Museum Visions: A Blog Space

“REPRESENT.”   It was an unhesitating one-word answer given during an in-community consultation. This past week, we conducted this consultation at the regional Korean-American Community Center to solicit feedback on the early concepts of an interpretive plan for a new installation of the Korean art collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Korean project is part of a larger … Read More

Our colleague Jon Carfagno candidly outlines in his May blog post, “Retelling the Story of Museum Education Roundtable,” the process we at the Museum Education Roundtable (MER) recently embarked towards an exciting organization-wide transformation. We reflected on our purpose, our audiences and our future to redefine our brand, mission, vision and role. Throughout this process of reflection and change, we … Read More

“Sharing, teaching, listening, guiding, forecasting – an ongoing organizational quest to inform, engage and inspire through compelling educational experiences. We are Knowledge in Action. “ These words form the conclusion of Museum Education Roundtable’s recently redefined brand story. More importantly, they mark the culmination of a multi-year project intended to chart a course for our future. Origins and Background During … Read More

Museums are the “invisible sector.” This statement came from Tim Delaney, President and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits as he briefed a room full of museum professionals on what to expect when we traveled to Capitol Hill the next day for American Alliance of Museum (AAM) annual Museum Advocacy Day. He added that museums are doing amazing work, … Read More

Over the last seven years, we’ve spent a lot of time telling stories from our successful AmeriCorps Cultural Technology (ACT) museum internship program. This program, which embeds our New Mexico Highlands University media arts & technology students and recent grads in paid long-term service positions in museums, libraries, and historic sites, has been running since 2010. There have been articles, … Read More

‘Tis the season for holiday shopping lists! And who doesn’t love to curl up in front of the fireplace with a good read around the holidays? Keeping these two things in mind, the Board of Directors at the Museum Education Roundtable have some recommendations for the museum-centric bookworms in your life. Perhaps one or two of the books on this … Read More

There it is again. That phrase. A small group of local teachers and media specialists are gathered at the Beckley Furnace industrial monument in Northwest CT, where we are discussing ways to engage area students in learning at the heritage site. As the conversation progresses one teacher offers: “We need to find a way to make this history relevant to … Read More

This year’s annual MER Forum held in Washington, DC at the Phillips Collection, was an interactive workshop led by new MER Board member and consulting curator and inclusion specialist, Porchia Moore. Future Forward: Towards a Racially Inclusive Museum was designed as a primer on race and museums, and forms the basis of her doctoral work at the University of South … Read More