I’ve written a guest post on museums and the unaccompanied children at the border for AAM’s Center for the Future of Museums. Below is the introduction. The theme of the Alliance 2015 conference is Museums and Social Value. Leading up to that meeting in Atlanta, CFM will be hosting a number of guest bloggers addressing various aspects of…
In the context of my periodic posts on The Empathetic Museum, I’m preparing a guest post for another site on how museums are/might be concerned with this humanitarian crisis. There is a great deal written today about museums, community and inclusiveness, as well as museums as forums. How do these qualities to which museums aspire…
A small but enthusiastic group met on May 20 in “The Unconference Room” at the American Alliance of Museum’s 2014 meeting in Seattle to continue discussions on The Empathetic Museum that began at AAM’s meeting in Baltimore in 2013: Janeen Bryant VP for Education at the Levine Museum of the New South; Karen Hasselflet, Cultural…
The annual American Alliance of Museums conference will be in Seattle, WA this year May 18-22. Here are two sessions that aren’t on the official program, and one that is. Pop-Up Session on The Empathetic Museum Look for information on the time and place beginning on Saturday, May 17. One can only sign up for…
Note to readers: Not sure why my old post on museums in India went out earlier today. Apologies for something your in-box doesn’t need. Here is current post: Ever notice an idea that you thought was original popping up in a number of places simultaneously? That’s what’s happening with the topic of museums and…
Following up on June 7 and June 29 posts on empathy in museums, six museum colleagues from a variety of areas in the field are proposing a session called “The Empathetic Museum” for the May 2014 American Alliance of Museums Conference in Seattle, WA. I’m one of the panelists, so this is a shameless plea for…
Now that the 24/7 discussion of the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case has died down, it’s time to look at the implications of a discussion that flared briefly in the aftermath of the not-guilty verdict for Zimmerman. On July 31, 2013, Lonnie Bunch, Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)…
In early June I posted a summary of a “Pop-Up” session I organized at the recent meeting of the American Alliance of Museums in Baltimore, MD. About ten participants joined in a round-table conversation about what might be meant by “The Empathetic Museum.” Daryl Fischer was part of the discussion, and here are some of…
Those who have read my March 26. 2012 post on Trayvon Martin will know that my answer to the question about museums’ role is “yes.” This case is a part of U.S. history, African American history, social and cultural studies, research on race relations, the history of social media, and digital humanities, to name just a…
Since my last post, on the pop-up discussion about The Empathetic Museum at the American Alliance of Museums conference, Regan Forrest of the blog Interactivate has picked up on this theme and examined it from the perspective of interpretation and design. Her posts are well worth reading, and have generated more widespread discussion on this…