Overview

Change Is Required will empower museum professionals, institutional leaders, funders and supporters to address the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic, economic dislocation, and social protest and stimulate new thinking about the future directions of museums in America.

Full Product Details

9781538161661

Table of Contents

Reviews

A remarkable exploration on the future of museums that contains powerful responses to the challenges we're facing, reflections on past and potential practices, and calls to action that offer the possibility for change.--Joe Imholte, Executive Vice President, The Bakken Museum This book is a must-read if you or your museum is grappling with how to remain relevant to the broader community, to enhance visitor numbers, and/or to deal with the role of technology and virtual learning. If you are not considering these issues, then it is an even more important read.--Dennis Schatz, Senior Fellow, Institute for Learning Innovation, and Senior Advisor Emeritus, Pacific Science Center This volume of collected essays is an immensely valuable gift to museum professionals. It is a banquet of possibilities offered by people willing to share their experiences of one of the most difficult times through which we as humans and professionals have ever lived. But as with any memorable banquet, I advise readers to approach the feast with small plates filled with only enough that can be digested in a single sitting to fuel their courage to embrace uncertainty, inspire adaptive leadership skills, and spark hope for transformation as we grow to embrace lessons learned during the pandemic and how they will shape the future of museums.--Erika Sanger, Executive Director, Museum Association of New York Some of the most insightful and forward-thinking people in the museum field weigh in on this moment.... How we got here, what it says about our field, and what opportunities it presents for long-overdue change. We need this book.--Sean Kelley, Senior Vice President, Director of Interpretation Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site

Some of the most insightful and forward-thinking people in the museum field weigh in on this moment.... How we got here, what it says about our field, and what opportunities it presents for long-overdue change. We need this book.--Sean Kelley, Senior Vice President, Director of Interpretation Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site

Author Information

Avi Decter, Managing Partner of History Now, has worked in and with museums across the country on exhibitions, programs, and strategic plans for more than forty years. He is a founder and past chair of the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) and an officer of the AAM's Independent Museum Professionals Network. Mr. Decter has held senior positions at the Museum of American Jewish History, Winterthur Museum and Gardens, and the Natiional Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution). He has helped to plan several new museums including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Louisville Slugger Museum and Visitor Center, the Boott Cotton Mill Museum at Lowell National Historic Park, and the National Civil War Museum. He is the author of Interpreting American Jewish History at Museums and Historic Sites (Rowman & Littlefied, 2016) and is completing a new book titled Exploring American Jewish History through 50 American Treasures, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield. Mr. Decter has co-authored and edited two other books and half a dozen book-length catalogues (with essays by leading scholars and museum professionals). He and Mr. Yellis have co-authored a dozen blogs on the current crises in museums published on the AASLH website and AAM's Museum Junction. Ken Yellis, Principal of Project Development Services, is a historian with more than forty years in the museum field as educator, exhibit developer, program planner, and grant writer. He was grant writer and content developer for The Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present and Future and wrote four successful grants for two major Brooklyn Historical Society projects, In Pursuit of Freedom and Waterfront. Ken has worked at the National Portrait Gallery, Plimoth Plantation, the Yale Peabody Museum, the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and Touro Synagogue. He was Guest Curator for Passages Through the Fire: Jews in the Civil War, Project Coordinator for the Newport Historical Society’s “The Spectacle of Toleration,” and Chair of the Technical Committee of the Newport World Heritage Commission. Ken was long Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Museum Education. He has written for Curator, Museum, The Public Historian, America in WWII, Seaport Magazine, Discovery (The Peabody Magazine), Jewish Daily Forward (on-line), ARTES (on-line), Providence Journal, Exhibitionist, Museologist, and others. His chapter “Museum Education,” M.S. Shapiro, ed., The Museum: A Reference Guide (1990), remains widely read, cited, and incorporated into curricula. He has contributed chapters to Museum Education Anthology, Patterns in Practice, Transforming Practice, and Interpreting Religion at Museums and Historic Sites. His exhibition, (www.seekingshelterblockisland.org), Seeking Shelter, should go on view at Yale Divinity School in spring of 2021.

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