We live in an AI-infused world, where AI is knowingly or unknowingly part of our everyday lives and work, and, in many ways, we are only at the beginning. Today's organizations and industries understand this and are responding in kind, with a mix of training, policies, and even usage applications. Museums are included in this mix, and many institutions have already established AI-based policies and training programs. In contrast, others have experimented with and continue to experiment with AI for their internal and external-facing work. Yet, it's fair to say that museums are not fully AI-integrated.

As is often said, quoted, and cited, "the public continues to view museums as highly trustworthy," a data point that has been annually tested, confirmed, and studied by the American Alliance of Museums; and this is not just within the U.S., it's international too. The trust bestowed on museums is the source of our strength. It provides the cultural community with the rationale, encouragement, and motivation to learn, continue understanding AI, its current and potential uses, and, importantly, where possible, lead in AI. Specifically in the areas of public transparency and usage. By that, we mean, what and how are museums and the cultural sector using AI? What functions and activities are now being performed by AI, or with AI support, to supplement staff, contractors, and volunteers? What, when, and where would the public encounter or experience AI content, whether whole, partial, or assisted?

These are new questions and considerations, each warranting additional time and careful discussion; this includes the implications of when, where, and how we use AI — and when we don't—and how, as an organization, not just as individuals, we decide to use AI or not.

Artificial intelligence is already part of our daily tools and practices. From writing assistants to image editors, from search engines to data analytics, AI is now woven into the way we work, communicate, and create. Museums, like all cultural institutions, are no exception.

Rather than denying or fearing this transformation, we believe it is our responsibility to embrace AI consciously and responsibly — to ensure that it strengthens, rather than weakens, our human values and our public mission.

1. Affirming the human at the core

We commit to keeping people — their creativity, judgment, and ethics — at the center of museum- and culture-based work, and to ensuring they remain in the loop and responsible whenever AI is used.

AI can support our work, but it cannot replace the professional intent and specialized knowledge that give culture meaning. Our exhibitions, programs, and communications will continue to reflect expert perspectives and critical thinking built through years of training and practice.

Museums exist to transmit human knowledge, memory, and interpretation. AI must serve our professional objectives. We are committed to maintaining clear professional direction: defining goals, questions, and intentions first — then selecting and shaping AI tools to support that vision.

2. Supporting our teams

We commit to training and accompanying museum professionals in understanding and using AI tools responsibly.

By helping staff to experiment, question, and evaluate AI, we strengthen their capacity to innovate while remaining faithful to the institution’s values.

Like any tool, AI requires a basic level of understanding so museum professionals can actively manage and direct its use, rather than becoming passive 'user-consumers' who overlook its inherent strengths and weaknesses.

Without a basic understanding of AI, two extremes are possible. Completely dismissing AI as a tool can lead to algorithmic aversion and mistrust in technology, preventing staff from benefiting from its strengths. On the other hand, blind trust can result in algorithmic loafing, encouraging people to accept its outputs without question and risk perpetuating its errors.

3. Being transparent and open

We commit to explaining how AI is used in our work — when it matters, and in ways that are meaningful and easy to understand.

Transparency is not about proving that our work is “human enough” but about building trust through openness: showing that we use AI thoughtfully, ethically, and in the service of knowledge sharing, always guided by professional standards.

We believe AI should support understanding, not blur it. When we use AI tools to create, interpret, or communicate, we will ensure that technology respects the origins, context, and intentions behind the works and ideas we engage with. This means being attentive to how AI systems are trained, what sources they draw from, and whether they honor the cultural and historical depth that museum work requires.

4. Encouraging collective reflection

We believe museums can play a vital role in helping society understand AI.

Through our programs, exhibitions, and communication, we aim to foster a broader public conversation on how technology influences creativity, knowledge, and identity. Audiences should be involved in it.

We recognize that AI is now everywhere, and the goal is not to push back against it but to guide its responsible adoption, helping audiences and professionals alike develop new perspectives on it. Museums can become spaces where visitors not only consume content but also question, experiment with, and co-create alongside AI. We will create exhibitions and programs that encourage the public to explore AI’s possibilities and limitations — fostering curiosity, critical thinking, and agency.

5. Valuing process over speed

We commit to building friction into our use of AI — not as inefficiency, but as a space for reflection, depth, and meaning-making.

Museums are not factories for content. We are guardians of memory, facilitators of dialogue, and spaces for contemplation. Speed and efficiency must never come at the cost of the slow, deliberate work that gives our mission its power.

Moments of constraint, pause, attention, and limitation are vital to depth and meaning. We will resist the pressure to optimize everything. Instead, we will design moments that constrain us and make us think — whether that means longer exhibition development cycles, collaborative curatorial processes, or programs that invite visitors to pause, question, and dwell.

6. Protecting the whole creative ecosystem

We commit to designing AI practices with awareness of their systemic impacts — on labor, culture, education, equity, and the communities we serve.

AI is not neutral. It reshapes who gets to tell stories, whose knowledge is valued, and how cultural memory is transmitted. We will not treat AI as a “bolt-on feature” but will consider its effects holistically from the beginning, ensuring it serves the public good.

For museums, this means:

• Labor: Ensuring AI augments rather than displaces museum workers; investing in upskilling and new roles rather than cost-cutting. We recognize that creative labor is increasingly precarious, and AI must not compound this instability.
• Equity: Interrogating whose voices, stories, and cultures are represented (or erased) in AI training data; actively working to counter bias
• Sustainability: Considering the environmental cost of AI infrastructure and prioritizing tools that align with ecological responsibility

7. Embracing experimentation and discovery

We commit to encouraging professional experimentation and exploration in our use of AI.

Museums are places of wonder and discovery, driven by thorough inquiry. AI’s ability to surprise us — to create unexpected connections, uncover hidden patterns, or generate outputs that challenge our assumptions — can be a valuable tool for professional exploration when used with proper methodology and careful oversight.

We will explore which stages of museum work gain the most from human–AI collaboration. This involves designing experimentation not as a closed process, but as an open one that includes public feedback from the beginning. Instead of relying only on professional expertise, we will create environments where museum professionals, together with collaborators and communities, can test new approaches, observe how visitors interact with them, and determine whether these approaches truly meet their needs.

We recognize that innovation requires space for trial and learning. We will support our teams in exploring AI’s potential while maintaining the professional standards and intellectual rigor that define museum practice.

Our Commitment

This pledge is a living document. As AI evolves, so too will our understanding of its role in museum work. We commit to revisiting these principles regularly, learning from our community, and adapting our practices in response to new challenges and opportunities.

We invite professionals in museums, cultural institutions, and heritage organizations to join us in this commitment — not as a final answer, but as a starting point for collective action.

Together, we can ensure that AI serves humanity’s deepest need: to create meaning, preserve memory, and imagine new futures — always with care, always with intention, always in dialogue with the past.

AI Disclosure: Please note that this article was written with AI assistance during the research and editing phases of the writing.https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamrozan/

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Originally published on my Linkedin on November 1, 2025.

Let's start with the basics. There are 365 days in a year, and on average, Americans work 226 of them. For comparison, it's 192 days in France, and 179 in Germany, with the hope, of course, that those 226, 192, or the 179 of those workdays are good ones. But, in truth, we have good days and bad days at work. No secret there, and as a colleague recently told me, "It's called work, and not play for a reason." So, what makes for a good or bad day?

When you think about your good days, those are the ones filled with successes. The presentation went well, the project was completed, the published article, the launch of a new program, and the opening of the exhibition you've been working on. Yet, that's a list of milestones, successes, moments worthy of celebration, and therefore likely to be remembered. In truth, our good days are far simpler.

You run into a friend after work, and she asks, "How was your day?" "Thanks," you say, "I had a good day. I got that report, which I'd been working on, submitted for review," or "I finally got to spend time on that project I've been meaning to get to, and I made some good progress."

Good days are concrete, where we can begin to see the results of our efforts and labor, and where our steps toward progress, however elusive, start to become real. Progress and accomplishments are linked. Most of our good days probably aren't memorable. Why would they be? Likewise, our bad days aren't either. The project review didn't go well. Edits still needed. Changes must happen. The budget will be less than expected. Leadership said "no." The contours of these actions and moments will, over time, fade and become part of the project's story. But these are the seeds of bad days; they aren't failures, like the car crashes in our careers that are memorable; they're just bad.

Think about the projects that you're currently working on. Your next steps aren't necessarily in order, like the instructions for Ikea furniture. Progress isn't linear, in which you do a and b, and then c follows. Projects instead move forward and backward, with challenges along the way. Issues to be addressed, people to be consulted, changes to be made, conversations to be had, budgets to be updated, memos to be written, meetings, forms, and more meetings.

Success or failure aren't the typical words we associate with our daily work or workdays. Sure, there are plenty of professions where performance can, and often is, measured daily, but that's a different conversation altogether. We think of good days and bad days. Only when we step back to plan, set a goal, or reflect on what we've done can we see both the trees and the forest.

What happens, however, when the project doesn't go well, the presentation is a dud, the exhibition doesn't open on time, the program doesn't attract an audience, and tickets aren't sold?

Imagine a program held at your local museum. The program, despite the team's efforts, attracts little attendance, receives no press coverage, and the feedback received shares a mediocre rating at best. The following Monday, the team comes together to debrief. The few measly surveys collected are passed around. There is plenty of commiseration about what went wrong, what worked, and what could have been better. More outreach and better promotion are discussed, and the so-and-so didn't help either. Plus, the weather was too nice outside, or it rained, and who could have predicted snow? Our last program didn't do this badly.

Should the program be considered a failure? What about the museum? Attendance is down compared to last year. And to make matters worse, a local reporter is asking to speak with the director, who is inquiring whether the museum's performance this year should be viewed as a failure.

Maybe you can't relate, but a version of this question was asked to Milwaukee Bucks basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo after their loss to the Miami Heat, which ended the team's 2023 season.

Reporter, Eric Nehm: "Do you view this season as a failure?"

Giannis Antetokounmpo: "Do you get a promotion every year in your job? No, right? So, every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work toward something — toward a goal. Maybe it's to get a promotion, to provide for your family, to build a house for them, to take care of your parents. You work toward a goal. It's not a failure. It's steps to success. I don't want to make it personal. There are always steps to it. Michael Jordan played fifteen years. Won six championships. The other nine years — was that a failure?"

I'll share the full transcript below, but it's a masterclass in perspective and composure, and I believe it's relevant to how we think about and evaluate our work. No matter what you do or where you work, Giannis's comments can offer valuable insights.

This might seem obvious, but as a reminder, Giannis isn't the only person on the court or even working for the Milwaukee Bucks. In fact, about 663 people (including Giannis) are employed by the team, according to a simple web search. We like to think of the individual, like the lone artist, inventor, or athlete, but for most of us, our work contributes to something bigger — a group effort, just like Giannis's. The museum isn't the sole toil of one individual, be it the director, or anyone. Nor is an exhibition the work of a single curator; it's the result of the entire organization, from the director down to the staff member checking tickets, cleaning the floors, and stocking the bathrooms. And work isn't easily measured by successes or failures, despite our eagerness to do so.

Despite our obsession with success, failure has its own fans and apparently visitors. In the summer of 2016, psychologist Samuel West was vacationing in Zagreb, Croatia, where he visited the Museum of Broken Relationships. This led him to have his own failure-based epiphany: "I just thought: Woah, if they can do that, then I should open the Museum of Failure. It was kind of an eureka moment," as shared in a 2017 Smithsonian Magazine article. A year later, West would open his own museum in Helsingborg, Sweden, where visitors could celebrate iconic and not-so-iconic failures. Failures, as designated by the museum, would include the Bic for Her pens, Amazon Fire Phone, Google Glass, Sony Betamax, and Coke II. But like its theme, the Museum of Failure is itself a failure. The site lists thirteen global locations, including Washington, DC, which, being about failures, has since shuttered all of them.

If the Museum of Failure is, or was, for the public, then the annual Mistakes Were Made session, occurring each year at the American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting, is for the museum field. The Annual Conference, the largest gathering of museum-folk each year, descends on a different American city each year. It's often the Mistakes Were Made session that's a conference favorite, a highly attended, standing-room-only session. With each Mistake that's shared, serving as an act of kindness and devotion to the field itself and those who call museums their place of work. Museums, by and large, are tax-exempt, 501(C)(3) organizations, "commonly referred to as charitable organizations" according to the IRS. This matters, as museums, like all nonprofits, are in the business of storytelling, sharing their successes, and highlighting their impact. Sharing stories of projects that went awry, programs that flopped, and initiatives that fizzled is anything but the norm. Why would they be, when as charitable organizations, we're dependent on donor dollars? And donors, of course, want to give to charities that can do the most good. Which is why the Mistakes Were Made session is so important; without those stories, the field can't grow.

Our organizations are best suited to tell the big stories, such as the opening of a new gallery, funding for new positions, or major research and initiatives. These are the programs and activities that naturally rely on the skills and services of our communications departments and teams. Our challenge lies in sharing smaller stories, the micro-innovations that feel significant to us but rarely get news coverage. We tend to see them as internal updates rather than stories worth celebrating.

This is another benefit of the 'Mistakes Were Made' session, as it peels back the process and opens the hood for learning. The examples serve as a reminder of how work is accomplished and how progress in any field is methodical—step by step, through the good days and the bad.

Working not for so-called successes or failures, but for the sake of progress. For learning. For incremental improvements.

Special thanks to Keira Hamilton for her editorial insights and review.

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• Crowdsourcing a Database of Permanent Museum Closings - Documenting and learning from museums that have closed their doors.

April 27, 2023, transcript of a question and answer between reporter Eric Nehm and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Reporter, Eric Nehm: "Do you view this season as a failure?"

Giannis Antetokounmpo: "Oh my god. You asked me the same question last year, Eric … okay?"

"Do you get a promotion every year in your job? No, right? So every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No."

"Every year you work, you work toward something — toward a goal. Maybe it's to get a promotion, to provide for your family, to build a house for them, to take care of your parents. You work toward a goal. It's not a failure. It's steps to success."

"I don't want to make it personal. There are always steps to it. Michael Jordan played fifteen years. Won six championships. The other nine years — was that a failure? That's what you're telling me? I'm asking you a question, yes or no? Exactly. So why you ask me that question? It's the wrong question."

"There's no failure in sports. There are good days, bad days. Some days you're able to be successful, some days you're not. Some days it's your turn, some days it's not your turn. And that's what sports is about. You don't always win. Sometimes other people are going to win. This year somebody else is going to win. Simple as that."

"We're going to come back next year, try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better. Not have ten days straight playing bad basketball. And hopefully we can win a championship."

"So, 50 years from 1971 to 2021 that we didn't win a championship — was that 50 years of failure? No, it was not. It was steps to it. We were able to win one, and hopefully we're able to win another one."

"Because you asked me the same question last year. I wasn't in the right mindspace to answer the question back, but I remembered it."

"So I'm not trying to make it personal. I don't mean to single you out. I just wanted to be clear."

Thank you for reading. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn and Patron View for more.

Originally published on my LinkedIn.

In 2018, Boston's Logan Airport opened a children's literature-themed kids' play space. With colorful graphics and some climbing structures, it highlights some of the famous children's literature that hails from Massachusetts. Seven years later, the space feels outdated and a little worn around the edges. And, if I may say so, it's missing some heavy hitters—children's book illustrator and author extraordinaire Ed Emberley, along with Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, best known for creating the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While the space could and should be much better, it's still there. I was glad to find it while waiting for a flight with my family, not too long ago. My son made full use of the stylized book-shaped structures to climb.

Like many places, the focus on children often reads as an afterthought, which might be understandable for an airport because it's ultimately an adult space—one that's busy, crowded, and where safety and security are top priorities. Yet, airports are highly aware of the variety of needs, demands, and wants of those flying and spending time in their spaces, including the individuals who work there. I had been thinking about the kids' space at Logan Airport when I perused the New York Times from August 31. I was immediately delighted that the Sunday paper included a favorite section of mine, the New York Times for Kids, but I quickly became disappointed when I started reading it.

For the uninitiated, the New York Times for Kids started in 2017 and has published about 100 issues since then. Each issue is kid-focused, designed, inspired, and most importantly, informed by kids. Every issue is a keepsake, featuring the best artists and illustrators, leading writers, and most importantly, the voices of hundreds, maybe thousands, of kids. Take, for example, their final edition. Some of the stories included were about detecting misinformation, expanding voting rights to 16 and 17-year-olds, the decline in public school attendance and its impact, tariffs, a list of the twelve most important stories that Times writers are following, and much more. These stories are alongside games, profiles, coloring activities, multiple how-to articles, impressive art, and content squeezed into nearly every available space.

For me, the section was often the best of the paper. Each issue was unique, exploring the widest and most interesting array of topics—important topics, funny topics—in the simplest of manners, without dumbing down or dismissing the intelligence of kids. Fans of the section know that each cover clearly conveys the Editor’s warning in all caps that "THIS SECTION SHOULD NOT BE READ BY GROWN-UPS." Yet, despite such clear instructions, I read every section and often encouraged other grown-ups to do the same. And, as a parent, I was excited for the future when I could share the Times for Kids with my child.

Which is why I'm dismayed, despite its fans and accolades, the August 31 issue is its last. In their words, "Attention NYT Kids readers! We've got some good news, and some sad news. First, the sad. This is the last-ever print issue of The New York Times for Kids. That's right: After eight years and nearly 100 issues, the print section is coming to an end. (Sniff!)" This is more than a "sniff," it's a wail.

Mark Wilson, in his Fast Company article "The 'New York Times' Is So, So Stupid for Killing Its Kids Section," writes, "The decision to kill a rare, analog piece of publishing—in an era when parents are looking for resources for their children to unplug—seems remarkably short-sighted." I have to agree with Mark. Parents are looking for these resources. So are teachers, homeschool families, and yes, even museum professionals—me included. And I'd argue that the section offered valuable real estate for its writers, providing an alternative space to share their work with a younger audience.

As for the rationale, The Times offered up the following in their Times Insider section, "After eight years in print, the final edition of the Kids section appears in Sunday's newspaper. The Times Magazine, which has housed the project, is undergoing a digital redesign and expansion and is shifting its priorities in order to realize this vision." All of which is fine and often necessary, but how does this relate to kids and parents looking for such content? In another article from around the same period, the Times writes about the great lengths that Tanglewood, the 87-year-old summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is going to attract, but also engage children and their parents. Or, the papers continued coverage of Luddite Clubs, where teens espouse technology and social media-free lives.

When I was a parent of an infant, I often found it surprising that the same aisles selling pacifiers also sold pretend phones—phones meant for teething and pretend phones for play. Experiences like that made me realize how common screens are in children’s lives and how often they are included in kids' spaces and environments designs. The kids' area at the local car dealership has a colorful rug, some toys, and a few discarded books, all arranged around a television. The same applies to children's dentists and doctors' offices. It also holds true for family-friendly restaurants. It’s not just local businesses and the medical community; it seems everyone with a child depends on screens. I understand, I've been through it; it's simple and effective. Even when you try not to use a phone or device, the parent next to you suggests that you do, even sharing what program their kid enjoys most.

Which brings us back to Logan's kids' space. The fact that they have a dedicated area is fantastic, and judging by the wear on the structures, it's been well-used. That's why we need not only more kids' spaces but also better ones—spaces where children can play, jump, climb, explore, learn, discover, and even read a print edition of the New York Times. Spaces designed for kids that celebrate their presence. Areas that provide opportunities for parents to play and learn with their children, while also offering time and space for themselves. For museums and cultural centers, it means celebrating and embracing our wonderful children's museums and encouraging adult museums also to embrace their kids' spaces, and see them for what they are as valued, needed, and essential spaces for children and their caregivers. This shift involves moving from traditional drop-in studios with limited activities to hybrid models of learning, exploring, playing, and making. It combines the best features of children's play areas, with slides and climbing structures, with our drop-in studios, where art making, science experiments, and reading are offered, along with artworks and objects—yes, our collections. Spaces like this are not only easy to imagine but also essential and would be appreciated by our youngest visitors and their grown-ups. And, picture this: the next time you’re visiting a museum with family in tow, you’ll be able to spend time in such a space where not only your child feels welcome, but you also feel engaged, with coffee in hand and a smile on your face, knowing the trip was worth it.

Special thanks to Keira Hamilton for reading and editorial support.

Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn and Patron View for more.

Originally published on my LinkedIn.

When it comes to PR, "you’re either the first, the last, or the most." I don't know where I picked it up or its origins, but it's a rule I often repeat and share. Mainly because it's true. Think about sports: we celebrate the team with the most wins, we bemoan the team with the fewest, and we marvel at athletes with the most three-point shots, passes, assists, and so on. That's another way to think about the first, last, and the most. The sports analogy only goes so far when considering museums and cultural organizations, as there are no worst museums of a season or a last-place finisher. The analogy also works for museums and cultural institutions, and helps think about inputs and outputs, resources and outcomes.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) exemplifies this rule since it's the largest museum in the U.S., and arguably, it receives the most coverage as well. For the Met, being "first" means being the largest museum, a status that comes with advantages, like greater access to resources. More resources mean better collections, exhibitions, and projects. Think the Met Gala, and any one of the museum's famed galleries.

Rare are the chances to be the "first," and pursuing the "most" is often an elusive pursuit, as a recent New York Times article on Guinness World Records from August 13, 2025, confirms. While it's not impossible, it's almost sure that no other museum will grow in size and budget to rival the Met, so being the largest is unlikely for another institution.

There are, however, scores of museums that gain immediate attention for being the "first" of their kind. Arguably, the most famous is the Museum of Ice Cream, which opened its doors in 2016 in New York City. A more recent example, from this year, is the BBQ Museum in Kansas City. Being the "first" will get you all kinds of attention from the public and the media. The challenge for these organizations is to maintain momentum—especially in year two, when attendance and media interest typically decline as the sophomore slump sets in. It's true that being "first" could apply to new programs or services, and not just to a new museum. While those efforts might get some attention, more often than not, they don't become major news stories. Yes, there are always exceptions, too.

I'll talk about "most" in another post, so for now, let's also consider the benefits of being last. What if, instead of chasing being the "first" or the best of something, we consider what it might mean for a museum or cultural organization to be "last"? This question invites us to rethink how we define success.

Being the "last" offers two immediate advantages that shouldn't be ignored: generating interest and intrigue from the public and the press. One of my favorite examples is the last Blockbuster Video store. In 2004, at the peak of Blockbuster's success, the company had 9,000 stores worldwide. Today, only one store remains, located in Bend, Oregon. This store, which is the subject of a documentary, has a global fan base, with visitors coming daily to see it, take photos, and buy merchandise. It also garners almost weekly coverage from regional, national, and international media. How many stores can claim that?

Being the "last" certainly presents a variety of challenges and, interestingly, provides a unique way to identify overlooked and forgotten audiences. For example, households still relying on dial-up internet access—numbering 163,000 homes according to 2023 data from the U.S. Census Bureau—will soon lose internet service, as AOL is ending its dial-up service this month, according to a recent New York Times article.

Another example, reported in September 2023 by the New York Times, is Netflix’s discontinuation of its DVD Subscription Services. If you can recall, there was a time before streaming movies when you ordered a DVD, and it arrived by mail. When Netflix ended its DVD-by-mail service, it was still shipping out 50,000 DVDs each week.

The AOL and Netflix stories are about being the last. The last gets coverage. They also highlight an audience that's now without the services they once relied on, creating an audience growth opportunity for another business.

Being the "last" means embracing the role of the underdog, rather than embracing something new or trying to be the first in something. Instead, you’re holding on to programs, services, amenities, and even technologies that might be outdated but still have an audience and following. Even if the following has dwindled in size, it might still be worth holding on to. For museums and cultural organizations, this involves finding those DVDs available through the mail and AOL dial-up programs and services. Programs and offerings that you may already have but could use a dusting off, or that are up for grabs elsewhere. Efforts that offer a potential win for your organization by aligning with the work you do and the audience's needs.

New is exciting, especially when it's also the "first," but there is something equally worthwhile about being the "last." The news stories about dial-up and DVDs are told from the company's perspectives; however, there is another perspective that deserves our attention: that of the users. Those who relied on dial-up and DVDs by mail are now without them. Eliminating such services may be a story of progress. It's also a story of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, offering a reminder not to lose audiences in the pursuit of the new or the chance to be "first."

Special thanks to Keira Hamilton for reading support.

Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn and Patron View for more.

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In its fifth year, the 2025 Civic Season has taken on a forward-looking lean with the launch of a new featured program, What's Your Wish For U.S.? Across the United States, over two dozen participating museums are inviting visitors to imagine the future of the country in 10, 50 or 100 years – and add that wish to a living mural hosted at a museum, or online at OnOur250th.org, created by The New York Historical.

What makes these Wish Walls particularly significant for the museum field is how they put today's visitors in conversation with those of the future – the people, and nation, that we will be in 50 or 100 years. Visitors don't just consume historical information; they contribute to an ongoing national dialogue about values, aspirations, and civic responsibility.

The flagship Wish Wall will be at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, where the Civics Pavilion features daily programming in addition to the wish-writing activity.

From past to future, in the nation's capital

At the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., What's Your Wish For U.S. is the centerpiece of the Civics Pavilion. Working with Made By Us, we commissioned 25-year-old graphic designer Katie Costa to create a 28-foot-long mural, where the visitors to the museum will be invited to write, share, and see wishes from other visitors on the mural. Costa's 28-foot mural features "portals" to the years 2035, 2075, and 2125, where visitors can post their written wishes for the future. The installation asks fundamental questions: Who will we be? What kind of country do we want to build?

By July 4, we imagine tens of thousands of wishes covering the mural, creating a rich tapestry of ideas, hopes, wishes from the public, visitors to the museum, who hope, wish for a bright future. The wall, the wishes, creates an opportunity for us to talk with the public, with one another, visitor to visitor about their wishes, and importantly, the actions that each of us can take to help that wish come true.

Many of those wishes after July 4 will be turned into a time capsule, held at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, to be reopened on Juneteenth 2075—fifty years from now.

The wish wall provided the museum an opportunity to fill the space every day with civics programming, from zine making to seed garden building to a visit from the Thomas Jefferson re-enactor at Monticello. A full calendar of events includes chocolate sampling, curator talks, meet the artist, and more. The robust set of programs and presence of the wish wall compelled D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to issue a proclamation for Civic Season to be held in D.C. between Juneteenth and July 4th 2025.

Wishes find their way to ribbons, fabric and seed paper

From the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh to the Idaho State History Museum in Boise, museums nationwide are installing similar wish walls that invite visitors to envision and articulate their hopes for America's future. This represents a fundamental shift in how museums engage with their communities.

The initiative emerges from a recognition that as America approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026, museums have a unique opportunity—and perhaps responsibility—to help citizens engage not just with historical narratives, but with the ongoing work of democracy and nation-building.

At the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, being built in Medora, ND, the staff offices include a wish wall focused on conservation, given Roosevelt's presidential focus on conservation efforts. Their wish wall runs from World Environment Day, June 5, to National Wildlife Day, September 4.

As part of the 250th commemorative exhibition, "Give Me Liberty: Virginia & The Forging of a Nation," on display at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, visitors are encouraged to think about their actions in helping liberty grow for future generations. The in-exhibition interactive, "Our Living Revolution of Ideas," asks the visitor: As you reflect on your experiences and consider the legacy of the American Revolution, what action can you take to continue planting the seeds of liberty in Virginia liberty? Taking a piece of seed paper, write down one thing you can do for your community. Plant it and watch as beautiful wildflowers grow from your idea!

At the Idaho State Museum, they're using fabric; at the Heurich House Museum in Washington, D.C. they are creating a ribbon walkway visible from the street. In all, 30 museums are taking part – see the full list here.

"This is an invitation for visitors to dream with unrestrained possibility and to wish for something greater than each of us can accomplish alone," explains Katie Costa, the 26-year-old graphic designer who created the flagship Wish Wall at the Smithsonian. "This piece is a reminder that our future is not fixed. It's ours to reimagine, together."

A lasting legacy – in the public interest

As the project was getting off the ground, The New York Historical came in with a bold idea to create a simple, easy to use web platform inviting birthday wishes for America's 250th. The design emulates a wall of sticky notes and is open to anyone to participate. OnOur250th.org has already had participation by hundreds of classrooms, community groups, and individuals. It was recently featured on Morning Joe and in the New York Times.

The wishes shared online at OnOur250th.org will enter The New York Historical's collection, while the wishes added to the Smithsonian installation have the chance to be included in a 50-year time capsule stored at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, to be opened during Civic Season 2075. This creates a direct line of communication between today's museum visitors and Americans 50 years in the future—transforming momentary museum visits into contributions to historical record.

The implications for museum practice are profound. Rather than simply preserving artifacts from the past, these wish walls are actively creating primary source materials for future historians and museum professionals. They're documenting not just what happened, but what people hoped would happen.

Museums interested in hosting Wish Walls can learn more at thecivicseason.com. The initiative continues through July 4, 2025, with many installations extending beyond Civic Season.

By Adam Rozan & Caroline Klibanoff

Note: Originally published June 17, 2025 on the Center for the Future of Museums Blog-https://www.aam-us.org/2025/06/17/whats-your-wish-for-u-s-turns-history-museums-into-future-imagining-incubators/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamrozan/

Explore More

• School Groups, GDP, and Our Community Interdependence - How museums create community value through civic participation
• Top 5 Reasons Why Museums Close - Understanding what keeps museums sustainable and relevant
• What Can Pokemon Go Mean for Museums? - Digital innovation in visitor engagement

Originally published on MuseumNext.

"No one thought it strange that a boy and a girl, each carrying a book bag and an instrument case and who would normally be in school, were visiting a museum. After all, about a thousand school children visit the museum each day."

– From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler

In my search to understand the state of museums today and how the field continues to emerge from the Pandemic, I found one area that I had yet to consider, let alone understand its recovery; that of school groups. Yes, the iconic museum field trip, with teachers and chaperones, yellow school buses, and docents touring children through galleries. Those visits are down, which may say more about the economy and employment than museums.

For museums, school group attendance should be a predictable roster of visiting schools, grades served, and curriculum connections made. Each institution with an established program, school, and teacher relationships.

Despite this seemingly stable program, museums are seeing a drop in their school group numbers. Why?

We'll get to this, but first, join me on this tangent as l explore the Gross Domestic Product, more commonly known as the GDP, which is used to measure and report on a nation's economy. If you know that measurement, you can measure an industry's impact within that economy, such as museums. In 2016, the American Alliance of Museums, or AAM, did just that. They found that U.S. museums contribute $50 billion to the nation's GDP as part of the $1.10 Trillion contributed by the arts and culture. AAM's executive director at the time wrote, "The numbers tell an indisputable story about museums as true economic engines for their communities, supporting jobs and wages that are vital to the health of their hometowns." This number also represents employment numbers, supporting 726,200 jobs, with 372,100 working directly at a museum. If you've ever wondered what a museum is, it's an organization that's "also essential to the national economy — generating GDP, stimulating jobs, and contributing taxes."

In my 2023 interview with Craig Fugate, FEMA's Obama-era Administrator, he shared something that struck me at the time as inherently important but not widely discussed within the broader museum and cultural community: that of the economy. When I asked him to define a museum's role in a community, he said, "…importantly, it's the recognition that museums are also part of the economic structure of their communities, so they are part of the economy. When people come to see the collections, that's foot traffic, which also is part of how the museum contributes to the economy, so it's both an economic issue and a cultural and educational one, as museums offer services to the general public." If you read the AAM economic report, you'll note that the language is similar. Fugate first speaks to the typical role of museums, that of education and collections, but his real answer is financial.

Now, back to the school group discussion. In the wake of the Pandemic, organizations found themselves exploring new ways of working, some out of necessity due to staffing cuts and depleted resources, and, for many organizations, those changes were less siloed, more innovative, and often audience-focused, as they had to be. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, is one such museum. Who used this moment to rethink their staid drop-in docent-led tour offerings. Where visitors are greeted by the friendly waiting docent flanking the information desk. To a new, in the gallery effort, what they're calling a "station-based" approach. Where docents now explore shared themes and topics with visitors and "station" themselves in galleries throughout the museum. This new approach has improved collaboration among educators and docents, increased visitor interaction numbers, and offered docents a greater variety of artworks that can be included; for example, smaller artworks that were previously challenging to discuss on tour are now fair game. While the museum has found an improvement here, it is also one of many museums seeing a drop in their school group tour numbers.

"The pandemic was absolutely devastating for field trips. They went off a cliff, even when schools went back to in-person," shared Susie Wilkening, a museum research guru, in an April 2024 Education Weekly article. "Statistics bear this out. In the spring of 2023, Wilkening Consulting and the American Alliance of Museums surveyed 340 museum directors from around the country on post-pandemic visitation. Forty percent of respondents reported that they continued to experience lower on-site visitation from K-12 teachers and students."

Marla Van Thournout, the manager of volunteer engagement at the Nelson Atkins, attributes the decrease in school group tours as part of a more significant national issue. That speaks of:

• A shortage of school bus drivers.
• A shortage of substitute teachers.
• Prevailing school and teacher concerns stemming from the so-called pandemic brain drain and missed classroom time.

Van Thournout and her colleagues are right, "Logistic and funding may also be preventing schools from returning to on-site field trips. Educational researchers have suggested that some schools prioritize resources toward activities that may improve student achievement on standardized tests over experiences like field trips, whose results aren't as quantifiable. That may be especially true for schools struggling to help students recover from pandemic-era learning declines." For other schools still pursuing field trips, curriculums and testing now influence site locations, as reported in a December 2023 New York Times story, "Field Trips Today: Museums, but Also Wastewater Plants."

It's not just the many challenges confronting our teachers and the worries of school administrators. While science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, are having their heyday, the arts have become marginalized. "Full Steam Ahead for STEM" slogans aside, there is no room at the table for art, and STEM isn't expanding anytime soon for STEAM. Today's university students, consumed with future debt and employment prospects, married with university tactics of following monied-based pursuits, have left little or no room for the arts and other humanities degrees. When West Virginia University in 2023 "sent layoff notices to 76 people, including 32 tenured faculty members, as part of its decision to cut 28 academic programs — many in areas like languages, landscape architecture, and the arts." As to why, E. Gordon Gee, WVU's president, shared in a Washington Post article that "the cuts were necessary to free up resources for higher-demand programs" or in the interests of "students who are fleeing to majors more closely aligned to employment." If Gee is correct, the arts and humanities don't support the economy, let alone the almost 1 in 5 Americans who speak a language other than English in their homes.

It's hard to argue with students' concerns about their future employment prospects, student debt, and the direction taken by many universities if it wasn't so maddening and misinformed. For all the talk of STEM and its economic importance, it's a three-legged stool without the arts. "Nationally, the nonprofit arts and culture sector generated $151.7 billion of economic activity in 2022 — $73.3 billion in spending by arts and culture organizations and an additional $78.4 billion in event-related expenditures by their audiences. The industry supported over 2.6 million jobs, provided $101 billion in personal income to residents, and generated $29.1 billion in tax revenue to local, state, and federal governments," as reported in an October 2023 Forbes article. Also, Mayor Hillary Schieve of Reno, Nevada, shared the perspective that "Arts activity creates thousands of direct and indirect jobs and generates billions in government and business revenues. The arts also make our cities destinations for tourists, help attract and retain businesses, and play an important role in the economic revitalization of cities and the vibrancy of our neighborhoods."

Does this mean that today's middle schooler, college student, or working parent will be a professional artist, work for a cultural organization, or paint murals? No, it doesn't, but it does offer them something else, according to writer Daniel Pink. In his 2005 book, A Whole New Mind, argues, "The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers … We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical, linear, computerlike capabilities of the Information age to an economy and a society built on the inventive, empathetic, big-picture capabilities of what's rising in its place, the Conceptual Age."

The arts matter and are economically vital, and it's essential to realize that many of the issues that our schools, teachers, and students now deal with are not local but national, such as the plight of substitute teachers or bus drivers. Two examples. Both are a national headache-turned migraine. Like any industry, our institutions are equally impacted by staffing shortages, supply chains, inflation, and other issues. Museums contribute to the GDP and are subject to the same economic challenges as everyone else; our success can only be realized by active participation in our communities. When our schools are dealing with staffing issues, we then are also dealing with staffing issues, and the problem becomes ours to support.

Another Craig Fugate and FEMA term is "Whole Community," which means that everyone, not just the government, is responsible for emergency preparedness and mitigation. A disaster is a disaster; some are economic, some are natural, and others stretch beyond classification, like the Pandemic. In the U.S., a shortage of substitute teachers and bus drivers is a disaster. Yet, it's not an American story alone; Michele Stockley, the head of learning at Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria, shares that "across our network of other museum educators, we're hearing that the return to pre-COVID visitation is very slow. Due to the pressures placed by the increased cost of living, increased transport costs for schools, and cost of replacement teachers to cover teachers leading visits are making excursions costs prohibitive for many families/schools." And it's not just staffing and rising costs; there are also other, "challenges for teachers in organising visits including more paperwork and administration activities, risk assessment associated with organising excursions and teacher shortages." Stockley also shared that if that wasn't enough, they also don't have enough buses.

To solve these issues, we need a whole community approach, solutions that marry willingness, and the financial resources to resolve them. In a provocative New York Times Op-Ed from February 2024, former Queens Museum of Art director Laura Raicovich and PowerHouse Arts board chair Laura Hanna write, "To Save Museums, Treat Them Like Highways," in which they pose that cultural organizations need federal infrastructure funding to cover the approximate "40 percent — that involves infrastructure costs like keeping the lights on and paying the staff salaries." Understanding why museums need sustainable funding models is critical — for more on what causes museums to close, the economics behind closures reveals patterns every museum professional should know.

She's right; what's called for and needed is a national infrastructure for our schools, communities, and cultural resources, serving as a foundational underpinning, with framing provided by individuals, communities, and organizations like museums.

If history is correct, and our memories haven't washed over our Pandemic experiences, then each of us, in our own way, had to reinvent ourselves. We did so personally and professionally, as did our organizations. We saw our museums become anew online and many in direct service to their communities, where parking lots became WIFI hubs, and car parades became vehicles for culture and connections. Our buildings served as food distribution centers, testing centers, and vaccine clinics.

Our Pandemic-based work is still needed, as is that reimagination we saw during those dark days and the need to serve. What's called for now is a new commitment to one another, our audiences, and our communities, a contract that reads, "We're all in it together." A decline in school group visits is not permissible, as our children can't be without a background in the humanities, and creativity is our new productivity. Or, as author Samuel W. Franklin writes in his book The Cult of Creativity, "In a world in which every last thing is being quantified, in which science, technology, engineering, and math get beefed up at every level of education while art and humanities programs are cut, any attempts to push back and restore such art education opportunities should be celebrated."

Explore More

For deeper insights into the themes explored in this article, consider these related pieces:

• Being Social: What Museums Need to Understand for the Future — Exploring how museums must evolve their social engagement strategies to remain relevant.
• Top 5 Reasons Why Museums Close — A conversation examining the sustainability challenges museums face and the economic factors behind closures.
• The Father of Third Place: Ray Oldenburg — Understanding how museums serve as vital community gathering spaces beyond home and work.
• How Museums Are Helping Communities Beat the Heat — Examples of museums stepping up as community service providers in times of need.

This article explores how organizations can leverage games like Pokémon Go to engage new audiences amid the decline in museum attendance.

On a recent Saturday, I met with friends at a café in Old Town, Alexandria. Over coffee and baked goods, I couldn't help but notice that besides the families and couples, the farmer market shoppers and tourists, students with laptops out and opened books, another group was present and congregating in large and small numbers. As my friends and I took a post-meal walk, the ever-present groups of individuals walking, chatting, with faces drawn towards their phones, and their phones connected to hidden battery packs, and the occasional costume or rabbit-like ears adornments that we had stumbled upon Pokémon Go. For the uninitiated, Pokémon Go is a highly popular, global, phone-based augmented reality game akin to a scavenger hunt, in which the user can detect Pokémon or other creatures played using your phone's GPS.

To any Pokémon fans out there, I hope my description will satisfy them, my goal is not to discuss the game's intricacies but rather its cultural and social significance. My friends were mildly confused when they saw people playing the game. Understandable as Pokémon first appeared in 2016, yet what was even more surprising was that these were not kids or teens but adults of all ages, including the grey-haired and silvery-streaked Gen Xers, and some with children in tow.

What we unknowingly stumbled upon was the Pokémon GO Fest. And, while this weekend drew the Pokémon community out in large numbers, it's not just the occasional festival. Rather, as a Wall Street Journal article reported on the rising trend of Pokémon Go travelers, vacationers, and even honeymooners, this is in addition to the game's everyday play. Journalist Salvador Rodriguez's article, "The Adults Who Book Vacations Based on…. Pokémon? Boomers, honeymooners, and celebrities are among travellers who pick destinations where they can 'catch' digital monsters." He writes this "unique breed: adults who incorporate the mobile-phone game Pokémon Go into their travels. The game is augmented reality, which overlays cute monsters known as Pokémon onto your real-world surroundings. Imagine strolling Rome's cobblestone streets when suddenly your phone vibrates, and a rare creature is perched near the Colosseum." The article describes a 62 and 59-year-old couple that has traveled and played the game across Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia. Or, of a family who traveled to Egypt to play the game, capture a rare character, and dress up in Pokémon Go costumes with family and friends for the ultimate fan photograph in front of the pyramids.

My first introduction to Pokémon Go was in 2016, when my friend and then-colleague Katrina Latka and I realized that our museum-goers were searching for Pokémon characters inside the galleries at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, MA. This realization led us to create a Pokémon Go guide for the museum, which explained the game, provided tips for playing safely in the museum, tips for extending your battery life while playing, and recommendations to visit during free and discounted admission dates.

Since then, I have stumbled across Pokémon Go meetups in different cities across the country and several times abroad. And, on one strange day, while in Portland, Oregon, my wife and I ventured, in what can only be described as traveling back in a time moment, to catch the city's MAX Light Rail train, some 260 feet (making it the deepest subway station in the U.S.), beneath Washington Park's famed rose gardens; to find ourselves boarding a crowded subway car, standing room only, in which each passenger was dressed as a Zombie. The train would eventually empty, and being the curious types, we followed the Zombie crowd, which was growing in number, to a Michael Jackson Thriller song gathering with hundreds of participants and even more spectators.

Seeing the Pokémon Go-ers and reminiscing on my Thriller experience (which I've now learned is also an annual October event called Thrill the World) reminded me of Culture Track's 2017 report, which remains an important and contemporary proclamation. They wrote, "Cultural organizations are facing a paradigm shift. For today's audiences, the definition of culture has democratized nearly to the point of extinction. It's no longer about high versus low or culture versus entertainment; it's about relevance or irrelevance. Activities that have traditionally been considered culture and those that haven't are now on a level playing field. With the traditional notion of "culture" no longer being a distinguishing factor, it is up to cultural organizations to reassert culture's purpose in an increasingly complex world, by powerfully articulating and delivering on their essential impact."

Pokémon Go, Thriller Fest, Barbieheimer, or your community's comic or manga conventions are equal in our communities' eyes, wallets, and attendance to the latest exhibition, gallery opening, and museum program.

It is also worth discussing a series of recent and concerning headlines relating to museums, including this March New York Times article titled "Audience Snapshot: Four Years After Shutdown, a Mixed Recovery" and another from ArtNews, also from March, "UK Museums Still Have Yet to See Pre-Pandemic Attendance, New Report Reveals." This is backed by research from the NEA's 2022 Survey of Public Participation and the 2023 American Alliance of Museums Survey of Museum-Goers, where 2/3 of U.S. museums have self-reported that their attendance has not returned to pre-pandemic attendance.

Are Pokémon Go and other activities to blame? No, there is no connection. However, it's hard to ignore the continued toehold that Pokémon Go and other activities like it have. Even consider the other end of the participation spectrum with events like mud runs or color runs (mud runs are obstacle-based races that include, as the name implies, mud and a color run is where the runners are doused in powdered colors throughout the race), have increased in popularity, participation, and regularity. Correlation does not imply causation, but as a Slate.com article on the phrase's usage writes, "It sure as hell provides a hint."

A Washington Post article from October 2023 on the NEA's study also highlights the increase in digital usage and the decline in museum, theater, and film-going attendance. Merlin, the birding app is proof of this. And, while I might be the only person I know who has not downloaded the Cornell University app, millions have. A March 2024 headline says it best: "I Can't Stop Using This Free App That Uses AI to Identify Birds." USA.com writer Elizabeth Weise wrote in a June 2024 article, "I'm not a bird watcher, but I've become a bird listener ever since downloading a bionic ear app to my phone." With 96,000 reviews and 12 million downloads by May of 2023 alone, Merlin has become ubiquitous, and birding is a hobby seemingly quotidian. Like Pokémon Go, Merlin travels with you, and your ability to see and hear more birds expands exponentially as you put on more miles and attend more meetups and gatherings.

Birding, like many activities and hobbies, took off during the pandemic, when our lives and society were topsy-turvy, reorienting our priorities, adjusting how we live, work, play, and as aptly stated in this March 2021 sub-headline from USA Today, "During the pandemic, many people found new joys, new perspectives, and new connections. Some people found themselves." How could it not? Over 7 million lives were lost globally, with over 1 million alone in the U.S. dying from COVID-19, and today, 1 in 13 U.S. adults struggle with the effects of long-term COVID. Health became a priority, and activities and hobbies that were once relegated to the someday, maybe, or when I retire category became priorities. The Pew Research found that the Pandemic "brought a new sense of trade-offs between protecting one's health and participating in social activities as part of daily life."

Pandemic fads like sourdough might have been moments of passing the time for some. Still, for others, the fermented starter was a vital process of healing and participation in a community, connecting digitally, sharing tips and techniques, and helping others by sharing their starters so the sourdough process could start again with another host.

If you can, recall the sourdough starter that arrived at your house or apartment or that of your friends, neighbors, or relatives; likely, you knew someone who made sourdough during the Pandemic. It wasn't just the starter, then voilà, and now you're done. Sourdough is an online communal event, a learning process filled with videos and comments, online community groups, TikTok and Instagram, articles, and text messages between friends. The same is true for Pokémon Go, birding, races, and any activity and hobbies, or personal and professional efforts, where, for better or worse, we spend our time online so that we can live in the real world informed.

Several years ago, I became very interested in wellness as a concept and a way of understanding what it means to be healthy and successful. I spoke with Dr. Bill Hettler, who, for all matters necessary, is the father of wellness; if your school, business, or organization has a wellness team, center, or goals, it's because of him. Wellness's big idea is you can be physically fit but still unhealthy or unwell if, for example, you neglect your social or emotional health; the idea here is that while you might be fit, you are not well. Today, wellness is a national concern and a government priority; for example, the Surgeon General's office recently released a Guide to Workplace Mental Health & well-being. And who hasn't heard or had a conversation about the negative impact of loneliness in our society?

This brings me back to Pokémon Go, Merlin the Birding app, fun runs, and other activities. These highly social activities encourage exercise and social interactions and provide instant communities online and in the real world.

For museums and cultural organizations, the headlines have changed. However, it doesn't have to mean doom and gloom, but rather, a chance to reinvent, reimagine, and reengage. We need to pay attention and hold space for conversation on what we can learn from, adopt, play with, and consider as part of the new way that we work within our organizations, in our online spaces, and in the community. It means experimentation, and now is a time that we should return to the idea that museums can be fun and places for play in a time when respite is so needed. As museums embrace digital tools and AI, I explore how to do so thoughtfully in Museum AI Pledge: Keeping Human Expertise at the Center.

A July 7 NPR.com article headline reads, "Temperature records are shattered as extreme heat grips the West and East coasts." And a July 1 headline from the Washington Post warns: "Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather." Heat.gov tracks the "number of people in the U.S. who are currently under active National Weather Service extreme heat advisories, watches, and warnings." As of July 7, that number is 132 million people and will likely rise throughout the summer.

In New York City, museums have become "Cooling Centers," organizations that have waived admission fees to provide access to air-conditioning and water to their communities in a funded partnership with the city. Many are members of the Cultural Institutions Group, which comprises organizations in city-owned properties. The list of participating museums includes the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, MOMA PS1, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Queens Museum.

The website banner for the Museum of the City of New York highlights, "We are an official NYC Cooling Center. Stop by between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. to beat the heat!"

Museums around the country are joining the effort to support their communities. Examples include the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, with a "hydration station," pitcher of water and disposable placed outside the museum, and Liberty Hall Historic Site in Frankfort, Kentucky, which offers "sprinkler days" to help visitors beat the heat and have some fun too.

• What the rest of us can do to help our communities survive the heat: Waive or reduce admission fees.
• Offer water stations for staff and visitors.

• List the museum's heat-related services on state and regional health and safety websites and share them with area news outlets.
• Promote the days when your museum offers free or reduced admissions, as well as other discounted offers.

Please share what your organization is doing!

Civic Season is a new tradition that connects our newest federal holiday, Juneteenth, and our oldest, July 4th. Since 2021, Civic Season has become an annual ritual for self-discovery and civic upskilling, co-created by Gen Z and cultural institutions. Museums and historic sites lead their communities in the celebration, through programs, exhibits, and sharing resources. This article was written by Adam Rozan to help inspire other institutions to celebrate this new tradition!

Flex your space

We renamed one of our staff spaces the 250th Liberty Lounge. Why? Naming the space was a fun (no-cost, non-permanent) way to build internal buzz, get everyone excited, and create a shared space where we can share ideas, provide resources, and take that next step toward 2026.

Advertise internally

Sometimes, the best ads engage staff and invite them into the process. We hung posters in staff areas at the museum and placed Civic Season Guides in meeting rooms. We invited staff to share what they stand for using the Civic Season posters.

Bring out the Collections

Do what you do best! Like most museums, NMAH is proud of its collections. This year, we invited curatorial colleagues to select an object that best connects with Civic Season and civic activity. We proudly made those objects a key feature of our online activity.

Throw a Pizza Party — and Invite Staff

Working with Made By Us and Pizza to the Polls, we ordered pizza for museum staff and volunteers who volunteered at our evening program. While the museum hosted thousands of visitors who danced to Reggaeton, explored our galleries, and stopped by our Civic Season table, among the other organizations participating in our Civic Pavilion, we treated staff to great pizza and snacks as part of our Civic Season effort.

Create an HQ online

We launched the Civic Season landing page on our website to showcase all of our events, resources, and publications for the public to access.

Display Materials

At the museum, we created a Civic Season display of books relevant to the Season and similar displays for heritage months and our exhibitions. When a new display goes up, we let staff know and encourage their exploration of the topic and the materials. In addition to a fun sign, we placed posters, Civic Season Guides, the superpower QR code, and some stickers we had.

Civic Season may be nearing a close, but civic engagement is a year-long commitment. With the help of Gen Z and nearly 500 museums, Made By Us is laying the foundation for a new generation of active citizens.

I’m resharing my 2014 Museum-ID article on museums and young adults. Enjoy!

A group of 30 or so contemporary adults, representing a wide range of ages, meet each Thursday after work at a local museum. The conversations are lively, and the adults are self-led; they know each other and the museum well. The group gathers inside a gallery devoted to American art. They describe themselves as a knit punk crafts community, and in the gallery each artisan sits down and works on his or her individual projects, from knit wraps for fixed gear bikes, to elaborate scarves. Yet reflective in each person's work are the dramatic colors found on the galleries' walls. The knit punk crafters are just one of many groups that meet at the museum regularly.

The museum also hosts live drawing classes, sing along story telling for young families, gardening, in-gallery music performances, book clubs, yoga and tai chi. Still further, the museum has re-arranged its open spaces to accommodate a large and growing need for wi-fi usage, and has built a new coffee/espresso lab with that in mind. There are comfortable reading rooms based on those at university libraries, and a drop-in art studio. The museum is used to experimentation with its exhibitions, programs, and online activities, and also open to new ways to involve its online audiences. In doing so, the museum reaches the majority of its audience through the various combined forms of social media and museum activity.

The museum in the example above is the museum we all want to see, visit, and work for, regardless of all the variables. This museum exists as a service to its audiences and community and in doing so has become a visitor-centered, relevant, and needed organization. Our institutions are seemingly founded in historic paradigms and operating structures, organized by traditional roles, hierarchy, and a perceived system of order. Yet, within the existing museum model, individual departments (marketing and communications, visitor services, membership, development, education, online resources, and others) have been forced to modernize, not by choice but by necessity. Some, like marketing and communications, have had to embrace modernity, adapt quickly, and learn to compete with major for profits competitors for the general publics' attention. As audiences, resources, and options have grown and shifted, retooling our external presence, marketing, and communication efforts have had to become a priority.

"Now is not the time to cut back on bold, high-quality programming or marketing efforts. To the contrary, at a time of economic distress, it's more important than ever – though undeniably challenging – for arts organizations to take the long view and sacrifice quality or risk – taking in deciding how to invest their resources" – The Wallace Foundation

Historically, initial perceptions of a museum were derived from visiting the museum itself, where the lobby, gift store, café, and exhibitions made one's opinion. Today, before the advertisements are seen, the museums online presence has augmented its reality. For instance, online visitors might come to expect openness, transparency, and even innovation when visiting the Powerhouse Museum Collection, The New York Public Library, or The George Eastman House, if their initial relationship with those institutions was formed online through the Flickr Commons Project. Membership departments are now becoming boutique, or customized to fit their changing audiences. Last year only a few museums offered 'green memberships,' an environmentally friendly membership option such as that offered by the Oakland Museum of California, or the Worcester Art Museum, where as now a Google search pulls up dozens.

Furthermore our programmatic efforts have shifted. Seemingly overnight the entire museum community has become a venue for adult themed activity, drinking, and live music performances. The social networking pages of these same institutions have morphed and multiplied in variety, with Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Tribe, Meetup, Four Square, and seemingly an endless variety of pages, profiles, and online promotions coming and going. Yet, despite these efforts – adaptation to online activity and presentation, membership customization, and social/cultural efforts being made to reach and sometimes pander to new audiences – museums themselves, for the most part, have not changed. Our basic operating framework are visiting hours between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Sunday, pre-determined payment structures, and a limited variety of activity at the museum and online.

Our audiences, in many ways, consider themselves experts. Their lives being digital, they've been exposed to cultures, trends, and activities from around the world. Their online participation through social media has altered the course of history by helping elect a new generation of Presidents into the White House to protect Iranian peoples. Today's audiences have opened and closed local and global businesses, and triggered substantial change in our existing consumption model, from reviewing local businesses on Yelp.com, to reading today's news on their iPhones.

At the same time, today's contemporary adult audiences are life and activity enthusiasts, who have resolved to respect not just their parents' hobbies, but those of their grandparents as well. Traditional activities such as knitting, sewing, gardening, and cooking share center stage with yoga and photography, and with their digital components. Such activities and projects are photographed, blogged, tweeted, and recorded to be shared on personal blogs, websites, and social sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr profiles and accounts. In a study conducted at the Japanese American National Museum:

"Research participants frequently brought up program ideas that related to their day-to-day interests and/or were more active in nature. These topics included: food, popular culture, music, gardening, and film. In other words, they wanted to be able to interact with exhibitions, not just look at them; they wanted the exhibitions to be relevant to them, not just the past"

These contemporary adults are looking to participate, socialize, and be involved – whether through community gardening, or after work groups devoted to books and TV. Adults are searching for activities to participate in, both new and unfamiliar, in an on-going effort to socialize, connect with their peers, and date.

The audience development conversation in museums has centered on advocating for a new contemporary adult audience — that of the Young Cosmopolitan, or YoCo, also referred to as the Young Adult, Grups, Grown Ups, or Contemporary audiences, among other names. YoCos are identified by their demographic qualifiers — They Comprise Gen X: adults born between 1967 and 1977, and Generation Y: adults born between 1978 and 1993 — but more importantly, by their psychographic traits. The argument made on behalf of this burgeoning audience is to not only invite them to the museum, but to engage them, with quality visit or experience. Today, adult evening programs pepper our cultural landscape but too many of these unfortunately follow a cookie cutter pattern. For most museums the adult evening formula of a DJ, bar, and film or some variation have become the norm, rather than the programming being personalized to the specific institution.

In another variation, social and cultural programming exists only at night and weekends, while the weekday museum experience remains unchanged. The positive side is the online growth of these programs, as museums expanded their social networking presence. Photographs, comments, and live streaming from programming are joining other, more participatory, online activities, such as wiki-style curating, or making collections images available for public mashups. Some have gone further, as Judith H. Dobrzynski identified, writing in a recent Wall Street Journal article:

"The 'populist' gospel for years, often translating that into exhibitions about guitars, hip-hop, or 'Star Wars' paraphernalia and live music nights with cocktails, DJs and dancing…Current thinking goes much deeper. Many young directors see museums as modern-day 'town squares,' social places where members of the community may gather, drawn by art, perhaps, for conversation or music or whatever. They believe that future museum-goers won't be satisfied by simply looking at art, but rather prefer to participate in it or interact with it"

YoCos within museum culture have moved from the outside to the inside, and in doing so established an identity of importance. However, the dialogue needs to continue evolving, broadening the conversation on YoCos to a discussion of contemporary culture, and of contemporaries themselves. Moving away from demographics (segmentation based on gender, age, identity, etc.), towards psychographics (segmentation attributes relating to values, interests, attitudes, opinions or lifestyle), and in doing so, embracing today's global, social, cultural audiences, and their uniquely digital lifestyles. A psychographic approach to audiences allows for the recognition of how adults today act, and interact, participate, exchange, shop, and consume. In a recent report, Wolf Brown refers to this as 'life-long':

"Many adults who are far from being professional artists conduct or sing in choirs, build furniture, weld, and quilt. In diverse arenas (e.g., writing for Wikipedia, the crowd-sourcing of solutions to technical challenges, the Van Cliburn competition for amateurs, and photo websites like Flickr and Shutterbug) there is strong evidence that there is much more creativity "out there" than we currently acknowledge or harness"

Digital identities, and psychographic interests, rather than personal characteristics and geographic locations, now define contemporary audiences. These days you are where your fill in the blank is (smart phone, laptop, game console, etc.). These contemporaries are likely to be participatory, aware, and involved. Additionally, they can be described as 'Digitally Nomadic' as they are mobile, technology-dependent, and continually shaping their online identities. For museums, the tasks of gathering home addresses may now become almost obsolete and soon email addresses as well, as technology and media/communication usage continues to change, and evolve. The new for museums will be a constant sense of exploration, experimentation, and adventure in gaming, social media, and communication exchange with the Nomads. The key for museums today will be institutionally adaptability and flexibility.

A vibrant online presence give museums the ability to engage audiences day and night, regardless of whether the museum is open or not. This could prove to be a winning lottery ticket for institutions looking for younger audiences. At the same time, museums need to have evaluative methods that take into account their online audience. The ability to move beyond traditional visiting hours, and success measured solely by attendance, to a formula that takes into consideration usage, and exchange, needs to become part of the new reality. In an article entitled The Anxiety of Age, Wolf Brown sites:

"A change in demographics that increases the target age market for the arts does not guarantee a corresponding increase in arts participation. To reverse the inexorable decline in arts participation requires a deep understanding of the root causes and the development of effective strategies to counteract them. To their credit, arts groups, with support from their funders, are experimenting with a variety of innovative audience development strategies, including adapting arts programming to attract younger audiences, segmenting arts offerings to appeal to varied attendee interests, participation through collaborative research and marketing initiatives among arts groups, and many others"

The challenge for many museums will become the balance between traditional museum activity and organization structure, and the social, cultural, and participatory demands from contemporaries. Exempting audience-based departments, museums are weighted toward the side of tradition. This imbalance puts museums out of step with their contemporaries. What is needed are new models from which museums can begin to work from. Within the museum community, several institutions have shown leadership in adapting and modernizing, in re-thinking the business-as-usual approach to visitors, programs, exhibitions, and economic sustainability. Looking outside the museum community, and drawing inspiration and learning from the business community, can also lead to new models of engagement, communication, participation, and usage. Working to address these questions acknowledges the necessary changes that must also occur within the museum community and within individual museums.

The existing museum structure is one in which individual departments provide support for the current project, in which curators create, the development departments fundraises, membership acquires new members, marketing and communications sell/promote, and education provides interpretation. Each department acts as a domino moving the direction of the exhibition or project. In this mode the visitor is last in line, and left outside the creative process.

As mentioned previously, this structure is inconsistent of how today's visitors experience the museum. Adults today interact before they visit, by reading exhibition reviews on Yelp.com for instance; they interact during the visit with tweets and photograph posts; and after their visit—by posting pictures on Flickr or blogging. And that: if they visit the physical location at all. Museums must continue to progress apace the advances made by their visitors, and construct new models of engagement and activity for these audiences. Again, from Judith H. Dobrzynski, quoting Olga Viso, director of the Walker Art Center, "The biggest transformation is how we're conceiving of social engagement with our audiences…we are working out the strategy for engaging in a much deeper way and a multiplicity of ways. It's about breaking down boundaries." The change Viso describes of the Walker Art Center is not what's needed in museums today; it is what is required of them. Wolf Brown refers to this as 'Active Participation:'

"If creative capital is not a luxury but rather is vital to personal and community well being, then the traditional emphasis on consumption (e.g. attending, viewing, appreciating, and listening to what the docents say) needs to give way to many more opportunities to produce and participate actively. The authorship, creation, and curation evident in new media are not just artifacts of new technologies, but expressions of a will to take part, engage, and leave a legacy"

An example is how businesses use social media to extend the company's goals. In this scenario, online tools can help improve brand awareness, usage, and reputation, and immediately improve consumer trust. SmartBlog on Social Media, discusses Oliver Blanchard's Buzz 2010 presentation, "Nonprofits need to calculate the return of investment of their social-media presence and use the money they're bringing in or saving to accomplish those goals. Blanchard recommends nonprofits get around this by starting with their ultimate goal and planning backwards." Exploring a business approach to audience development and engagement, along with rethinking communication and outreach will lead institutions forward. All departments of the museum are now in the customer services industry, joining their membership and front line staff in these efforts.

Understanding today's contemporary audiences and their needs is simple, according to the Japanese American National Museum, "Younger audiences as a whole want to see their interests, experiences, and perspectives represented in the programming being represented." Because programs like iTunes or iPhoto give users the ability to share, adapt, alter, construct, and curate, such models of engagement have become common and expected. Audiences need to perceive the museum as a flexible entity that allows the visitor to customize his or her visit. Different kinds of experiences for different people should be offered. Building brand awareness and loyalty, and hence attracting new audiences, depends on this perception. "External and internal perceptions is critical: how audiences perceive an institution can dramatically impact their desire to engage with the organization." Here too, the connection between the business and museum model is identical. Ed Cambron, vice president of marketing and communications for The Philadelphia Orchestra writes:

"With audiences more fragmented than ever and having more options for both what they hear and where they hear it, a deep understanding of their real experience expectations is critical…Without 'dumbing down' one bit (in fact I'd call it 'smarting up')…By simply meeting them where they are on their own musical journeys, through intelligent packaging and clear communication, we believe that audiences, young and old, will become more engaged and attend more frequently"

Within our culture, several institutions are breaking new grounds with regards to visitors' participation and engagement. In 'Open Field,' The Walker Center for the Arts has re-imagined their outdoor area, allowing artists and the public to turn once empty parks into an open arts space, in which picnics share equal footing with poetry readings. The Walker has gone as far to build a Tool Shed, in which it lends radios, blankets, playing cards, sketch pads, scissors, and even iPads. The Walker is not alone in their commitment to public engagement. The Dallas Museum of Art and The Bronx Museum have also invited their audiences into the curatorial, exhibition, and collection processes—changing not only temporary exhibitions and collection practices, but the role of the visitor within their institutions. And institutions such as the Japanese American National Museum have gone even further in both their experimentation, by co-curating programs with hip hop artist Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and Giant Robot magazine. The Japanese American National Museum have documented and shared their progress in a white paper entitled The Cultural Museum 2.0: Engaging Diverse Audiences in America. These institutions are moving from survival mode, to driving mode and in doing so creating a living engagement strategy that translates from exhibitions to labels.

The economic climate has left museums and the cultural sector without sure footing. Financial uncertainty, a worsening economy, and long-term concerns of the museum community must be addressed by substantive change. Outside of the museum world, the for-profit community has adapted to the contemporary demands and changes of today's adults. From marketing and communications efforts, to digital usage of communication exchanges, business has altered its approach to their audiences, and in doing so, evolved brand loyalty and usage. Likewise, audience participation has grown up. Contemporary adults have moved away from sitting and listening, or walking quietly and looking contemplatively at art and sculpture, to being active, loud, and visibly engaged, with interests and spending habits that are highly customized, personal, and extremely social. These changes have the potential to breathe new life into museums. As Carol Vogel writes in a 2009 article for The New York Times:

"Yoga classes and bicycle get-togethers may not be your typical museum fare, but in these rough economic times, anything goes…but lean times are bringing out a pioneering spirit as museum officials strive to develop creative strategies for what is undeniably a new world…More than before, institutions big and small have adopted the same mission: to transform once-hushed museums into vibrant cultural centers where the activities go far beyond what's hanging on the walls"

Permission is no longer needed to experiment, and the movement to the online world no longer counts as a controversial topic for museum professionals. Museums today operate in a new digital, participatory age. For museums these changes require new thinking with regards to our audiences, collections, museum experience, and the basic role of the institution itself. As Carol Vogel writes, 'once-hushed' museums and galleries are now centers of social activity. It's time to get used to it.

Explore More

This article explores themes that connect to many other discussions about the future of museums:

• Super Museums: Being Mindful of Every Opportunity to Delight Audiences - How museums can create memorable visitor experiences
• What's Your Wish for U.S.? - Turning history museums into future-imagining incubators
• Museum AI Pledge - Keeping human expertise at the center as technology evolves
• School Groups, GDP, and Our Community Interdependence - Understanding the broader community value museums provide
• Success and the Museum of Failures - Redefining what success means for cultural institutions

Originally published on my LinkedIn.

In my life and work, hardly a week goes by that I don't think about or discuss the many ways museums can and should be "third places," or the places we go to be part of a community. And it's not just me; this is a prevalent idea in the museum sector that I foresee won't change any time soon. The concept will likely only continue to grow.

When a colleague from the University of West Florida shared with me the sad news that Ray Oldenburg had passed away Nov. 21, 2022, at the age of 90, I felt compelled to thank him and share his impact. Third Places is Oldenburg's idea, and the fact that we're talking about it today is thanks to him.

You might not recognize the name Ray Oldenburg. If you were to Google him, you'd likely hit a wellspring of articles about the artist Claes Oldenburg, another luminary who passed away in 2022. While Claes Oldenburg's star might have burned brighter, Ray Oldenburg's star was also luminous and just as impactful to me.

Oldenburg introduced the world to the idea that people need places to come together to be part of a community. He called these places "third place," also known as a third space. Google "third place" and the hits keep coming, with seemingly a new daily article that references Oldenburg's term and this concept. For instance, on April 4, 2022, the Atlantic published the article: "Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a 'Third Place.'"

Oldenburg was a longtime professor at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, joining the faculty in 1967. He would go on to chair the Sociology Department several times. However, it was Oldenburg's writing that would bring him international acclaim. The author of numerous books, most notably, "The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day," which was published in 1989.

Oldenburg's influence and work are easily seen, as are the usages of the third place terminology, with companies, coworking spaces, coffee shops, and breweries all adopting the nomenclature. Most famous for doing so is Starbucks, which has "long described itself as a third space for customers to gather after home and work," although it is now exploring alternatives to the eat-in and hang-out experience. I believe that, as humans, our survival relies on our connections with one another, and to do that, we need space. We need third places in our communities. We need to invest in public communal spaces and protect them.

If you want to pay your respects and are near Pensacola, stop by the University of West Florida's "Great Good Place" lounge on the second floor of the Pace Library. In 2001, it opened as a gathering space for students, faculty, and staff to serve the community while honoring Oldenburg.

You can read his Pensacola News Journal obituary here.

Explore More

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  How Museums Are Helping Communities Beat the Heat

  Jul 11, 2024

  Originally published on my LinkedIn. A July 7 NPR.com article headline reads, "Temperature records are…

• 

  What's Your Wish for U.S. Turns History Museums Into Future-Imagining Incubators

  Jun 19, 2025

  In 2021, history museums across the nation, working in collaboration with one another and with…

Last year I caught up with Susana Bautista over Zoom to chat with her about her new book How to Close a Museum: A Practical Guide, which explores the steps necessary to professionally and ethically close down a museum or prepare for the possibility of closure. Our conversation grew out of conversations associated with the Closed Museums Google Tracker that aims to identify museums that have closed and the information related to the museum at the time of its closing. Her book includes twenty-five cases studies of permanently closed museums from this list, including one she closed down in 2018. We've intentionally not included specific examples for this post to not focus on the example, but the root cause.

Together we identified the five root causes of closures that have been excerpted from our conversation.

Reason # 1: Financial Security

Not having enough finances to sustain the organization through difficult periods or an unforeseen financial expenditure is a common and unfortunate cause for museums to close permanently. Financial security doesn't mean that you need millions in endowment, but it does require enough resources to withstand a bad quarter, or worse, a lousy year or more.

Do some scenario planning and analyze if your museum is financially able to handle the impact of an unexpected crisis such as a recession or pandemic. The fiscal responsibility of museum boards includes paying attention to red flags–such as subsequent years of debt, a single donor constantly bailing out the museum, loss of external funding, a sharp decrease in membership and attendance, a high turnover of staff (especially leadership)–and also planning for the future. Another red flag is if your museum does not have a cash reserve, bank line of credit, deferred maintenance fund, or other non-collection assets that could be used for emergency funding.

Reason # 2: Diversified Revenue Stream

The museum is overly reliant on a single or a few related revenue streams. Organizations without diversified revenue and funding sources are at risk for closure.

For example, the museum has one primary donor or relies on the revenue earned from facility rentals to meet its operating costs. If you rely on admission fees, what happens if you have to close temporarily? Or what if you rely on a significant corporate sponsor who suddenly goes out of business or has a change of leadership? Indeed, each museum will have a different percentage of each. Still, a diversified revenue stream includes both earned revenue (admissions, gift store, café, rentals, exhibition fees) and contributed revenue (membership fees, individual donations, corporate sponsorships, donations from foundations and public agencies).

Reason # 3: Costs Associated with Building or Property

The museum cannot sustain the costs associated with its building(s) and/or property.

These can be new costs associated with needed or unforeseen repairs or the expanded budget and additional costs associated with a building project. Museums undergo massive capital campaigns for facility upgrades, building expansions, and other satellite spaces. Still, these come with an increased operational budget that must also be part of the planning. For historic buildings, this is especially problematic with significant maintenance requirements and legal restrictions. Faced with permanent closure, we have seen some museums downsize or even become virtual operations.

Reason # 4: Community Support

One big problem is when museums don't have community support, which means you don't have the connection, goodwill, and trust built up with your community or critical local financial support.

Community support refers to the connections that the museum has within its community. When the museum is in trouble, does it have the breadth and depth of relationships to financially support, sustain, and advocate for the organization over time? Community support is paramount and speaks directly to the museum's connections and strengths within the community that the museum resides in and serves. This support includes institutional partners such as schools, libraries, other nonprofit organizations, local and community foundations, local businesses and corporations, and even your local media and public officials. The strength of your museum membership is usually a good sign of community support and interdependence, as is its diversity in terms of representing all parts of the community.

Reason # 5: Transparency and Accountability

A lack of transparency and accountability for a museum's problems can generate even more internal issues with staff and boards and externally with funders, members, and partners.

Most museums don't like to publicize their problems or even share them with the staff until it's too late. The recent wave of unionizations demonstrates a demand for shared power, transparency, accountability, and equity at all levels, further pushed by the rise in popular anonymous social media accounts such as @changethemuseum. Also, a strategic approach to confiding in some of your community partners might result in unforeseen solutions, with some museums finding success going public with GoFundMe campaigns and other crisis media appeals.

Please note that the five reasons listed are aggregates. The closing of each organization is nuanced and not the product of one reason but the accumulation of issues, challenges, and decisions presented to the organization over time and having distinct encumbrances, Bylaws Articles of Incorporation, and other governance restrictions.

Explore the Closed Museums Google Tracker originated by Adam Rozan, and please help out with this research. Do you know a museum that closed in the U.S. or elsewhere? If so, please add your information to the Tracker.

Explore More

• Crowdsourcing a Database of Permanent Museum Closings - Learn more about the research tracking museum closures across the country.
• Being Social: What Museums Need to Understand for the Future - Explore how museums can adapt and thrive in changing times.
• Super Museums: Being Mindful of Every Opportunity to Delight Audiences - Discover strategies for building stronger audience engagement and community connections.

Due to the independent nature of the nonprofit sector in the US, there no comprehensive way to track museum openings or closings (much less arrive at a definitive head count of museums at any given time). This is of particular concern as we try to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting financial crisis on our sector. Today on the blog, Adam Rozan, a CFM regular and museum audience engagement expert invites your help in plugging this data gap.
–Elizabeth Merritt, Vice President for Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, American Alliance of Museums

Museums close, they go out of business. Of course, 2020 was unique, an economic earthquake that may create a wave of pandemic-induced museum closings. Museums like the Tahoe Maritime Museum in Lake Tahoe, California, the Morro Bay Skateboarding Museum in Morro Bay, California and the Bellingham Railroad Museum in Bellingham, Washington are a few of its victims. Directors' responses to the Alliances' COVID Snapshot Surveys in June and October of 2020 suggest that up to 33 percent of American museums are at risk of closure in the coming year due to Covid-19-related hardships.

This context gives new importance to a project I began in 2016, documenting as much information as possible on museums that went out of business. The result is this Google spreadsheet recording instances of museum closings, mostly post-2016, compiled with the help of students and colleagues. Hopefully this could help us figure out what factors put museums at particular risk of permanent closure. Can one museum's misfortune help protect another? I hope so.

Now I'm sharing this spreadsheet with the broader community and asking you all to help fill in the blanks, of which there are many, and begin making sense of the data. Please help us paint a clearer picture by adding more examples of private or public museum closures and contributing more information about the examples we have already documented. I'm particularly interested in capturing data about museum closures before 2020, to provide a baseline of comparison to closures provoked by the pandemic. And I would also love to read any observations or analysis that you develop based on this data—please share in the comments on this post.

I'd like to give a special thanks to Erica Peaslee, who was a Harvard University Extension Faculty Aide in 2016 when she helped me launch this project and did much of the initial research. Also, a big thanks to Elizabeth Merritt, director of AAM's Center for the Future of Museums, who is passionate about this topic and has been encouraging me to keep it going. I also appreciate the insight of Dr. Susana Bautista, a museum leader who is writing a book on this topic, which I look forward to reading as soon as it's published.

PLEASE NOTE: Since this is an open-source document, we cannot vouch for the accuracy of the data collected thus far.

Adam Rozan, Allison Agsten, Hanna Cho and Aimee Chang on why museums should be mindful of every opportunity to delight their audiences. Being simply average has become the modus operandi for museums. But a new and bold interpretation of the traditional museum model is slowly emerging. Adam Rozan talks to some of the pioneers in the field of audience engagement.

The existing cookie-cutter model most museums utilize to attract visitors leaves them feeling and looking nearly identical to each other with subtle differences visible in their locations, building attributes and collections. Luckily, we're seeing a new and bold interpretation of the traditional museum model slowly emerging to give cultural institutions the freedom to meet their visitors halfway. This shift in museum thinking is as radical as it is practical, and is called "Audience Engagement." This approach is a giant step away from the one-size-fits-all model and will help bring museums back to a socially relevant existence.

The complex challenges that museums face today require an ability, and willingness, to combine typically isolated functions and departments – blending the boundaries between marketing and communications, education and curatorial, to further align the needs of the visitor – online and onsite – with the work and activity of the museum.

Museums that can do this, which are what I like to call "super museums", think and act differently. While they have typical museum-like functions, they are anything but typical. These institutions are contemporary in intention and action, and are mindful of every opportunity to delight their audiences.

To better illustrate the role of "audience engagement,"Adam Rozan – Director of Audience Engagement Worcester Art Museum – asks some of the pioneers in the field to weigh in. They are Allison Agsten of the HAMMER museum; Hanna Cho of the Museum of Vancouver; and Aimee Change of the U.C. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. This small group is paving the way for us all. They provide more examples and context in the following Q&As…

Adam Rozan talks with Aimee Chang, Director of Engagement, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

What does engagement mean to you and your organization?
I think engagement is a key part of human nature – we seek to engage with people and our environment. In museums, including at BAM/PFA, there is a shift to include participation and real-time person-to-person exchange as part of the museum experience. For me, maybe because of my curatorial background, I think about how this intersects with "traditional" exhibitions and about how and in what ways art viewing can be or is participatory. I also think about how to support artists doing this kind of work and where it intersects with the political. What is the role of the museum in supporting and historicizing public and social practice works made outside of museums?

How would you describe audience engagement as it relates to museums?
I think this means many different things at different organizations. Overall and at its best I think it is a philosophical shift throughout institutions—a deep consideration of varied audiences when thinking about what museums are and do.

Describe your position and your department, division, or function?
At BAM/PFA the director of engagement is a new position that oversees the education, communications, and membership departments. There is a newness to this here and at other institutions and I'm fascinated by the many different ways we are finding to realize similar goals.

What's next?
At BAM/PFA I'm excited about a new open-ended exhibition, The Possible. Opening during the spring of 2014, it will explore the intersection of art, craft, pedagogy and performance. The installation will grow and evolve over the course of four months through multi-layered workshops, discussions, and collaborations.

Adam Rozan talks to Allison Agsten, Curator of Public Engagement, Hammer Museum

What does engagement mean to you and your organization?
We of course want to engage with our visitors in many respects. This may play out onsite with Visitor Services or online in social media. More specifically, engagement at the Hammer often refers to Public Engagement, a curatorial endeavor within the museum. Through Public Engagement, we aim to forge connections between visitors and the institution though art projects that value exchange.

How would you describe audience engagement as it relates to museums?
I do not think there is a standard for what "audience engagement" means at this juncture. My program is artist driven, for example. Other engagement programs are the amalgams of various departments at the museum, like marketing and education. Engagement can also refer to just one of those things vs. a combination of various functions.

Describe your position and your department, division, or function?
I curate art projects aimed at connecting visitors with the museum. Often this work is categorized as social practice though in my program, music and sound also have an important role. And in the next year, we will stage our first olfactory piece.

Is audience engagement a trend or do you see it growing in the museum field?
One way to dispel the stodgy, elitist stereotypes (and realities) of museums is with engagement-oriented programs. Do I think this work is the panacea? No. But I do believe engagement is more than a trend.

What's next?
An uptick in the presentation of interdisciplinary work.

Adam Rozan talks to Hanna Cho, Curator of Engagement and Dialogue, Museum of Vancouver

What does engagement mean to you and your organization?
Engagement means being a platform for creative forms of inquiry, knowledge-driven exploration, and active understanding that is interdisciplinary, intersectional, and, for us, Vancouver-focused. It's something that is central to the Museum of Vancouver's mandate. After a lengthy consultation process that started about 7 years ago, in 2009 the MOV launched a new vision to hold a mirror up to the city and lead provocative conversations about its past, present, and future. In short, it means updating the way in which museums position themselves in relation to their audiences and intellectual community, to serve as a platform that is more participatory and inviting than museums traditionally have been.

How would you describe audience engagement as it relates to museums?
For me, the growing attention and profile given to audience engagement in museums, is simply a way to describe a fundamental reset and desire for relevance in a changing cultural field. Focusing on engagement is a vital way for museums as institutions to adapt in an increasingly decentered and networked social reality.

Describe your position and your department, division, or function?
Interactivity, participatory values and creative collaboration are at the heart of my work at the museum. Whether it's a public program, online (digital) storymap, or urban design charrettes, these keywords can describe much of how "engagement" manifests at the MOV. Organizationally, my position sits squarely in an interdisciplinary team of curators, yet also works collaboratively and often, with a range of community, academic, and public sector partners. Overall, I see the department and my role as a clear signal and commitment to the MOV's progressive new direction, and ability to be a leader and partner of, rather than mere observer of, civic change.

Is audience engagement a trend or do you see it growing in the museum field?
Absolutely not. Audience engagement is a key component of a generational shift that is already underway and exemplified in every aspect of how workplaces, education, and other cultural sector agents are evolving. I think I see engagement becoming part of museum DNA especially in how many organizations (including mine) are pursuing longer term collaborative relationships within our community.

What's next?
A growing presence for the Museum into and of the city's geographic core, particularly through opportunities for exploratory play, design workshops, and exhibition/programming pop-ups that encourage interactive "hands on learning" that treats the city as a living artifact.

Originally published on American Alliance of Museum.

A large ochre insect, possibly a praying mantis, hovers on a man’s forehead, perched like a church hat or crown. Over-sized antennae form hypnotic inward circles over his face. The insect’s crosshatched body is drawn as if carved from wood. The man, whose features echo the artist’s, has a message scribbled across his lips: “Starbucks Coffee.” A craving for a latte? A statement of contempt? A voice of advertisement? The artwork of John Martin introduces much, but often leaves more unanswered.

Martin, who was born in 1963 in Marks, Mississippi, is a featured artist at Creative Growth, an Oakland organization serving adult artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities. His work often resembles a still life of sorts, but one in which realities are crossed; his subjects, everyday objects and people, morph into a series of symbols for the viewer to decipher. Martin culls not only his inspiration, but also his materials, from the area surrounding his Oakland studio. Scraps of wood are layered with paint, clothing is stitched together to make canvases, meticulous drawings in sharpie and oil pastel cover newsprint and old phone books. Martin paints with a heavy hand, laying color in thick solids, brights and darks mixing to create a palate Warhol would have appreciated.

Visiting Martin’s shared studio and gallery space, in which hundreds, if not thousands, of his works can be seen, is a bit like being inside a pinball machine — your eye ricocheting around the room with increasing velocity. Seeing so many works at once should be daunting, tiring and a struggle to consume. But, in fact, it’s the opposite. To see Martin’s works together is an opportunity to discover a world that is not the same as ours: a place in which mundane objects and situations become fantastical, if not magical.

It’s doubtful that Martin has ever studied the work of Claes Oldenburg, yet there is an unmistakable kinship between the artists. Oldenburg, famous for his giant clothespins and hamburgers, possessed a similar genius for making his work accessible to viewers. Both artists have a tendency toward creating fictionalized storylines from everyday subjects. In Martin’s hands, mundane objects like Zippo lighters, wrenches and sharks are combined into a menagerie of outrageous juxtapositions, describing the world in a way that only Martin can.

Martin is an artist whose work is not easily labeled or that neatly fits into a genre. But there is a beautiful nakedness to his work, an honesty that surrounds everything he depicts. As an artist, his world is limited by his obsessions — tools, people, animals, foods. Despite such narrow focus, or perhaps because of it, he has found a marathoner’s approach in his dedication to his subjects. Martin of the alligators. Martin of the pick-up trucks. Martin of the fried chicken. The power of John Martin’s work lies in replicating and recreating these ordinary objects and creating new storylines for them — ones that are beautiful, even poetic.

Learn more about John Martin and Creative Growth here.https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamrozan/

Several years ago, I stumbled upon a rectangular version of Superman’s crystal palace at Powell and Market in San Francisco. The structure was a publicity stunt for Levi’s, in which the company had invited an artist to draw the portraits of everyone who stopped by to check out what was happening on the surface. The artist hired for that project was Jason Polan and Levi’s, in hiring him, had found just the right artist. Now, as in then, Polan has been well-chosen for yet another great assignment; this time it’s the New York Times with a weekly post titled “Things I Saw.”

Since encountering the outdoor drawing project, I have become friends with the artist and have seen him grow and expand from project to project, while at the same time never losing his thirst for adventure and his wonderment for the world that we see every day but fail to properly notice. In Polan’s simple yet honest drawings, we are given the unique chance to discover, and in doing so, better understand. When Polan visits a museum or a park, attends a baseball game, rides the subway, or sits on a plane he’s looking, drawing and recording what he’s seeing. Through him we are given the opportunity to tag along and are reminded to pay attention to our surroundings. Our busyness has blinded us from noticing, observing and reflecting. We have become the blind, smartphone hordes that are overlooking and taking for granted the nuanced details that make up the minutia of this existence. Polan, on the other hand, sees all, records all, and in a primitive beauty, transcribes with detailed strokes the contours of this reality.

A friend described his work as “doodles,” and while there is truth in that labeling, it’s far from that simple. With Polan, doodling has become a sport, and unlike the majority of us who on occasion may swing for the fences or attempt a three-point shot, Polan is now off to the Olympics with a fine point pen. Combined with a voracious work ethic and a creative streak that has lasted years, Polan has emerged as the people’s encyclopedia. Several of his past creative exploits include drawing every object at the Museum of Modern Art, a fixation with drawing giraffes, attempting to draw everyone in New York City, re-drawing your written letters, and establishing a drawing club that only meets at Taco Bell. With 53rd Street Biological Society, Polan’s blog, I am reminded of the simple joys found reading Calvin & Hobbes or the sense of awe I experience on a perfect weekend, where discovery often meets chance. These drawings are entertaining, carefree and often very funny. The work maintains a level of charm and sophistication without feeling forced or predictable.

With new artists, or when the rare art making activity poises itself on us, we are confronted with what to draw or not draw. We question what’s worthwhile for drawing, hoping in that moment that our eyes stumble upon some hidden beauty as they squint to find a picturesque angle or prime vantage point. Polan, with his trained eye, has found genius among the ordinary. Take “Things I Saw – No. 12,” for instance. Polan has drawn his friend’s ping-pong paddle, then seemingly in the same breath, Mt. Rushmore, placing them next to each other and in doing so, suggests that the two are equal. Because in a Jason Polan artwork drawing, everything can be interesting and is often beautiful, making us realize that we too would see beauty everywhere — if only we paid attention.

The Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums study was born out of a 2009 session of the Association of Midwest Museums conference entitled, The Next Generation: Targeting Young Audiences in an Uncertain Economic Climate.

The report was designed to measure the energies involved in young cosmopolitan programming by examining 170 museums, varying in size, affluence and scope.

The term "young cosmopolitan" describes a hybrid generation born out of Generation X (those born between 1967 and 1977) and Generation Y (those born between 1978 and 1993). They "are exceptionally social, ethnically diverse, college educated, technologically savvy, and have a creative and open mindset." Alexandra Gregg, co-author of the Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums survey, wrote earlier in a post on WestMuse:

YoCo – young cosmopolitan – because it focuses more on a psychographic than on specifically drawn lines of age, gender, etc. YoCos are the people who are highly social, are all over Facebook and iPhones, and are curious, creative, and cosmopolitan. It's the people who go to the Hirshhorn's famous after-hours event in DC, or the Hammer's Bike Night in LA… But YoCos can still be understood in terms of geography and economics – they tend to gravitate around cities and have a general US buying power of $924 billion.

A recent cover fromTime Out New York reads, "You're smart. Cultured. And you've never been to the Rubin?… Museums: The Actually Cool Guide." Inside the article reads as a tasting menu of New York city's many museums, highlighting various activities, events and parties held each month targeting this cosmopolitan audience.

Despite such articles, this scene is not the norm across the country, rather the opposite–only 37% of museums that participated in the Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums study offer such programs.

With the key attributes of the YoCos in mind (e.g. highly social, college educated, creative, etc.), why are the other 63% of museums studied in this survey not engaging these audiences? Funding, limited staff time, lack of board support, and "not enough time to organize an effective program to YoCos," prevailed as the primary reasons provided. Furthermore, 8% of those surveyed felt "this demographic cannot be reached" and accordingly another seven museums provided that this target group was not relevant to their institution. While seven museums are far from a majority, can any institution truly afford to ignore this diverse and knowledgeable audience?

YoCo programming remained the primary responsibility of the education and programming departments for 51% of the study, and sadly, only 7 museums reported "cross-departmental collaboration (primarily between education and marketing)," and only one institution had a "YoCo team with representatives from marketing, events, development, etc."

The 77% of museums that host YoCo programs reported having clear goals and objectives, and used terms like "attract," "welcome," "target," "reach," or "increase attendance" to describe some of their goals; another group used "engage" or "educate" to best describe their objectives. Because only 23% of respondents "have or consult a young adult advisory board or related committee," it is not surprising that some of the museums felt they were not adequately targeting the YoCo audience.

What is to be done with YoCos?

Time Out New York's article on museums highlights activities such as "behind the scenes tours, lectures, films, and even the quirky B-movie nights," which are similar to those mentioned by the museums surveyed. These events usually occur at night and are aimed at attracting YoCos to museums. The evenings differ between alcohol and no alcohol, tours to lectures, and so as I have written earlier here at WestMuse:

At first, with young adults the need was to create the parties, and provide the invitation. Now, that they are arriving, and are interested–isn't this the time to change our programs, exhibitions, and other existing models of activity? Let's begin to re-think how visitors act and interact inside galleries, and with our collections. Asking what is the role and purpose of exhibitions, and programs, and how our visitors are to use them and participate. Maybe the best place for the deejay is inside the gallery, on a Saturday afternoon, next to the collections?

Rethinking our visitors and the visitor experience is paramount to the successful museum, not just in outreach exercises, but in the delivery of the modern museum visit. What that means is unique to each museum: however, we can no longer avoid the new rules assumed by today's modern audiences. The lives of YoCos are defined by their digital identities and social and cultural connections with their psychographic interests. The balance between one's iPhone and one's personal life has merged, and yet at the same time the need to socialize, learn, and interact has never been more present.

Museum of Modern Art Twitter Sign in to Recommend STRETCH A yoga class at MoMA surrounded by a video installation by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist.

In many ways we are entering an era focused on experiences. In the 2009 Museum Section of the New York Times, Carol Vogel writes:

Yoga classes and bicycle get-togethers may not be your typical museum fare, but in these rough economic times, anything goes…But lean times are bringing out a pioneering spirit as museum officials strive to develop creative strategies for what is undeniably a new world… Most, if not all are expanding their public program. More than before, institutions big and small have adopted the same mission: to transform once-hushed museums into vibrant cultural centers where the activities go far beyond what's hanging on the walls.

Today's economy has given permission to experiment, and has required us to evolve. Audience development for museums is not by any means a new pursuit, nor is recognizing underserved audiences within our institutions. Moving away from demographic pursuits to psychographics and augmenting our institutions to today's audience and tomorrow's patrons is necessary to captivate today's audience and tomorrow's patrons.

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