Museums today are facing a multifaceted crisis—grappling with funding cuts, staff reductions, and the rollback of DEI initiatives. Compounding these challenges are external pressures from government executive orders that call into question the very narratives and missions at the heart of our institutions.

These panelists will share their work to create and lead environmental and sustainability programs and how these programs intersect with efforts to improve staff well-being.

Art museums, like other types of museums, address issues of equity, inclusion, representation, and shared authority. Confronting these challenges requires re-thinking art historical narratives, restructuring staff and work culture, and negotiating new terms of collaboration with both communities and living artists.

MuseumExpert.org’s ambition is to find creative ways to address the obstacles we have identified that prevent museums from creating a Human Centered Workplace. This webinar will bring together presenters who will share successful strategies that will inspire positive change in other museums.

As we all work towards a more equitable museum community, it's important to explore what museum staff feel the perceived barriers to a human-centered workplace are. Join MuseumExpert.org Founder, Walter Staveloz as he leads a conversation with Anne W, Ackerson (AASLH/Anne W. Ackerson Consulting), Laura Lott (COO of the National Gallery of Art), and Micah Parzen (CEO of the Museum of Us). This panel will review and discuss the results of the April 2024 MuseumExpert.org Survey on Barriers to Equitable Museum Work survey.

In this session, Joanne Jones-Rizzi, Meredith Sorin Horsford, and Brandie Macdonald--three contributors to Change Is Required: Preparing for the Post-Pandemic Museum—do a deep dive into the complexities of museum narratives. They share their perspectives on successes, missteps, and still vexing challenges.

In this second step in our series, we have asked Micah Parzen, CEO of the Museum of Us (San Diego, California) to lead a webinar/workshop combo to share his recent work on the creation of a human-centered workplace. In the first part, he will share his vision and what he has learned through several recent workshops on this matter. In the second part, he will lead a conversation with participants based on his evaluation of the questions that matter as they emerged through these workshops.

The pandemic accelerated widespread change in the concept of work, the process of work, and the role of the workplace in social justice and equity, and has left many museums questioning their organizational structures, business models, and roles in communities. While museums rebuild, reorganize, and reconnect, employees are questioning their roles in influencing and implementing change within their museums and communities, and many are rethinking how to re-balance work and personal well-being.

This webinar will be a lively conversation between Robert Janes, Avi Decter, and Marsha Semmel focusing on Janes' just-published volume, Museums and Societal Collapse: The Museum as Lifeboat.

The U.S. and Europe have faced the same pandemic but the impact on museum strategies and the museum workforce has differed. Join is as we discuss the influence of the pandemic on European museums and their staff.

Two Ukrainian museum professionals discuss the state of museums since the beginning of full-scale conflict in February 2022.

Three contributors explore how, in this time of widespread anxiety, isolation, mis- and dis-information, and ‘culture war’ flareups, museums can maintain their reputations as trustworthy organizations and still address such timely and significant issues as climate change, systemic racism, political partisanship, and economic inequity.