A Glimpse of the Future: Center for the Future of Museums
The HRC thanks Elizabeth Merritt for serving as guest author for the following entry. Elizabeth is the founding director of the Center for the Future of
Museums--a think-tank and research & development lab for the museum
field. The American Association of Museums (AAM) created the Center to help
museums explore cultural, political and economic trends shaping the
future and to ensure that museums play a profound role in society. She has 15 years experience in museums, including
administration, curation and collections management. Before joining AAM
in 1999, she was Director of Collections and Research at the Cincinnati
Museum Center. Her books include National Standards and Best Practices for U.S. Museums and the AAM Guide to Collections Planning.
The Center for the Future of Museums (CFM) was founded by the American Association of Museums in 2008 to help museums adapt to the rapidly changing environment of the 21st century. To assist museums and their communities in navigating the cultural, political, economic, demographic and ecological trends that will shape the coming decades, the CFM:
- Encourages museum practitioners to take a long term, large scale view in planning.
- Collects, synthesizes and disseminates trend data from a variety of fields that can inform museum planning, and fosters forecasting within the museum field.
- Promotes innovation and experimentation, encouraging museums to explore how to navigate the future.
The CFM website (www.futureofmuseums.org) supports these goals by serving as a clearinghouse for information and a platform for discussion:
- The CFM Blog features provocative essays by CFM staff and guest bloggers speculating on potential futures, highlights innovative, futures-oriented museums and museum projects and covers recent news illustrating important trends.
- Voices of the Future encourages people to contribute their thoughts about the future via short videos to the CFM nonprofit YouTube channel.
- CFM's Research Roundup and e-newsletter Dispatches from the Future of Museums share information on news, information and resources related to trends and forecasting.
- CFM's inaugural forecasting report Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures surveys the forces most likely to affect cultural organizations and their communities in the coming decades, and explores how museums can help society meet these challenges. CFM is using this report as a jumping off point for further research. The next report, to be released spring, 2010, "Demographic Transformation and the Future of Museums: Trends and Implications," will explore the future of museums in a "majority minority" society. What are the barriers that discourage some populations from visiting and supporting museums today? Can museums contribute to new cultural attitudes that transcend race and ethnicity?
- CFM's yearly lecture features a thought-provoking, innovative thinker helping museums take a fresh look at themselves and their potential from a new perspective. The live lecture is recorded , webcast, and archived on the AAM website. Museum practitioners are encouraged to watch the lecture in groups and to use the associated discussion guide to explore the lecture themes.
What Are People Saying About This Post?
Dear Colleagues,
The Center for the Future of Museums is an excellent resource!
I find their e-newsletter Dispatches from the Future of Museums especially useful. I don't recall signing up for it but it appears weekly in my inbox and rarely disappoints. Basically it is a well "curated" compendium of articles from newspapers, blogs, journals and the like that address topics like trends in our society, long-range planning, and museum innovation. For example, a recent article explored the potentially troubling ubiquitousness of "metrics" in virtually every corner of our lives today. Apparently "instinct" is no longer a viable management strategy! I find articles like this stimulating to one's thinking and interesting to share with our staff and with our board-level Planning Committee.
As some one who tries (but rarely succeeds) to read two newspapers a day (old school I know) this is a useful resource that complements the content of the Heritage Resource Center.
Jeff Andersen, Director, Florence Griswold Museum