelli-Twardzicki, Sean Blinn, Catherine Caverly Taraviras, Gavin Culbertson, Eileen Gill, and Holly Deakyne

 

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This sweeping open-air museum in New York’s Hudson Valley is a premier destination for taking in both natural and artistic beauty. Visitors can stroll through five hundred acres of open landscape while viewing a world-renowned collection of large-scale sculpture and site-specific artworks.

Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, MO)

Recommended by Makenzee Brown, Renée Compagna, Rod Williamson, L.E. Brown, Ann Barnard Toftness, Gavin Culbertson, Catherine McCarthy, and Chris G. Carron

 

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Founded in 1859, this St. Louis institution can proudly call itself the oldest continuously operating botanical garden in the country. Major features include a geodesic dome conservatory, a fourteen-acre Japanese strolling garden, and an interactive children’s garden experience that teaches the significance of nature and plants.

The Gardens of The Met Cloisters (New York, NY)

Recommended by Heba Khairy, Dana Golan Miller, Jennifer Lawton Schloat, India Rael, Holly Deakyne, and Katherine Danalakis

 

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With three unique gardens and an orchard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s branch museum is as much a showcase for the plants of medieval Europe as its art and architecture. Each design reflects thorough research into historical sources: the orchard and Judy Black Garden in the Cuxa Cloister mimic the design of aristocratic pleasure gardens, the Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden showcases the known uses of more than four hundred species in the Middle Ages, and the Trie Cloister Garden riffs on the “ecstatic” fantasy gardens described in the art and literature of the period.

Winterthur Garden (Winterthur, DE)

Recommended by Robin Sarratt, Brenda Hornsby Heindl, Cheryl-Lynn May, Julie Steiner, and Danyelle Rickard

 

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In addition to a museum and library, the Winterthur estate in Delaware maintains the historic garden designed by founder Henry Francis du Pont. His naturalistic design is particularly regarded for its “lyrical” color combinations, the result of decades of experimentation with thousands of different plants.

Philbrook Gardens (Tulsa, OK)

Recommended by Melody Lowe, L.E. Brown, Joseph Kolasinski, Ulrich Museum of Art, and Ruaidhrí Belfry Crofton

 

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A post shared by Angelica Marie | Destination Wedding & Brand Photographer (@angelicamariephoto)

The gardens outside of this Oklahoma art museum reflect its building’s past life as “Villa Philbrook,” the home of a local oil tycoon modeled on an Italian Renaissance villa. In addition to the home’s original formal gardens, which take their structure from sixteenth-century models, the museum also maintains a modern sensory garden design conceived in 2004. The Philbrook also houses a beloved garden cat, Cleome, who serves double duty as pest control and visitor-experience-booster.

Honorable Mentions

• Rooftop courtyard at the Museum of Jurassic Technology (Culver City, CA) – Recommended by Kate Nardin, Emily Lytle-Painter, Mar AceMehia, and Holly Deakyne
• New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill (Boylston, MA) – Recommended by Ryan Beckman, Ali Kane, Amy Littlewood Frasco, and Diana West
• Gardens at Biltmore (Asheville, NC) – Recommended by Christal Tongish, Meghan Ward, Joan Lessing, and Karrie Porter
• Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO) – Recommended by Alex Whitney, Angela Watts, Karrie Porter, and Anne Manning
• Mary Livingston Ripley Garden (Washington, DC) – Recommended by Meredith Peruzzi, Betsy Smith Platt, Tania Said, and Patricia Ann Raynor
• deCordova Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA) – Recommended by Amy Littlewood Frasco, North Andover Historical Society, Lauren Kaufmann, and Martin Fox

1. Resisting the Colonial Imagination: The Role of Exhibition Design in the Decolonial Project

By Adrienne Lalli Hills & Margaret Middleton

For Indigenous museum visitors, long-prevalent display methods like “wonder cabinets” and “white cubes” can be an alienating way to encounter their cultural heritage. This article, which originally appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of Exhibition journal, shares how some exhibition designers are working to overturn these colonially rooted formats in favor of ones that prioritize the preferences and expressions of source communities.

2. “Wait, What? Toddlers in an Art Museum?”

By Nicole Cromartie & Bailey Placzek

As the Clyfford Still Museum kicked off a long-term initiative to become more welcoming to young children and their families, staff came up with an unusual idea. What if, instead of just designing experiences for children, they worked with them as co-curators? And so began the planning for Clyfford Still, Art, and the Young Mind, an exhibition for which more than 250 children selected objects, weighed in on design, contributed in-gallery interpretation, and even led tours.

3. Chatting About Museums with ChatGPT

By Elizabeth Merritt

While generative artificial intelligence has been brewing for years, it came onto many more people’s radar this year, thanks in large part to an uncanny new chatbot called ChatGPT. In this post, the Founding Director of the Center for the Future of Museums gives the tech a try, asking it to weigh in on some of the dilemmas that face museums today.

4. The Best Museum Cafés and Restaurants, According to Museum People

By Joseph O’Neill

Our crowdsourced series of reader polls on some of the best museum features and amenities, which previously celebrated the field’s outstanding bathrooms and stores, turned its attention to the culinary arts this year. The eleven most-mentioned dining outposts included a regional sampler of Native American foods, a recreation of a fin de siècle Viennese café, and an operational historic 1940s diner.

5. 3 Trauma-Informed Practices for Museums to Follow

By Jackie Armstrong

For one museum employee, who supports audience experiences at the Museum of Modern Art, the pandemic was a wake-up call about the role that our nervous systems play in daily life, and how unsettling experiences can permeate throughout our professional and personal lives. In this post, she offers a primer on what she’s learned from research on trauma, and offers three general trauma-informed practices museums can embrace to support staff, visitors, and community members in their mental health.

6. A Short Rant About Quiet Quitting (or, Why Heroism Can Be Toxic)

By Elizabeth Merritt

The pandemic has transformed workplace culture, bringing with it new archetypes of behavior, like the much-publicized phenomenon of “quiet quitting.” But is this hot-button term unfairly conflating doing the bare minimum at work with setting healthy boundaries, especially in high-pressure mission-driven environments like museums? This essay argues that we should normalize staff giving less than “200 percent,” especially if it protects them against burnout down the road.

7. How Emotional Intelligence Can Create Happier and Healthier Museums

By Jennifer DePrizio

Museum cultures are built on celebrating expertise and ingenuity, but often at the expense of good working relationships and collaborative skills. Here’s why one veteran of the field argues we should invert this paradigm, placing emotional intelligence at the center of our priorities and refusing to tolerate bad behavior.

8. Different by Design: A New, Inclusive Framework for Accessible Museum Exhibitions

By Sarah Schleuning

At the Dallas Museum of Art, a recent exhibition explored how multisensory engagement—beyond the standard museum behaviors of looking at objects and reading labels—can better serve visitors, particularly those with disabilities. Here’s what visitor research into the exhibition revealed about the strategies that work to engage more learning styles, including de-escalation spaces, non-text-based interpretation, and staff training.

9. Moments That Matter: Toward a Visitor-Centered Understanding of Belonging in Museum Spaces

By Evelyn Ronning, Sarah Lukowski, Amy Grack Nelson, and Marjorie Bequette

In recent years, museums have begun to emphasize “belonging,” seeking to create comfortable, inclusive experiences for visitors from marginalized identities. But what aspects of a visit contribute to belonging, and how can we design for it? To find out, four museums recruited visitors for a photo-based research study on their experiences. Read about their findings in this article from the Fall 2023 issue of Exhibition journal.

10. The Messy and Vulnerable Truth about Trust and Museums

By Dawn DiPrince

Public trust in museums appears to be growing, but is this for deeper reasons than being reliable sources of information? The Executive Director of History Colorado thinks so. Here’s why she believes an increase in receptive community partnerships is behind the phenomenon, and how her museums are embracing the charge.

To get a taste of this rapidly growing community, here is a look back at some of the threads that sparked the most discussion this year:

1. Seeking Examples: Outdoor history sites/museums with porous or open boundaries, and/or located in a living neighborhood

By Michelle Moon

“We are working with a museum that consists of several historic buildings embedded within a living neighborhood. The grounds are porous and open to the public for walking around, as well as to residents for driving, parking, tenant access, etc.

We are doing some creative brainstorming about wayfinding, managing indoor access, and marking the borders of the historic areas, and would love your help identifying other sites with similar conditions that we can learn from.”

2. Sustainable and Low Carbon Footprint Museum Exhibitions

By Douglas Flandro

“Looking to connect with any exhibit managers or designers who are doing research about how to best create sustainable and low-carbon footprint exhibits in their museums. I am especially interested in research about how material and equipment choices affect BIPOC communities and what choices lead to improved environmental justice. Would love to share resources.”

3. Visitor Location Heat Maps Software

By Harry Klinkhamer

“Anyone have any recommendations for tracking where visitors are from with interactive heat maps?  What I am looking for is replacing the antiquated push pin on a map that visitors place with a touch screen where when they input their zip code it gets tallied so that zip codes with high attendees are red, ones with few blue, etc.  Finding lots of expensive subscriptions services, but I just want something I can put on an external drive and hook up to a touch screen monitor.”

4. Affordable Video-to-Text Transcription Software

By Keith Cook

“I am working on getting our veteran interviews transcribed and wanted to know if anyone has any recommendations for safe, reliable, and affordable video-to-text transcription software. I am currently using Microsoft Word to transcribe the videos through the ‘Voice’ function, and then going through the interview recording to correct any errors to the AI transcription. While Word does a fairly decent job, the service is limited to 300 minutes of uploaded audio a month, which are going to get eaten fast given that our museum has over a hundred hours worth of interviews that need to be transcribed. Are there any services that allow unlimited transcription work? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.”

5. Seeking museums that offer accessible programming for adults with dementia

By Nicole Root

“I am interested in connecting with museums that are already offering programming for adults with dementia and their caregivers to learn more about your experience with developing such a program. For the last 15 years I have been facilitating a creative hands-on sensory-based experience in long term care communities that engages a wide variety of abilities. I am curious to see if such a program would be valuable in a museum setting as well, so I would love to learn more about what is working and what is not with accessible programming, and how museums would like to move forward (or not) with these endeavors.”

6. Curation without Education

By Destiny Jones

“I’m an emerging professional in the museum field with big dreams of curating my own exhibits. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in History and a Master’s Degree in American Studies but I keep getting the feeling I can’t start creating exhibits without an official degree in Museum Studies. Is it possible to learn everything I’d need to know through my own research, conferences and internships or is a degree or certificate needed to truly know what I’m doing? I recently discovered many resources like the AAM that I think could really benefit my journey without an official degree. Is there anyone out there who can tell me their path less travelled background on how they became a curator without an official degree in Museum Studies? If I do decide to go through with my own exhibit am I officially a curator then or is their some kind of unspoken hoops I need to jump through to give myself that title? Seeking advice about my future career and I would just love to hear how others got their start.”

7. The place of NFTs in the new museum practices

By Marie Degonse

“I am interested in the use of NFT as a new digital object in the museum but especially in the question of how technology can contribute to the production of value in digital museum objects that goes beyond monetary value.

What do you think: does the current NFT craze respond to a trend, a fad or, on the contrary, is a future-oriented solution, respond to a structural evolution of museums towards digital?”

8. Content Warning in Museums

By Alyssa Pizarro

“Do others share content warnings in their museums, and if yes, is it by exhibit or is it overall for full museum content?

As an equity + inclusion manager, I am wanting to honor the diverse lens and ages of attendees AND am cognizant of whose comfort I am centering, so wondering if others have a process/ procedure that they are willing to share.”

9. Bulk Convert TIFF files to JPG2000

By Jeanne Sojka

“We have been scanning hundreds of library documents as high resolution TIFF files. Is there a company or service that will batch convert them to JPG2000 for use on a website?”

10. Audio Tours

 By Keith Hardison

“Does anyone use audio tours inside a historic home? If so, what have been your experiences either positive or negative?”

In the meantime, we thought we’d take a look back at some of the new ground museums broke this year. Here is a sampling of the stories shared last year, one from each month of 2023:

January

Louvre will begin significantly limiting daily visitor numbers to create ‘more pleasurable viewing experience’

The Art Newspaper

In 2022, the Louvre received 7.8 million visitors—19% less than in 2019, albeit a rise of 170% from 2021 when French museums were closed for nearly five months. But the fall in attendance is not necessarily bad news. The Louvre director Laurence des Cars has hit the pause button and decided to limit daily entries to 30,000. Prior to Covid-19, the museum could welcome up to 45,000 people on its most crowded days. With 80% of tickets now issued via a reservation service, the new policy should stabilise attendance at between 7.5 million and 8 million visitors for 2023, the same levels experienced by the museum around 17 years ago. In a statement, Des Cars said she opted for the change “so the visit would be a pleasurable experience, especially for first-timers to the museum who make up 60% of entries.”

February

In Controversial Move, British Museums Will Avoid Using ‘Mummy’ to Describe Mummified Remains

ARTnews

The British Museum in London, the National Museums of Scotland and the Great North Museum: Hancock have decided to change when they use the term “mummy” as part of a broader re-examination of how exhibits are described, labeled, and presented to the public. Instead, they will use “mummified remains of” or “mummified person” to describe the Egyptian artifacts whenever possible. The shift in language to describe exhibits of these major Egyptian artifacts also follows an ongoing reexamination of colonialism in the United Kingdom, and the horrific way the mummified remains were treated in the past.

March

Two San Francisco museums launch joint curatorial position focused on art of the African diaspora

The Art Newspaper

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) and its close neighbour, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), are launching a joint curatorial position to generate exhibitions and programmes bridging the two institutions. With the title Assistant Curator of the Art of the African Diaspora, to rotate every three years, the job is designed to offer more opportunities to Black curators early in their careers and provide substantive experience to help advance them to the ranks of museum leaders. SFMoMA, which has an operating budget of more than $56m in contrast to MoAD’s $5m, will fully fund the salary of the new assistant curator who will work with the curatorial teams at both institutions and steward acquisitions of work by Black artists for SFMoMA (MoAD is non-collecting).

April

Madison Children’s Museum opens pay-what-you-can cafe

The Cap Times

Little John’s Lunchbox, the [Madison Children’s Museum’s] new cafe, is a pay-what-you-can restaurant, seemingly the first in a U.S. museum. The latest project of the nonprofit Little John’s Kitchens, invites the public to choose from half a dozen pre-packed entrées and then decide what to pay: a little, a lot, or nothing at all. Staff and volunteers prepare meals using fresh ingredients donated by grocery stores and farms—food that otherwise might go to waste. The cafe isn’t just for museum visitors. Like the museum’s prior cafe, it’s open to the public during all museum hours, inviting anyone to eat and explore the exhibits in the museum’s front area, called the Community Concourse, without paying admission. In that way, the museum is bringing the pay-what-you-can model to downtown Madison as a whole.

May

‘Not just a problem of science’: how the environmental crisis is also cultural

The Guardian

Nature, Crisis, Consequence [at] the New-York Historical Society juxtaposes classics of 19th-century American naturalism with works by artists from communities largely left out of the historical narratives that these works have been central in enshrining. [The exhibit] contextualiz[es] classic 19th-century Hudson River school paintings by surrounding them with work made by groups who had largely been excluded from the histories told about these times and places. [Curator Dr Wendy Nālani E Ikemoto] hopes that Nature, Crisis, Consequence will push audiences’ understanding further and help them connect the links between history, civil rights and the climate crisis. She believes that, ultimately, filling out these stories is not only correctly serving NYHS’s public, but also offering a better understanding of our nation’s past and present.

June

Juneteenth puts focus on preserving enslavement sites

Axios

Historic sites linked to enslavement and emancipation are getting new attention—and funding for preservation—after years of neglect. Pressure and new funding from public and private entities are beefing up demand to include the voices of enslaved people at sites. The “(Un)Known Project Augmented Reality App” in Louisville, Ky., [will] allow visitors to see images of enslaved people via an app near the Louisville Riverwalk as they looked toward freedom across the river in Indiana. The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is developing a mapping project to identify and locate all Black American cultural sites, including those linked to enslavement. It will be created on an app to help visitors locate sites, many of them relatively obscure.

July

Museums in Scotland required to pay Living Wage to apply for public funding

Museums Association

Museums and galleries in Scotland must pay all of their workers at least the real Living Wage to apply for grants, following changes to funding criteria introduced by Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS). The funding and development body is required to align its criteria to the Scottish Government’s Fair Work First policy, which applies to grants and public contracts being awarded by and across the public sector. Fair Work is also a priority area in MGS’s recently launched strategy for 2023-30. MGS has produced a Fair Work Resources for Employers page to help museums find support and guidance towards becoming a Fair Work employer. It encourages museums to seek accreditation from the Living Wage Foundation.

August

New augmented reality app turns objects at the Metropolitan Museum into digital gaming accessories

The Art Newspaper

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it has partnered with telecommunications company Verizon to launch Replica, a new app that allows users to engage with art from its collections in virtual space. The app can be used with Roblox, the popular gaming platform, where a new virtual version of the Met, including spaces like its Fifth Avenue façade and its Great Hall, can be explored. The new app, available for free on iOS and Android devices, encourages in-person trips, inviting visitors to scan certain objects that can then be transferred to Roblox. Designed for children and young adults, the app aims to present an immersive cultural and educational experience. It also marks the Met’s latest move to lure back visitors after seeing a major drop in attendance since the Covid-19 pandemic.

September

Museum Curators Evaluate A.I. Threat by Giving It the Reins

The New York Times

Curatorial staff at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art embraced a challenge posed by their chief curator: [could] A.I. replace them effectively[?] The experiment’s result, the exhibition “Act as if You Are a Curator,” is one of the first examples of A.I. organizing an art exhibition. ChatGPT, a prominent chatbot developed by the company OpenAI, was able to identify themes and develop a checklist of 21 artworks owned by the museum, along with directions of where to place them in the galleries. But the tool lacked the nuanced expertise of its human colleagues, producing a very small show with questionable inclusions, mistitled objects and errant informational texts. The human curators added their own commentary on the labels to point out its quirks and inaccuracies. Despite the errors, some Nasher curators said it was easy to see how A.I. could support [their work].

October

Penn Museum will no longer display exposed human remains

WHYY

Penn Museum has updated its policies regarding the handling of human remains, and decided to no longer put “exposed” remains on exhibition. Wrapped mummies or remains enclosed in a vessel will still be considered for display with signage forewarning visitors. But all visible human tissue — such as bones, teeth, and hair — will be removed from view. Displays may still involve recreations of human remains such as molds cast from the original. The policy extends to Penn Museum’s educational programs, which will use artificial remains for teaching purposes in most circumstances. The museum’s decision to bar display of remains goes further than most other museums. While most major institutions have policies regarding the ethical treatment of remains, few have banned them from view.

November

Barcelona museum throws open its doors to nudist visitors

Reuters

A Barcelona museum opened its doors to nudists on Saturday, holding a special tour during which visitors could ditch their clothes. The Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia held the 90-minute tour in collaboration with the Catalan Naturism Club. Visitors viewed the Bronzes of Riace exhibition of Luigi Spina’s photographs depicting two large Greek bronze statues of naked warriors from the 5th century BC that were discovered in 1972 near Riace, Italy. The museum’s website promised visitors the chance to “admire the works by posing in the same situation as they are, completely naked and surrounded by other bodies”.

December

Bloomberg to use Natural History Museum data for biodiversity tool

Responsible Investor

Launched in 2014, the Natural History Museum of London’s Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) measures the biodiversity makeup of a specific terrestrial area in comparison to a pristine area with minimal human interference. Ecosystem integrity is categorised on a scale from 100 percent (the naturally present biodiversity remains intact) down to 0. The BII is built on the Natural History Museum’s PREDICTS database, which incorporates peer-reviewed biodiversity data from over 50,000 sites across the globe, spanning more than 100 countries. Now Bloomberg plans to build a tool that combines the museum’s geospatial BII data with its own data on more than one million physical assets linked to nearly 50,000 global companies. This will allow companies to see their proximity to intact ecosystems and the scale of degradation to ecosystems near company operations over time.