Assessing Risk

So much of what is happening falls outside our realm of personal experience, it can be hard to make rapid, intuitive judgements about risk. When faced with the current spate of EOs and announcements, it may feel natural to focus on the potential risks of noncompliance. However, it is useful to remember that there is actually a spectrum of risk:

• At one end are potential legal or financial actions, by the government or nongovernmental groups, that might damage an organization.
• At the other end, preemptive compliance (or as some have called it, “anticipatory obedience”) can pose a risk to reputation, to the ability of an organization to deliver on its mission, and to its duty of care for its staff and its community.

It is also important to consider the cumulative impact of individual or organizational actions on society. Decisions that keep us safe, individually and institutionally, in the short term may over the long term collectively create undesirable futures. For example, self-censorship of content might help an organization avoid unwanted attention in the current political climate, but what kind of future would widespread self-censorship help to create?

Asking Questions

How can you make wise decisions within the context of this whole spectrum of risk? One approach is to start with a framework of questions that can help tease out potential consequences of action or inaction. For example, here are some questions I’ve been hearing museum leaders ask as they consider how to respond to the expanding list of Executive Orders affecting charitable nonprofits. (Prefacing with the disclaimer that I am not an expert in either legal or legislative issues, I’m just outlining the issues as I’ve heard them discussed.)

• Does a given EO apply to our organization? Some EOs are directed at specific businesses that receive federal funding or a federally regulated. For some museums this may be a clear “yes”: for example, if their governing authority is part of the federal government, or if they receive grant funding from a federal agency. On the other hand, as we saw with the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, “federal funding” finds its way to museums through a wide variety of channels.
• Is the guidance in a given EO clear and consistent? The wording of some of the EOs so far have been vague, and in some cases conflict internally or with subsequent communications, making it difficult to determine what organizations they apply to, or what compliance they are trying to mandate. For example, the EO Executive Order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” names accessibility (as part of DEIA) as a preference that “can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation”. However, it’s not clear whether the EO is actually targeting accessibility, or, if it is, whether that would stand up to constitutional challenge. (Disability rights lawyer Eve Hill thinks not.)
• Is it possible the EO may be challenged in court? (Many of them already have.) It may take some time for these challenges to wend their way through the system to determine whether they are eventually implemented. This being so, might it be prudent to wait and see, before taking any actions, absent an immediate threat?
• Are the consequences spelled out? The EO “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” requires each federal agency to “identify up to 9 potential civil compliance investigations of corporations, large nonprofits or associations, or foundations with assets of $500 million or more.” Some museums fall into that asset category, but what are the implications of these “potential civil compliance investigations?”

More generally (not EO specific)

• When might “taking a stand” make a difference, and when might it put an organization, and its staff and audiences, at risk? If both, how do you weigh the benefit and harm of these impacts?
• What are the values, and opinions, of our museum’s key stakeholders (board, staff, funders, donors, and community members), and how do they support or conflict with pressure from the government, funders, donors, and activists to behave in certain ways?

It also may be useful to set aside questions that might not provide useful answers, for now. For example:

• Many legal scholars are weighing in on whether any given action will hold up in court, asking “does the government have the power to do this?” Even a consensus on these issues might not provide useful guidance, as the administration may not comply with court rulings. For example, this week the administration announced it would defy a court order to prevent the funding freeze at the National Institutes of Health from going into effect.
• Many museums are taking the prudent step of conferring with attorneys about their specific circumstances, but this input may be of limited use as well. The administration has shown it is willing to take steps a lawyer might not anticipate, such as breaching the terms of contracts that have already been signed, or giving the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) unprecedented access to government IT systems and directly block payments, change code, and delete information without going through established channels.

As you create your own decision tree, incorporating these or other questions, here are some resources that might be of use:

• The National Council of Nonprofits’ continually updated summary of Executive Orders Affecting Charitable Nonprofits
• Guidance from the Federal News Network on Navigating the Trump administration’s executive orders: Key implications for employers and federal contractors.
• The Legal Landscape Around DEI Is Shifting. Your Messaging Should, Too, Harvard Business Review (accessible when you sign up for a free account).
• ‘It’s Not Over’: Steps to Rethink Fundraising After Trump’s Spending Freeze, The Chronicle of Philanthropy (paywalled, check to see if any of your colleagues have a membership.)

I’ll work on the next installment in this series. Please let me know what you would find helpful and share resources I can integrate into this work. Comment on this post, connect with me on Bluesky @elizabethmerritt.bsky.social, and join the Future of Museums Community on Museum Junction to DM me and discuss these issues with your peers.

Yours from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt
VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums
American Alliance of Museums

If you’d like to explore this topic, join me on Thursday, February 27, from 3-4 pm for a Future Chat with Nik. (Free, but preregistration required.)

–Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, American Alliance of Museums

There’s a quote from The Terminator (1984) that, for me, perfectly captures our complicated relationship with technology. In the movie, Kyle Reese warns Sarah Connor about the relentless nature of the Terminator in pursuing her. With a tiny adjustment, it becomes eerily applicable to how we experience technology today:

“Listen and understand. That [technology] is out there! It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop…ever, until you are dead.”

This is technology—a ceaselessly evolving and advancing tool yet utterly integral to our lives. It is how museums get things done, from crafting presentations, to managing collections, to connecting with audiences, to tracking donations. Yet, digital’s relentless march forward can feel overwhelming, especially as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent. (And we all know what happens when SkyNet becomes self-aware…)

I’ve worked with museum technology since shortly after The Terminator hit theaters. I’ve seen the excitement, the frustration, and the persistent struggle to adapt in the time since. I recall, while working at the Getty Museum in the mid-2000s, proposing a scenario during disaster recovery planning where an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) temporarily wipes out all technology, just like in Ocean’s Eleven. A senior curator became incandescent with joy at the idea of never having to use a computer again. For the next decade, he would ask me when all this “electrickery” might finally disappear.

While we may joke about technology’s pitfalls, the truth is that it’s here to stay. Museums must make their peace with it, learning not just to manage it but to maximize its potential. The real challenge is less in keeping up with technology’s rapid pace than approaching it thoughtfully. This means seeing it as a strategic investment rather than a necessary expense, and as such, one that we must protect, care for, maintain, and replace when it fails to keep up with program and departmental goals. I too often see museums cling to outdated, inefficient tools for years, unwilling to invest in solutions that could transform productivity and engagement. My diplomatic excuse for this is that museums are very loyal to their technology.

When we think about the cost of technology, it’s tempting to focus on the price tag: the expensive software licenses, hardware upgrades, or IT staffing. But the real question is not how much technology costs—it’s what value it delivers. For example, let’s say an application costs $1,000. An expense mindset says that’s $1,000 we didn’t budget for and can’t afford. An investment mindset says that $1,000 saves one employee thirty minutes daily and pays for itself in just a few months.

This is where a matrix my colleagues and I have developed comes into play. It’s designed to help museums evaluate their technology spending as a percentage of their overall budget and understand how this spending aligns with their operational maturity and strategic goals. Remember, this matrix is a generalization. If you are spending more, that is great. Focus on the maturity description as your gauge, and whether you are getting value for your investment.

Our benchmarks are backed up by a 2021 survey by Statista focused on the digital activities of museums worldwide. Of the organizations surveyed, roughly 45 percent dedicated no more than 5 percent of their total budget to communication and digital activities, nearly a quarter allocated less than 1 percent, and 21 percent dedicated between 1 and 5 percent.

The matrix outlines eight levels of technology investment, ranging from “delinquent” to “aspirational.” At the lowest levels, organizations spend 1–2 percent of their budgets on technology. These museums typically rely on outdated systems, free or personal software, and minimal IT support—if any. While this may save money in the short term, it often results in inefficiencies, frustrated staff, and missed opportunities to engage audiences effectively.

As spending increases to 3–4 percent, we see organizations at the “baseline” level. Here, basic systems are in place, but they’re not ideal. Part-time IT support struggles to keep up, and systems often operate in silos. This stage represents a turning point: many museums at this level recognize the need for better technology but lack the resources or strategic focus to move forward.

The “healthy” level, with spending at 4–5 percent, marks a significant shift. Systems are contemporary, staff have access to the tools they need, and IT support is robust. At this stage, technology begins to play a strategic role in the organization. For example, digital tools are integrated into audience engagement efforts, and departments have the funds to invest in technology that meets their specific needs.

The “proactive” level (5–6 percent) reflects an organization that doesn’t just react to technology needs but plans for them. Budgets include experimentation funds, and a clear digital strategy is in place. The organization recognizes the value of training to maximize the tools at its disposal, and regularly refreshes digital initiatives to keep pace with changing audience expectations.

At the highest levels we typically see—“advanced” (6–7 percent) and “leadership” (7–8 percent)—technology becomes a hallmark of excellence. These are the museums that my organization cites when asked for exemplars of digital adaptation. Museums in these categories are leaders in the field, operating efficient and effective internal systems and using emerging technologies to engage audiences in innovative ways. They support staff with ongoing professional development and integrate technology into many aspects of operations. These organizations demonstrate what’s possible when we see technology not as an overhead cost but a driver of mission fulfillment.

Finally, there is the “aspirational” level—wouldn’t that be nice?—where spending is 8 percent or more. Few museums achieve this in reality, but it represents a vision of technology as a fully integrated, highly efficient force multiplier. Here, systems work in harmony, and the organization’s digital activities are recognized as exemplary.

This matrix is less of a rigid framework and more of a guide to help museums understand where they are and what it might take to mature and advance. The key takeaway is that we should view spending on technology as an investment—not just in systems and people but in the museum’s ability to fulfill its mission, engage its audience, and remain relevant in an increasingly digital world.

As with any category of spending, we must account not only for the cost of acquiring digital tools but maintaining them over time. While the relentless cybernetic assassin of The Terminator is thankfully fiction, the threats to museums’ digital assets are very real. We face several unavoidable depreciation challenges, one of which is “bit rot”—the physical corruption of data over time. (Think of it as the digital equivalent of a painting slowly fading under the sun, except instead of colors dimming, entire files or systems can disappear into oblivion.) The other is “data decay”—the depreciation of the value of our data over time; for example, an out-of-date member address or email.

So, how might museums plan for the ever-present march of technological change and mitigate these challenges? Once again, this will require a change in mindset. Museums are often more comfortable funding new initiatives than maintaining old ones. However, digital sustainability isn’t just about keeping things running; it’s about ensuring access, usability, and relevance for future generations. When making the case for long-term digital investment, we should frame it as an extension of the museum’s core mission to preserve and share knowledge. After all, bit rot and platform obsolescence are the digital world’s equivalent of losing an artifact to time.

OK, here’s my last pop-culture reference. In Minority Report, the future is predicted through data and technology. While we don’t have pre-cogs guiding us, our strategic investments in technology today can help us shape a future where museums thrive, adapt, and continue to connect emerging audiences to our programming and collections on their digital terms.

Step 1: Start from a Stable Base

I want to start by emphasizing the need to care for yourself and those around you. Fostering mental, emotional, and physical health not only minimizes harm, but sets the stage for effective response. If you, or members of your family, participate in sports, you may be familiar with the precept “start from a stable base”—a strong and balanced core. It’s not possible to respond effectively to challenges when you are off balance, or, as the idiom goes, “caught on the back foot.” While self-care may seem out of reach right now, it may be a useful practice to deploy when circumstances permit. With that in mind, here are some resources you might draw upon:

• From TrendsWatch, Take Care: Building resilience and sustainable practice addresses the history and importance of the self-care movement, its implications for museum workers, and steps museums can take to care for their staff and community.
• Several resources from the estimable Seema Rao of Brilliant Idea Studio:
  • An essay on how to set aside time and space for a self-care plan in the workplace.
  • Objective Lessons: Self-Care for Museum Workers, 196 pp., digital edition available from Amazon.
  • An episode of the MuseoPunks podcast, in which host Jeff Inscho and Suse Anderson interview Seema and Beck Tench to create an Ode to Self-Care.
  • A webinar in which Seema joined me to discuss how museum workers can employ self-care to sustain physical and mental health, and how museums can foster self-care in the workplace and create a less stressful work environment.
• The Hidden Brain podcast recently aired an episode titled Wellness 2.0: When it’s all too much, in which researcher Sarah Jaquette Ray talks about how we can reclaim our sense of efficacy and purpose in the face of big, systemic problems.

Step 2: Identify Credible, Manageable Sources of Information

The sheer volume of news and commentary about the impact of current events is, frankly, counterproductive. It can be more useful, and healthier, to identify a few credible, useful sources of information to monitor on a regular basis. Here are a few sources that I am using to stay informed:

• The National Council of Nonprofits has created a summary, updated daily, of Executive Orders Affecting Charitable Nonprofits, including a list of related actions and capsule analysis of nonprofit impact.
• Patrick Reis, senior politics and policy editor at Vox, has created The Logoff newsletter to provide a daily synopsis of political news that allows you to “log off and get back to the rest of your life.” Each entry summarizes what’s going on in the White House, provides some historical perspective, comments on the impact, and offers some thoughts on what may come next.
• The weekly NPR Politics Newsletter is also a good source of “political news without the noise.”

Step 3: Organize Your Mental Inbox

I’ve written in the past about the importance of establishing healthy filters for consuming content. That is more important than ever, given the pace of change under the new administration. How can you ensure you stay informed of things you need to know without becoming overwhelmed? Consider creating categories to organize the information pouring into your feeds. As you sort through the headlines, identify whether a piece of news:

• Has immediate impact, for your organization, your family, yourself. For example, might your museum need to remove material from its website, reassign staff, or cancel government-funded events or contracts? This is your priority basket, for your attention even if all else gets filtered out.
• May potentially have impact, depending on how things play out. Some of the recent executive directives can be challenged in court, require legislative approval, or must go through additional processes before they can take effect. To help identify what you might flag as having potential impact, it may help to review this explanation from National Public Radio on the difference between presidential orders, memorandums, and proclamations.
• Is of concern, but is not something you have the responsibility, or even the ability, to cope with yourself. To paraphrase something Dr. Ray says in the Hidden Brain interview (above), the mental suffering we inflict on ourselves does not, itself, make the world a better place.
• Is noise you can, and should, ignore. Some of the issues raised in press and commentary are speculative at this moment—worrying about what might happen but hasn’t happened yet. Learn to filter: is it something you could prepare for? Does it increase stress without providing useful, actionable information? Scrolling social media feeds, be alert to memes, AI generated fakes, and misinformation that may just make things worse. (Though if a little bit of meme humor makes you feel better, then consume as needed.)

As always, I will do the best I can to search, filter, analyze, summarize and share news that can help you respond to current events and plan for the immediate future.

Warmest regards,

Elizabeth Merritt
VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums
American Alliance of Museums

For those of you who are new to AAM’s forecasting report: each edition of TrendsWatch examines a few important issues that are shaping the future of society, museums, and the communities they serve.  Because our focus is on trends (forces of change that will play out for years) rather than fads (transient cultural blips) the articles in the report form part of longer arcs of conversations via blog posts, webinars, and sessions at the AAM Annual Meeting and the Future of Museums Summit. Sometimes the report sparks larger initiatives, convenings, and reports (for example, our deep dives into museums and the future of K-12 education, healthy aging, and most recently repatriation, restitution, and reparations).

Often TrendsWatch enriches AAM’s existing coverage of standards and best practices with a futures-oriented exploration of key issues. For example, AAM has rich resources on recruiting and managing volunteers, including blog posts, articles, and a best-selling toolkit. This year TrendsWatch explores how shifts in demographics, culture, and values around volunteerism may affect museums and museum practice in the coming decade.

Because the issues covered in TrendsWatch are of enduring importance, the TrendsWatch library is a valuable resource for museums and museum people. Each edition includes concise briefs on key issues, explores the implications for society and for museums, and suggests how museums might respond. (At the end of this post, I’ve included a recap of some issues of continued importance addressed in previous editions of the report.)

TrendsWatch 2025 Topics

Feature articles

The Next Era of Volunteerism: How can museums create equitable, accessible, and effective volunteer programs?

By giving their time, volunteers help knit together communities and plug the gaps in government and for-profit systems of support. This generosity benefits the giver as well: volunteering provides a meaningful source of social connection and contributes to health and wellbeing. But the who, how, and why of volunteerism is increasingly being questioned both by volunteers and the organizations to which they give their time.  What is the best future we can envision for volunteering in our society and in museums? How can museums address issues of equity and accessibility while valuing the work of people who donate their time, and recruiting the volunteers they need to do their work?

Stop, Look, Think: How to manage digital vulnerabilities.

The world’s first web site was published on August 6, 1991, and by 2004, 88 percent of museums reported having a site. Social media began its explosive growth in the early 2000s—fast forward two decades, and one museum alone, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, has over 13.3 million followers on the major social platforms. Now it’s hard to imagine operating a cultural nonprofit, managing collections, or interfacing with the public without digital tools and platforms. Customer relationship management (CRM) software is integral to managing communications, membership, and donor relations. Museums use artificial intelligence for business analytics, for attendance projections, and to establish variable pricing for tickets.  But along with power, scale, reach, and almost magical abilities, the digital era brings new challenges. What risks are posed by our current reliance on digital storage, platforms, and tools? How can museums recognize and mitigate these vulnerabilities?

Facing the DEI Backlash: How can museums serve their communities while avoiding culture war skirmishes?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, aka “DEI,” is the latest battleground in the current round of culture wars. At the national level, that has led to historic court decisions curbing opportunities or funding that appear to favor (or exclude) any protected class. Publicly traded companies are backing off from DEI commitments and training. Colleges and universities are searching for ways to foster diverse student bodies without using race as an admissions criterion. Museums have been targeted by protests or lawsuits related to DEI initiatives ranging from admissions programs to internships. How can museums avoid, or respond to such attacks? What can organizations do, individually and collectively, to continue to serve their communities in ways they feel are just, equitable, and appropriate?

And more!

The Short Take essay, Pulled in All Directions, looks at the internal conflicts wracking museums as leaders struggle to navigate the often conflicting demands of staff, board, donors, and community members about how the museums should respond to a range of issues.

For Your Radar suggests two terms deserving of attention: targeted universalism as an approach to DEI that seeks to be effective while minimizing backlash, and managed retreat—the proactive relocation of people and infrastructure in the face of climate change—as an issue for large portions of the US in coming decades.

This year’s Trend Alert takes the form of an IRS 990 form from the year 2035, to explore how museum practice, and finances, may change in the next decade.

Finally, the issue takes the pulse of the post-pandemic world with a roundup of statistics on key indicators, including employment and museum attendance.

How to engage in the coming year

Join me at the AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo in Los Angeles this May, where I will give a session based on this year’s report, offering updates and some new provocations.

Watch the AAM events calendar for Future Chats related to this year’s themes. In these webinars, a guest helps me pick apart a recent signal of change (it might be a news story, a research report, even a photograph) and examine its implications for our lives and our work.

Use the Future of Museums community on Museum Junction to share your experiences with these trends and seek input from peers. I use the community as a place to connect with museums and museum people doing work on this year’s issues and emerging topics of concern.

I would love to help you explore these challenges through a talk or workshop at your museum or conference. Use the form on the Alliance’s Advisory Services and Speakers Bureau page to start a conversation about such opportunities.

Use the TrendsWatch Library to Inform Your Work

I encourage you to explore the extensive collection of resources available through CFM to enrich your planning. This includes past editions of TrendsWatch, blog posts, videos, and specialized reports. Here are a few examples of resources you might want to review in the face of current challenges. The text below includes direct links to articles, as well as links to the entire copy of the related TrendsWatch (TW) report.

• Recent climate-driven disasters, including the fires devastating Los Angeles, and the damage inflicted by Hurricane Helene, emphasize the need to pay attention to changing climate risk (TW 2023), rising sea levels in particular (TW 2015), and how museums can help with emergency response in the face of disasters (TW 2022).
• Many museums are experiencing an increase in the number of unhoused people camping in their neighborhoods or on their grounds. This TrendsWatch article from 2019 explores the “wicked problem” of housing insecurity, what it means for museums, and how some museums are responding to the needs and challenges posed by homelessness.
• Revisiting CFM’s 101 introduction to blockchain, and digital currencies (TW 2019) might help you understand and assess the incoming president’s proposal to establish a US bitcoin strategic reserve.

I look forward to exploring the TrendsWatch themes and emerging issues.

Warmest regards from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt
VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums
American Alliance of Museums

—Elizabeth

Elizabeth Merritt, VP, Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums.

When we were first invited as the ICA San José to host Jonathon Keats’ Future Democracies Laboratory, I imagined it to be part of a broad-stroke provocation, a major production. But, in the end, I saw that it was the small things—the stories, the little acts—that mattered. Facing a political discourse emphasizing mass deportations and undermining the faith in elective procedures, these were important lessons for us as an institution focused on caring.

Jonathon Keats and I worked together on one of his very first museum projects entitled REVISIONS Jonathon Keats: The First Intergalactic Art Exposition (2006), installed at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, CA. Inspired by Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum (1992), Keats helped the Magnes initiate a series of programs where contemporary artists were invited to reinterpret or engage with the collections of one of the oldest Jewish Museums in the US. Two decades later, Keats has now seen scores of institutional projects and a 360-page hardbound catalog from Hirmer Verlag entitled Thought Experiments: The Art of Jonathon Keats (2020, edited by Julie Decker and Alla Efimova).

When we decided to do the Future Democracies Project at the ICA San José, we scheduled it to coincide with the 2024 election. The installation consists of two workstations that harken back to a certain machine nostalgia, equal parts Star Trek stage set and 80s office aesthetic. Designed and built in collaboration with San José State University professor Steve Durie and SJSU students, the workstations process and predict representative election results based on visitor input, returning data sets for the students to study. With its welcoming, engaging spirit, I saw the project as essential and aligned with my desire to bring a sense of broad community engagement into the work that we were doing at the ICA San José.

As Keats writes:

In the United States and around the world, democracy is in peril. Caught up in partisan gridlock, and often indulging in corruption or bigotry, all too many politicians are unable or unfit to govern. What if we automated governance, generating laws without legislators? What if citizenship were expanded to enfranchise nonhuman animals and plants? These are some of the core questions addressed by The Future Democracies Laboratory. This immersive exhibition is the first public showcase of the lab’s provocative experiments, undertaken initially with San José State University’s student body under the guidance of Digital Media Arts adjunct professor Steve Durie.

In addition to working with the university, supporting local artists, and being a platform for learning, it was my hope that the project would be able to reach out to a broad population. But doing so would mean working within the nuances of the San José community.

San José has long been a multiethnic city of immigrants, from the global workers drawn to Silicon Valley today to the farm workers who came here in previous generations to do necessary labor on the fields and orchards. The 2012 US Census American Community Survey reported San José’s self-identified race/ethnicity as 33.2 percent Hispanic, 32.8 percent Asian, 27.6 percent white, 2.8 percent African American, and 3.6 percent other, with English spoken at 43 percent of homes, Asian/Pacific Island languages at 26 percent, Spanish at 24 percent, and others at 7 percent.

Trauma runs through the histories of many of these communities. This goes back to the earliest arrival of the Spanish in the area, who used violence to control local populations. (For more on this history, look into the incredible exhibition California Stories from Thámien to Santa Clara at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University, which unpacks the brutal legacy of the Catholic missions.) After the Chinese settled in the region based on the railroad building of the nineteenth century, European-descended locals burned down San José’s Chinatown in 1890, destroying property and livelihoods. During the Second World War, Japanese Americans, many of whom had started to take ownership of the farms they had come to work on, were sent to internment camps, with their property taken from them to be sold. In the 1970s, Vietnamese populations forced to flee US aggression in Vietnam made their way to the region, with San José now being the largest population of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam.

As we began meeting with community and arts leaders a year out from the installation of the Future Democracies Project, we started to see how histories like these would impact its reception. Many of our advisors felt the exhibition would not resonate in their communities, because they had grown up without a sense that democracy was “for them.” In many cases, their parents had grown up disempowered or under communist rule, and did not value elections as a result, or even feel certain that democracy was a realistic idea. Friends described parents or grandparents watching Fox News all day, already questioning the resolute status of voting in this country. The perception that democracy was not working was already mainstream, in a sense. We realized it was not through the kind of provocation we had in mind that we would provide the kind of broadest welcome to which we are committed.

To achieve this welcome, concurrent with Keats’ exhibition, we also opened Allegedly the worst is behind us, a group exhibition curated by the ICA’s Curator and Director of Public Programs Zoë Latzer that highlights the practice of twelve contemporary artists who pursue personal and collective acts of rebuilding fractured memories and stolen histories. We created a space where everyone can see themselves in the picture(s). This collection of stories, in a sense, by artists of disparate backgrounds has received a positive critical response, and been welcomed by all of our audiences. We also launched at the same time a large installation on the facade of the ICA by local artist Oscar Lopez entitled “Without Them is Not Us,” in partnership with Local Color SJ. It is a tribute to the farm worker labor organizing movement, showcasing the iconic figures of Cesar Chavez, Larry Itliong, Dolores Huerta, and Philip Vera Cruz.

Our opening event was packed. In response to the Lopez project on our facade, a local troupe of dancers offered to do a ritual and performance for the opening event, to bless our proceedings, and to pay tribute to the labor movement and all the stories we were sharing. In this time, we found that it was the people—our neighbors, our stories, our shared humanity, and our need for mutual support—that was redemptive. These are difficult times for us to measure the effectiveness of our democracy with so much propaganda and disinformation circulating, but our stories remain, our connections, the little acts that matter, rather than deliberate provocations.

On the evening of November 7, the Thursday following the election, we did a shared project with San José State students and educators led by Jonathon Keats, and in partnership with the San Jose Museum of Art. In small groups, we did hands-on activities exploring the themes of the Future Democracies Laboratory. The students came from varied backgrounds, like one person in my group who was from Vietnam and needed to use Google Translate when presented with terms like “freedom.” It was interesting to hear their perspectives on that concept in particular, which they proposed was in fact oppressive, because it forces people to work too hard. For these students, the idea of freedom was associated with the accumulation of money. With Keats’ guidance, we created models using found materials as a springboard for shared dialogue.

It was the working together that felt like a healing balm: reminding us that, in our togetherness, we find each other, even when our systems fail us. All of which reinforced for me the importance and power of the work we do for our local communities—put best by the Buddhist saying a colleague recently recalled to me, “Tend to the garden you can reach.”

Here’s a summary of projections on some issues important to museums, organized by the STEEP foresight categories (Social/Cultural, Technology, Economy, Ecology/Environmental, Politics/Policy). I encourage you to use this briefing as a jumping off point for discussions with colleagues, staff, board, and planning teams about what to expect in the year ahead.

Social/cultural

A tight labor market and workplace discontent

As of November, unemployment in the US was 4.2 percent—slightly above the post-pandemic low but still functionally considered to be full employment. This “hard” job market gives workers considerable flexibility in choosing what jobs to take, and when to leave.

National data gives some indication of how this freedom may play out. A recent Glassdoor poll of professionals show that almost two-thirds feel “stuck” in their current roles and satisfaction with career opportunities is falling. According to an October survey by ResumeTempates.com, over half of workers are looking for a new job in 2025, a third plan to quit even if they don’t have a new job lined up, and one-fifth plan to change fields. Gallup estimates that the cost of replacing lost staff ranges from 40 percent of salary for frontline positions to 200 percent for leaders and managers. Add to that the loss of institutional knowledge and memory, as well as the chilling effects on project timelines, and it’s clear that high turnover can cripple an organization’s budget and operations.

Numerous studies agree on what people value in a job, notably work-life balance, job security, growth opportunities, and flexible policies. According to some researchers, the most important factor in employee satisfaction is recognition, making people feel like they matter. While pay and benefits are important, other factors play important roles in decisions to stay or leave. The biggest issues driving workers to quit are burnout, feeling underappreciated, and inflexible policies about when and where work gets done. In particular, return to work policies are provoking a backlash, with many workers unwilling to pay the costs, in money and time, of commuting when being on-site is not clearly relevant to their work.

AAM’s 2024 Annual Snapshot of US Museums revealed that 47 percent of museums continue to have trouble filling open positions. Given the forecasts cited above, these challenges are likely to persist in 2025.

Museums might:

• Study the research on what employers can do to make staff feel valued and supported.
• Implement regular surveys of their staff and make a commitment to addressing the most important concerns. (Note that, without follow through, conducting a survey can be worse than doing nothing at all.)
• Provide career development opportunities for all staff. A broad, inclusive approach might, for example, create opportunities to participate in other departments and learn new skills.
• Create equitable, meaningful recognition programs.
• Establish flexible work policies that accommodate the needs of a wide variety of employees. Such policies may also give the museum access to a broad pool of talent, including people with disabilities, disadvantaged by traditional employment practices.
• Consider the role hybrid or remote work may play in your organization and assess how it might improve jobs that can be done offsite by saving staff time, and money. Note that not all employees prefer remote work (research suggests that younger workers, in particular, may value the opportunity for direct contact with their manager and colleagues).

Technology

Disruptions in social media

Many pundits foresee seismic shifts in the realm of social media. X (formerly Twitter) steadily lost users over the last year, an exodus that spiked after the election. Some analysts believe that use of the platform will continue to decline in 2025, driven in part by the company’s decision to gut its content moderation and the concomitant rise in hate speech, disinformation, and AI generated content. TikTok will be banned in the US unless a) parent company ByteDance complies with a legislative requirement to sell the app by Jan 19, b) the Supreme Court agrees to review that legislation, or c) the incoming president intervenes. Facebook usage seems to be stable, but its parent company, Meta, has made clear that its priorities lie in artificial intelligence and augmented reality. That may affect the care and attention devoted to supporting the platform, going forward. All the major platforms may be impacted by rising public concerns over the well-documented negative effects of social media on children. In addition, there are a growing number of legislative efforts at the state and federal level to address these concerns by requiring companies to impose age restrictions, and improve content moderation, or face significant fines.

Much of the dissatisfaction with the existing mainstream platforms arise from the way their business models have led them to clog users’ feeds with ads and promotions, making them less like social networks and more like paid content delivery mechanisms. In response, we are seeing the rise of non-commercial, open-source sites such as Bluesky Social and Mastodon. It remains to be seen whether these alternatives can provide the reach needed for effective public communications or for professional community building.

Museums might:

• Review their social media policies, assess their dependence on each platform they use, and evaluate the potential risk from any given platform shuttering, changing in ways that make it a bad match for the museum’s reputation and target audience, or changing policies in ways that make it less useful for the museum.
• Evaluate their performance metrics, and identify ways to assess not just reach, but also the outcomes of such engagement.
• Identify when key changes in these metrics would trigger actions, for example, posting more or different content, or leaving platforms that are no longer a good match for the museum’s goals and values.
• Experiment with emerging platforms, to assess their potential to supplement or replace existing platforms in the organization’s suite.

Economic

Insurance

Climate risk is disrupting the insurance industry at an accelerating pace. A 2024 Senate committee investigation on insurance nonrenewal found that in 200 counties, the rate at which insurance companies dropped policies has tripled or more since 2018. As a recent article in the New York Times points out, the consequences could be profound: “Without insurance, you can’t get a mortgage; without a mortgage, most Americans can’t buy a home. Communities that are deemed too dangerous to insure face the risk of falling property values, which means less tax revenue for schools, police and other basic services.”

As we saw during the pandemic, lower local tax revenues affect museums as well, both in terms of direct support, and erosion of basic services on which they rely. In addition to the impact on their communities, climate risk, whether from flood, storm, or wildfire, may increasingly affect the cost of insurance for museums, or, for some institutions in high-risk areas, their ability to find coverage at all.

Museums might:

• Use FEMA’s National Risk Index to check the levels of risk from natural hazards for their county. This agency’s interactive map provides information on expected annual loss, social vulnerability, and community resilience.
• Consult the interactive tool created by the New York Times to check insurance nonrenewal rates by state and county.
• Equipped with the information from these sources, start a conversation with their insurance provider. Does the provider anticipate raising premiums, due to these risks? Is there a chance that the museum might lose its coverage, particularly if it is damaged by natural disasters in coming years?
• Review options for insurance coverage in case the organization needs to control rising costs, or find a new insurance company willing to provide coverage for a high-risk site.

Ecological/Environmental

Bracing for the next pandemic

There are troubling signals that the H5 bird flu virus, widespread in wild birds worldwide, may become the next global pandemic. Over the past year, rising levels were detected in domestic poultry and dairy cows. On December 18, the CDC reported the first severe case of human infection, from a backyard chicken flock in Louisiana, and the governor of California declared a state of emergency in response to the growing threat. To date, the actual impact has been small: there have been a total of 64 human cases in the US so far, and no documented cases of human-to-human transmission. However, epidemiologists warn that the virus is only a single mutation away from being able to spread more effectively between humans. Recent samples from two patients, one in Canada and one in Louisiana, have already featured changes that made it easier for the virus to target human cells and cause severe illness. Whether or not H5 becomes a significant threat, increasing contact between humans, domestic and wild animals, degradation of natural habitats, and the sheer volume of global travel result in conditions ripe for contagion. As researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health point out, the question we should be asking about the next pandemic is not if, but when.

Update: on January 6 the Louisiana Department of Health announced the first human death from bird flu in the US.

Museums might:

• Use what they learned during the COVID-19 pandemic to create plans, procedures, and policies that can be rapidly adapted and implemented in response to the next health emergency, including a contingency plan for operations and income.
• Maintain a stock of personal protection supplies, sanitation materials and equipment, and materials needed for daily operation that may be scarce during an emergency.
• Review their financial reserves and establish how many months of operation they want to plan to support, in the absence of income. Be mindful that the Federal relief (e.g., the Paycheck Protection Program and SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Advance) that kept many museums afloat during the COVID pandemic may or may not be available the next time around.
• Regarding the H5 bird flu specifically, monitor the ongoing CDC tracking and reporting. Identify a trigger point (number of local or national cases; warnings or actions by state or federal agencies) at which your organization would activate response plans.

Policy/Politics

Attacks on DEI

A rising number of lawsuits and legislative actions at the state and federal level signal ongoing threats to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The President-elect has announced his intention to challenge DEI policies in higher education and in the corporate sector. Advisors are encouraging him to repurpose laws designed to fight racial discrimination and use them to dismantle affirmative action. Anticipating such pressure, some corporations and universities are pre-emptively scaling back or ending their DEI programs and practices. Grant makers are preparing for the possibility of litigation as well, which may have a chilling effect on funding for equity-focused programs and services.

Museums might:

• Watch for the 2025 edition of TrendsWatch, coming out this month as the Jan/Feb issue of Museum magazine, which includes a longer exploration of DEI backlash.
• Work on becoming better advocates for museums. (One resource: the AAM toolkit Speaking Up: Museum Advocacy in Action.)
• Monitor state and local legislation for proposals that would impact operations. Stay in touch with your state museum association for news on such developments.
• Network with colleagues, sharing experiences and trading advice on how to respond to anti-DEI lawsuits or pressure. Seek out safe places for candid discussions of sensitive issues, whether at professional conferences, or by hosting peer groups at your own institution.
• Sign up for AAM Advocacy Alerts for news on recent calls-to-action and stay up-to- date on opportunities to weigh in with your federal legislators.

I look forward to fostering a communal exploration of these and other trends in the coming year. Please reach out to futureofmuseums (at) aam-us.org to let me know how these issues are affecting your museum, and how you are responding. It would be great if you are willing to write a guest post for this blog. If you would rather share your experiences in confidence, to inform my understanding of these topics, I’d be happy to schedule a phone call, or meet up at the AAM annual meeting in May.

Warmest regards from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, American Alliance of Museums

“Hope is a muscle, a practice, a choice that actually propels new realities into being. And it’s a muscle we can strengthen.” –Krista Tippett (journalist, author, creator and host of On Being)

I’m going to close out the year by penning a brief gratitude post reminding myself of the many Good Things that happened in 2024 and sharing my personal wish list for the next twelve months. If your lists and mine overlap, perhaps we can work together in 2025! (I’ve highlighted some opportunities to collaborate, in bold text, below.)

I hope this inspires you to take a moment to remind yourself of moments of joy, even in hard times, and to exercise your “muscle of hope” going into the new year.

Looking Back and Flagging Some Opportunities

I am very grateful to have welcomed Ariel Waldman onboard as CFM’s Project Manager in October. As is true for many staff here at the Alliance, Ariel has a deep background in museums and educational institutions, having worked at the Smithsonian Science Education Center, the National Museum of the United States Army, and the International Spy Museum. She’s already bringing her keen eye and organizational skills to the production of TrendsWatch and publication of our Next Horizon papers.  Having been a “department of one” for many years, with Ariel’s help I look forward to tackling new projects and extending our reach. One notable project will be to refresh and revitalize the CFM blog with new topics and authors. If you are interested in writing a guest post sharing how your museum is responding to forces of change, particularly any of the many issues we’ve addressed in TrendsWatch or on the blog, please reach out to Ariel at futureofmuseums@aam-us.org.

Last month we wrapped up the first two stages of our deep dive into the Next Horizon of Museum Practice: Voluntary Repatriation, Restitution and Reparations. The project is framed around the Three Horizon’s Model for building better futures, and this year we focused on how to envision futures that are a better fit for our values and practice. Sixty-nine people joined me for a workshop at the annual meeting in May for a day-long dive into positive foresight, culminating in the creation of movie pitches around their visions. In November, we published the Next Horizon collection: fifteen academic papers, opinion pieces, and speculative fiction exploring how language and practice, may change in coming decades to help museums be a new kind of steward for culture and heritage. Please read, share, and comment on these papers! Regarding the blog (see above), we are particularly interested in guest posts responding to and expanding on the thoughts shared by our authors, and examples of museums putting these ideas into practice.

In August, I had the incredible opportunity to teach foresight workshops in Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville, organized by Humanities Tennessee, as part of their Shared Futures Lab.  The purpose of that program is to “explore how the outcomes of past and current humanities programming may impact the future of Tennessee communities and civic life.” In support of that admirable goal, I led about 100 participants through the process of scanning for change, exploring the implications of significant news, finding a path forward, telling stories about possible futures, and integrating foresight into their work. (Check out two of the “artifacts from the future” they created, left, and below.) If I did nothing for the rest of my working life but teach workshops like this in every state of the union, I would feel fulfilled. Let me know if you are interested in hosting a foresight workshop at your museum, a conference, or across your state.  I am happy to brainstorm with you to generate ideas for funding these events.

Looking Forward, and Flagging Opportunities

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help museums and museum people through what is likely to be a difficult near-term future. First up, I’m working on a set of scenarios on navigating the cultural, political, and economic challenges that may arise under the incoming administration and the general political climate of the country. Normally, my work focuses on helping museums think on a longer time frame, but with many museum people worried about the impact the election may have on their work, funding, and personal lives, that time frame has collapsed from the next four decades to the next four years. This kind of mirrors the pivot I made at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I shifted to short term forecasting. This new set of scenarios will, I hope, function in a similar way by helping museum people manage uncertainty through monitoring critical indicators, modelling potential outcomes, and creating appropriate contingency plans.

This focus on the short-term future will also inform the next iteration of the foresight workshop I teach each year at the annual meeting. Each year I change up the agenda, focusing on different exercises and skills. Per the quote from Tippett that opened this post, we need to nurture our ability to be optimistic in the face of challenges. So this year I’m going to focus on how we can use foresight to cultivate hope and use “practical optimism” to guide ourselves, our institutions, and our communities through difficult times. I hope you consider joining me for this workshop in LA. Every year we’ve offered this workshop, it has sold out. Registration for the meeting is now open, and tickets for events will go on sale in January–snag your spot early.

I, myself, am cultivating optimism around stage 3 of the Next Horizon project—how to navigate the second horizon (aka ‘the messy middle’) to create preferred futures for museum practice and museums’ relationships with descendant communities. If you are interested in partnering with CFM on this work, hosting a workshop or convening, or have ideas for potential funders, please let us know (again, at futureofmuseums@aam-us.org).

I’ll close with another great quote about hope, from historian and activist Rebecca Solnit via my fellow futurist Jane McGonigal:

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency…To hope is to give yourself to the future—and that commitment to the future is what makes the troubles of the present inhabitable.”

Warmest regards from an optimistic future, and best wishes for a bright 2025

Elizabeth Merritt
VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums
American Alliance of Museums

Full confession: I’m one of that 100 million, and my average is more like 20 episodes a week.

I have over 100 titles in my pod queue, including futurist content (e.g., Future Now from the Institute for the Future), museum stalwarts (Museum Confidential from the Philbrook Museum of Art), and delightful oddballs (Perfume on the Radio from The Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles.) With this post I’m going to share a few of my recent favorites, leaning into podcasts I hope may provide useful and timely information, or help provide inspiration and comfort, in the face of coming challenges.

The newest addition to my podcast feed is Making the Museum, hosted by Jonathan Alger, managing partner and cofounder of C&G partners, which complements C&G’s newsletter of the same name. This is one of the few podcasts I’ve found that tackles the economics of running a museum. (When guest Amy Kaufman, in The Money Pie Chart episode, said “Nonprofit is a purpose, it’s not a business model,” I actually cheered.) Jonathan has recruited a very interesting variety of guests—museum practitioners, consultants, and experts from adjacent sectors. I look forward to hearing what curator Jennifer Posey (John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art) says on what the circus can teach museums about making better exhibitions.

Next most recent is Humanities in Action, “about the work being done today to create a more empathetic and connected future.” The podcast is produced by Humanities Tennessee, which brought me to Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville to teach foresight workshops as part of their Shared Futures Lab program*.  Some of the episodes tackle issues like storytelling, immigration, and neurodiversity. Some are museum-specific, for example a profile of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. (*Re: Shared Futures Lab: I love love love this program so much, and wish every state had a comparable initiative. Now my stretch goal is to teach foresight workshops in every state of the US, to support such efforts. Let me know if you’re interested… futureofmuseums (at) aam-us.org)

One of the Tennessee Workshop attendees recommended I Was Told There Would Be Snacks, a podcast from the Tennessee Nonprofit Network “questioning tired ways nonprofits and funders do business, and shedding light on bold new practices in our field.” The episode Epic Grant Writing Fails will spark empathy from anyone who has tried their hand at grant writing, an activity the host characterized as “not terribly fun, like a blood clot, not something you look forward to, but you have to do to make some money.”  Another great episode, Nonprofit Sustainability is Not a Thing, features the marvelous nonprofit gadfly Vu Le, author of the blog Nonprofit AF.

Some of my favorite podcasts provide context for the things I’m seeing in my scanning and help me make sense of the world. I highly recommend Hidden Brain, in which host Shankar Vedantam interviews researchers, academics, and historians to shed light on “the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. I found two recent episodes to be particularly timely:

• In Sitting with Uncertainty, researcher Dannagal Goldthwaite Young’s explanation of how our response to uncertainty shapes our political beliefs helped me make sense of the recent election results.
• In Fighting Despair, psychologist Jamil Zaki shared some practical strategies for cultivating hope when we feel disillusioned and distrustful of the world.

My scanning is filled with anxiety-provoking projections regarding the next four years in the US, war across the globe, and the potential for yet another global pandemic. For general stress relief, I recommend this series of guided meditations from Tara Brach, who synthesizes her work as a psychotherapist and a Buddhist teacher into mindfulness training. And if stress is keeping you up at night, consider the Nothing Much Happens podcast, featuring short pieces of “conflict free fiction,” designed to curb your racing brain, quiet obsessive thoughts, and lull you to sleep.

And a word about supporting the work of creators. Some podcasts are funded by for-profit businesses, buoyed by grant funding, or bolstered by ad revenue. But some also depend on individual support. Many great platforms for “free” content have disappeared in recent years because they are underfunded public goods. If you find yourself listening to a podcast on a regular basis, consider making a donation if that is part of its funding model.

Warmest regards from the future,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Merritt

Vice President, Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

The Context for This Collection

At its heart, strategic foresight consists of four essential steps:

1. Know where you’ve been.
2. Understand where you are now.
3. Decide where you want to go next.
4. Figure out how to get there.

Put that way, it seems simple, yes?

But simple isn’t the same as easy. A lot of my time is spent learning and teaching skillful ways to take these steps. One important thing I’ve learned is that this journey is easier when you recruit others to help us along the way. Historians, elders, scholars, archivists, and lore-keepers can help us remember where we’ve been. People actually doing the hard work of whatever needs to be done can offer a shrewd assessment of where we are now, and how well we are doing.

The next step—deciding where we want to go next—is often an order of magnitude harder. Left to themselves, our brains are wired to extrapolate the future as a straight line from the past through the now and forward—resulting in a more mature (and entrenched) version of the present. One of the most important truths about the future is that it isn’t predetermined. At any given point we face many potential futures, some of which are better, and others worse, than we might assume. To help overcome mental myopathy, we can enlist the help of people with well-developed imaginations—storytellers who can paint pictures not just of how the world is, but how it could be.

This is the approach I’ve taken in applying foresight to museum work, most recently in AAM’s exploration of the arc of history, from past to future, of repatriation, restitution, and reparations. The first report from this Next Horizon of Museum Practice project documented how the relationships between museums and descendants of communities whose culture they steward have changed over the last decade, and where that leaves us now. That report shared stories of how some museums were repatriating some collections not because the law said they had to, but because their values told them that such so-called voluntary repatriation was the right thing to do. And it showed how those shifts are changing how museums think and talk about the collections they steward—talking about belongings, for example, rather than objects, or ancestors, rather than human remains, language that reflects deeper changes in the relationships between museum people and descendant communities, and between the living and the non-living.

To help with step three—envisioning where we, as a field, want to go next—I enlisted the help of an amazing working group (credited below) in recruiting a diverse array of writers to share their visions of what preferable futures might look like with respect to voluntary repatriation, restitution, and reparations. The resulting collection consists of fifteen papers by authors writing from the perspective of their communities, academia, and museums (some from the intersections of these three domains). By sharing these visions of potential futures, AAM hopes to provide museum people with the inspiration that fuels change and the courage to disrupt any current practice that no longer serves its purpose. I encourage you to browse the titles, pick a few that catch your eye, and dive in. Share stories that resonate with your colleagues, students, and friends. What elements of these stories do you find compelling, plausible, useful? Which paint pictures of futures that you would like to inhabit?

A Preview of Some of the Papers

The collection consists of:

• Opinion pieces, such as that contributed by Ernestine Hayes, Professor Emerita at the University of Alaska Southeast, writing, from her perspective as someone belonging to the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Lingít nation, of a future in which everything that was taken grows old and dies where it belongs.
• Academic foresight, including a paper by Fabio Mariani, Lynn Rother, and Max Koss at the Provenance Lab of Leuphana University Lüneburg, on digital cataloguing as a reparative practice.
• Speculative fiction, like David Zvi Kalman’s mind-bending story that challenges us to consider whether an object’s provenance can have power equal to or exceeding the object itself.

It addresses museums’ relations with descendant communities from various points of view—for example:

• Victoria Phiri Chitungu and Samba Yonga of the Livingstone Museum and Women’s History Museum, Zambia, exploring a future in which digital repatriation can be a means in which African cultural objects in foreign museums are reconnected with their embedded Indigenous knowledge and communities of origin in Africa.
• Marc Masurovsky, co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project and Director of Research for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust-Era Assets, on a future in which museums treat the provenance of an object as equally worthy of storytelling as its creation, especially in the case of looted or stolen works.
• Laura Van Broekhoven, drawing on her experience as director of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford to envision how museums can be part of a process of societal healing by enabling community-led work towards reconciliation and prioritizing listening, cultural care, and epistemological equity.
• Jessica Harris, President, Descendants of Enslaved Communities at the University of Virginia, describing a future in which a future in which descendants of enslaved communities have an equitable, reparative seat at the table as we strive toward true repair and stronger museums.

This collection caps the second phase of this Next Horizon project. I’m hoping to tackle the fourth key step in foresight—figuring how to get to our preferred futures—in stage three. Please reach out to cfm (at) aam-us.org if you might be interested in hosting a workshop on this topic at your museum or conference, and please, please share ideas about partners and potential funders for this important work.

Yours from the future,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight & Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

Gratitude and Acknowledgements

This project has been made possible by the generous support of the David Berg Foundation.

And by the wise guidance of the Next Horizon Working Group:

• Antonia Bartoli, Curator of Provenance Research, Yale University Art Gallery
• Kalewa Correa, Smithsonian APAC curator of Hawai’i and the Pacific
• Michael Glickman, jMUSE Founder and CEO
• Jane Pickering, William & Muriel Seabury Howells Director of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Boston, MA
• Brandie Macdonald, Executive Director, Indiana University Museum of Archeology and Anthropology
• Stephen E. Nash, President and CEO, Archaeology Southwest
• Ashley Rogers, Executive Director, Whitney Plantation
• Noelle Trent, President & CEO of the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket
• Nii O. Quarcoopome, Curator &, Department Head of Africa, Oceania & Indigenous Americas at Detroit Institute of Arts
• Richard West, Founding Director & Director Emeritus Smithsonian NMAI

The program kicks off on October 29 at 1 pm ET with a keynote by one of my favorite futurists. The next day, at 1:30 pm, you’ll have the choice of four fantastic Big Idea talks, one for each of our four session tracks. Today I’m previewing these speakers to encourage you to register (if you haven’t already) and, for those already planning to join us, to help you choose which of the Big Idea talks to attend. (Though not to worry, the recordings will be available to registrants until January 31, 2025, so you can catch up on the ones you missed.)

First, our keynote speaker: Last year Dr. Jane McGonigal launched the Summit with a pep talk on building urgent optimism for the future. This year I’m so happy to introduce you to Rob Hopkins—a futurist, time traveler, and imagination catalyst trainer based in Totnes, England. I fell in love with Rob’s work through his marvelous podcast From What If to What Next, where he shared provocative, optimistic challenges such as “What if we loved politicians?” and “What if we decolonized economics?” (The podcast, alas, came to a close in 2024, but I highly recommend the archived episodes, which you can find on any major podcast app.) Much of Rob’s futures work and his practical activism focus on combating climate change and building resilient futures.

On to our Big Ideas speakers:

You may already know Sree Sreenivasan, former Chief Digital Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and now co-founder and CEO of Digimentors, a social/digital/AI training and consulting company. For the past year, he’s been teaching his “Non-scary Guide to AI” workshops and working with clients on AI policy, strategy, and scenario planning. In writing up his speaker text for the Summit, I was intimidated by the other accomplishments in his bio: In 2015, Fast Company named him one of the hundred most creative people in business. In 2004, Newsweek named him one of the twenty most influential young South Asians in America, along with Kamala Harris, M. Night Shyamalan, and Norah Jones. (I know, right!?!?!) In 2020, the President of Italy awarded Sree the knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy for his role in promoting US-Italian relations. Sree is going to enrich the AI Adolescence track with his observations on “AI & Museums: Beyond the Hype and the Backlash.”

While most of the sessions in our “Net Zero” track look at practical ways museums can reduce their carbon impact, Dr. Susan Clayton is going to make sure we don’t lose track of the psychological cost of the climate crisis. As the Whitmore-Williams Professor and Chair of Psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio, Susan’s research explores people’s relationship with the natural environment and how climate change affects mental health and well-being. A fellow of the American Psychological Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology, she was a lead author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In her talk, Susan will address how climate change affects our psychological well-being, including threats to identity and grief over environmental losses, as well as how museums can help mitigate this damage.

I confess that writing about Culture Wars for TrendsWatch left me feeling pretty discouraged. One thing that lifted me up out of that funk was the work of Mathieu Lefevre, CEO and Co-founder of More in Common. Mathieu’s work at More in Common focuses on understanding the forces driving us apart, finding common ground, and bringing people together to tackle shared challenges. At the Summit, he will deconstruct some of the factors contributing to the “polarization illusion,” including the role of the media, social media, and the “polarization industrial complex.” Mathieu has some ideas about what we can all do to stem the tide of polarization and the critical role museums can play as convening places and community spaces.

If researching topics for TrendsWatch has taught me anything, it is that for any challenge in the world, there are amazing people working to find solutions. The current loneliness epidemic is a case in point. Dr. Jeremy Nobel is an actual doctor—a primary care physician and public health practitioner with faculty appointments at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Medical School. (He’s also an award-winning poet. Not that I’m going to get an inferiority complex or anything. Yikes.) Jeremy is the founder of the Foundation of Art and Healing, and his 2023 book Project UnLonely looks at how we can heal the current “crisis of disconnection.” At the Summit, he’ll draw on his work to offer some insights and strategies for how museums can play a role in that process of healing.

I hope to see you at the Summit next week. If you haven’t snagged tickets yet, register now and start planning your agenda for the day.

Warmest regards from the future,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Merritt

VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums

American Alliance of Museums