You’ve are finally starting your career as a museum professional… Now what? Starting a new career doesn’t have to mean starting over. Learn how to incorporate experiences from your “previous life” into your new one so you don’t lose momentum as you turn that corner.

Building the Car While Driving It: An Insider’s (in real-time) Perspective on Creating a New Museum for the 22nd century – provides participants the necessary tools to consider when in the driver’s seat to creating a museum from scratch.

Due to systemic inequality, women, members of the LGBTQ community, and BIPOC people have long been excluded from various canons. This poster introduces the concept of revisionism as a tool to rectify this injustice and provides an example of how it was used to create an inclusive program.

In this session, viewers will learn how to make museums more accessible. They will learn about student-led accessibility initiatives at the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University. They will learn how to identify and solve accessibility issues in their own museums.

A free virtual tour of the Schroeder Saddletree Factory Museum is now available from anywhere in the world. The tour can be viewed on a computer, tablet, smartphone, or virtual reality headset. It is one of only a few virtual tours of historic industrial sites in the US.

Post-pandemic, Conner Prairie chose to deepen its commitment to donor engagement, starting by surveying donors’ interests and preferences. This poster will focus on the implementation and conclusions of two years of donor surveys, based in research and stewardship best practices, as well as how Conner Prairie used the results.

There are many challenges when there are unknown and potentially hazardous pharmaceutical chemicals in museum collections. This poster illustrates how one small museum with limited staff and funding is resourcefully improving their spill response and prevention procedures when their collection contains unknown and potentially hazardous chemicals.

What is the relationship between exhibit design, engagement and learning in museums? Participants will join a collaborative discussion related to unpacking this question. Through a hands-on brainstorming session, participants will contribute to the creation of a set of priorities that can serve to guide the future investigation of this question.

Museums of all sizes can benefit from audience evaluation. Knowing your audiences is a great first step in engaging your audiences. It helps to decipher what it is that makes your institution unique to your community and is essential for future planning of exhibits, programs, and other events.

As museums look to increase engagement, emphasis has been placed on growing new audiences that are not always served in “traditional” museums. Using the Indiana State Museum’s Early Childhood programming as an example, we present a case study that focuses on hands- on, open-ended exploration that has made the museum a destination for families with young children.

The pandemic exposed how museums are vulnerable by an over-reliance on earned revenue. Building resilience requires building philanthropic capacity. In this fast-paced gameshow, two teams of experts “compete” to share best practices and new ideas in development and membership. The audience becomes the third team, and everyone wins!

Engage and learn with the Arab American National Museum (AANM) as we strive to answer the questions around how museums can (re) engage with their local community members through responsive educational and public programming.

Is your career at the “braking” point? The needs of museums and museum workers have changed drastically in the last few years. Our panel will discuss how to advocate for your needs, shifting gears when that simply isn’t working, and how to repackage your skills to land a new role.

This session hosted by IMP features a panel of museums leaders and consultants to discuss issues that come up when museums and contractors work together and how to strengthen their relationships. If you hire independent contractors, work with independent contractors, or ARE an independent contractor, this session is for you!

If web accessibility isn’t already on your radar, it should be. Many accessibility standards are items everyone can address. This session is designed to empower attendees with fundamental web accessibility and usability principles and corresponding techniques.

In this session, we’ll talk about leveraging relationships to be better fundraisers inside our museums and outside in our communities (especially with our board’s help). And we’ll spend plenty of time sharing what is and isn’t working back home, so we all leave with new ideas and new contacts.

Most of us lead from the middle at some point in our careers – but professional development for that level can be scarce. Move your career forward and bring your challenges to a lively crowd-sourced session to discuss how to lead up, down, and out in fast-paced museum environments.

Join HUB International’s Museum Insurance team for an introduction to the world of insurance claims. Presenters will guide participants through the claims process, identifying ways that museums can proactively prepare and respond in the event of an emergency such as flood, fire, or injury to visitors or staff.

Alebrijes: Creatures of a Dream World was a one of a kind exhibition that allowed partners, the Mexican Cultural Center DuPage and Cantigny Park, to reach new audiences, create new education opportunities and undertake an experiment in an international exchange on a large scale in the Midwest.

When creating an exhibition around topics like bias, what evaluation practices and techniques can we use to understand where communities are at and what resources they need to facilitate difficult conversations. Join Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service project team members to discuss the nationally traveling exhibition The Bias Inside Us.

Feeling alone and overwhelmed in the great big world of human resources? Does your current role in your organization require you to wear many hats and the people/payroll/benefits etc. are just one part of it? This session is definitely for you! Together, we will brainstorm ways you can find support through getting connected, using existing resources, and developing a plan for next steps. Are you ready? Let’s go!

Walking the tightrope between education and entertainment has never been harder. This session will help you perfect your balancing act giving you the tools to mix engagement with education. You’ll walk away feeling a renewed sense of your organizations mission, mini program proposal, and new framework for program creation.

Internships are meant to be learning opportunities, but professionals are facing challenges: What should we be teaching, what should students already know, and how can we meet all needs? Through classes, TikTok, work study and more, panelists will share experiences in diversifying opportunities to better prepare students for future careers.

How do we elevate exhibits beyond the basics of access? Where does design and visitor experience intersect with inclusion? Moving beyond ADA and Universal Design Standards, this session will highlight the evolution of inclusive design considerations, concepts, and approaches including color contrast, edge detection, tactile feedback, and standardized braille implementation.

Is your annual gala tailored to fit your capacity and fundraising goals? Or have you followed a “one size fits all” approach? Join the Haitian American Museum of Chicago, Ukrainian National Museum, and Chicago Cultural Alliance Executive Director for a detailed look at budgets, paddles raises, silent auctions, and more.