TMG members contribute to the field in many ways, including writing books, articles, and reports that advance the conversation about the place of museums in society. We think these recent publications are worth a look.

Julia Forbes and Marianna Adams, with Jeanine Ancelet, Family Spaces in Art Museums: Creating Curiosity, Wonder, and Play
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers/AAM
A
practical guide based on research that helps art museum educators understand the role and value of spaces designed for families and helps them to create dedicated spaces for intergenerational play and learning. This book features insights, best practices, and lessons learned from years of experience in creating dedicated spaces for families in a wide range of art museums.

Bob Beatty, “What Kind of Ancestor Will I Be?,” in The Inclusive Museum Leader,  co-edited by Cinnamon Catlin-Lugutko and Chris Taylor
Rowman & Littlefield, Co.
Insights and perspectives from recognized museums leaders offering practical solutions and opportunities for today’s museum leaders. Authors share their journeys to becoming inclusive leaders, as well as decisions they have made and actions they have taken to build equitable practices within their organizations.

Anne Bergeron, “Ethics and Accountability,” in Achieving Excellence in Fundraising, with co-author Eugene R. Tempel
John Wiley & Sons
The chapter applies moral philosophy to the practice of raising philanthropic funds for nonprofit causes, offers a framework for resolving ethical dilemmas, advances the 21st century imperative of integrating ethics and social justice, and offers guidance to practitioners to serve as the “moral compasses” for the organizations and communities they represent.

Laura Roberts, Collections and Deaccessioning in a Post-Pandemic World: Cases from the Old Reality
Museums Etc.
TMG member Laura Roberts contributed a chapter on deaccessioning and its aftermath at the Delaware Art Museum to Collections and Deaccessioning in a Post-Pandemic World: Cases from the Old Reality, part of a three volume set edited by Stefanie Jandl and Mark Gold, to be published in early 2021.

Paul Orselli, “Can Museums Really Change?
In Informal Learning Review, September/October 2020
TMG member Paul Orselli questions whether museums can really make the changes needed to move in the post COVID-19 world.

Anne W. Ackerson and Joan H. Baldwin, Leadership Matters: Leading Museums in an Age of Discord, 2nd edition
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers/AASLH
TMG member Anne Ackerson and Joan Baldwin illustrate the connection between individual leadership and organizational strength using profiles of 35 leaders from a range of positions and institutions who are champions for relevancy, collaboration, and revolutionary rethinking of museums’ role in their communities. Focusing on history and cultural organizations, the authors also explore 10 myths and 10 simple truths of museum leadership and offer criteria and goals for individual and organizational development.

Gretchen Jennings, Jim Cullen, Janeen Bryant, Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, Stacey Mann, Charlette Hove, and Nayeli Zepeda, “The Empathetic Museum: A New Institutional Identity.
In Curator: The Museum Journal, October 2019
An inner core of institutional empathy is essential to 21st-century museums that seek deep and authentic engagement with their communities. TMG members Gretchen Jennings and Janeen Bryant and their coauthors—colleagues in the Empathetic Museum initiative—trace the origins of this collaboration during a time of expanded social consciousness in museums, explain the characteristics of empathetic practice, and propose a process of awareness, acceptance and action in pursuit of institutional transformation.

Janeen Bryant, Jennifer Scott, and Suzanne Seriff, “Statues of Limitation: Are Museums the Rightful Home for Confederate Monuments?
In Museum, March/April 2019, American Alliance of Museums
The debate over what to do with Confederate monuments erected during the Jim Crow era points to the imperative for a broader conversation about more than the oppression these statues represent. Janeen Bryant and her coauthors invite museums and other educational institutions to “critically examine their own histories of exclusion and any continued complicities in what they monumentalize before they earn the right to properly contextualize racist memorials.”

Gail Anderson, Mission Matters: Relevance and Museums in the 21st Century
Rowman & Littlefield/American Alliance of Museums
30% discount code: RLFANDF30
Designed for museums of every size and stage of development, Mission Matters approaches mission in the context of external realities and the need for museums to position themselves as leaders and change agents. It features thought essays, 20 stories of mission-focused transformative change, and 80 diverse mission statement examples. Gail Anderson has also created a Mission Alignment Framework to guide museums in reframing their missions to pursue transformative change.

Elaine Heumann Gurian, “Modeling Decency, Sir!”, in Designing for Empathy: Perspectives on the Museum Experience , edited by Elif M. Gokcigdem
Rowman & Littlefield/American Alliance of Museums
The 23 essays in Designing for Empathy expand our understanding of empathy and its potential for fostering compassionate worldviews and actions. In her contribution, Elaine Heumann Gurian explores ways museums can help rebuild the foundation of shared values and practices needed in a generous, inclusive society. “If [we] consciously want to push back against the degradation of civility that threatens our democracy,” she writes, “we will need to reemphasize the moral and civic nature of our work.”

Marsha Semmel, Partnership Power: Essential Museum Strategies for Today’s Networked World
Rowman & Littlefield/American Alliance of Museums
30% discount code: RLFANDF30
What are the essential attributes of sustainable and relevant museum-related partnerships, collaborations, and networks in today’s hyperconnected world? In this exploration of what authentic partnership means, how partnerships evolve, and their benefits and challenges, Marsha Semmel shares perspectives from related sectors, current case studies from a broad and diverse spectrum of museums, and proven tools, tips, and resources.

Mary Ellen Munley, “Viewing Guggenheim Social Practice through the Lens of Evaluation”
In Guggenheim Social Practice
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2018
Project evaluator Mary Ellen Munley describes the evolution and impact of a multiyear planning and implementation process for a program at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum that explores how museums and artists can work together to foster new forms of public engagement that advance social values. She also shares her customized methods for assessing work that involves high levels of uncertainty, innovation, and social complexity. The full evaluation report is available here.

Daryl Fischer and Laura B. Roberts, Templates for Trustees
Rowman & Littlefield
The new edition of this popular series from the Museum Trustee Association features books and web-based customizable templates that guide boards in identifying their priorities and planning their actions. Building Museum Boards, The Leadership Partnership, and Executive Transitions were published in spring 2018; Strategic Thinking and Planning will be available in fall 2018.

Margaret Kadoyama, Museums Involving Communities: Authentic Connections
Routledge
Sample chapter: “Learning about the Museum and Learning about Oneself
Advocating an accessible and inclusive approach to museum management, the author shares insights into how museum-community relationships can be forged in practice, how museums can be involved in building healthier communities, and how community engagement strategies can be developed, implemented, and evaluated successfully.

Laura Roberts and Barbara Franco, “The Winds of Opportunity”
In American Association for State and Local History Guide to Making Public History, edited by Bob Beatty
In their essay on issues and trends facing history organizations, the authors urge museum professionals to embrace change by exploring new operating models, creating a climate of entrepreneurship, sharing authority with audiences and volunteers, and seeking new partnerships.
Rowman & Littlefield/AASLH
30% discount code: RLFANDF30

Darcie Fohrman and Janeen Bryant, “Radical Collaboration—Building to WE in Exhibition Design: Essential Elements for Confronting Social Issues with Community”
In Exhibition, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Fall 2017)
When developing the award-winning ¡NUEVOlution! Latinos and the New South, the Levine Museum of the New South made a long-term commitment to deep community engagement through radical collaboration. The complex process led to an exhibition that confronted often-contentious social issues while strengthening the museum’s role as a catalyst for understanding.

David Ellis, Robert Mac West, and Dan Martin, “Reactions of Various Institutions to the New Administration in Washington, DC”
In Informal Learning Review, May/June 2017
The authors report on their May 2017 survey of 38 directors from all types of museums across the country to learn their perspectives on issues and challenges emerging in the current political and social environment.

Marsha Semmel, “Generational Inclusion: Shattering Stereotypes and Challenging Assumptions”
In Informal Learning Review, May/June 2017
As demographic trends continue to show a five-generation workforce, two conversations at the 2017 AAM annual meeting (one sponsored by TMG) revealed the need for greater exploration of age-related stereotypes and experiences that would help museums create a more productive, fulfilling multigenerational workplace.

Elaine Heumann Gurian, “Public Spaces for Strangers: The Foundation for Peacebuilding and Implications for Heritage Institutions”
In Heritage and Peacebuilding, edited by Diana Walters, Daniel Laven, and Peter Davis
Boydell Press
The first step in enhancing civic peace in urban settings, Gurian argues, is to intentionally create more areas where strangers can encounter each other safely while going about their personal quests.

Mary Ellen Munley, “A Reflection on Evaluation, Research, and Practice”
Daryl Fischer, “The Evolving Lexicon of Creatives-in-Residence”
In Down the Rabbit Hole: Adventures in Creativity and Collaboration
Denver Art Museum
Insights from a two-year project exploring how collaboration with the local creative community can help an art museum transform visitor experiences, with essays by consultants and evaluators Mary Ellen Munley and Daryl Fischer

Daryl Fischer, Swarupa Anila, and Porchia Moore, “Coming Together to Address Systemic Racism in Museums”
In Curator: The Museum Journal, Volume 60, Issue 1 (January 2017)
Forming alliances among museum practitioners is essential to building commitment across the field to address legacies of exclusion, privilege, and institutionalized racism.

Marsha Semmel, “Museum Leadership, Organizational Readiness, and Institutional Transformation”
In Museum, American Alliance of Museums, March/April 2017
An anthropologist and lawyer makes the transition to museum director, stabilizes and re-invigorates a troubled institution, and then learns how challenging real institutional transformation can be.

Paul Orselli, “Do You Really Need a 3D Printer, and Other Essential Questions You Need to Ask about a Museum’s Makerspaces
In Hand to Hand, Association of Children’s Museums, Summer 2016, Volume 30, Number 2
The most essential qualities of makerspaces including the pros and cons of low tech and high tech devices and the value staff or creative partners add to the visitor experience.

Judy Rand, Less Is More. And More Is Less
In Exhibition, National Association for Museum Exhibition, Spring 2016
When it comes to exhibition text, “less is more.” Visitors have only so much attention to give, so putting more in front of them doesn’t mean they can devote more attention to it.

Beverly Sheppard, Marsha Semmel, and Carol Bossert, Think With Me: David Carr’s Enduring Invitation
In Curator: The Museum Journal, Volume 59, Issue 2 (April 2016)
Honoring the legacy of David Carr (1945–2016), scholar, teacher, librarian, writer, advocate for cultural institutions, and astute observer of museums.

Mary Ellen Munley (lead research advisor), Ellen Hirzy (editor), Room to Rise: The Lasting Impact of Intensive Teen Programs in Art Museums
Whitney Museum of American Art
Report on a groundbreaking research and evaluation initiative by four leading art museums that explores the transformational impact of intensive museum programs for teens.

Other Member Publications