Change is Required: Preparing for the Post-Pandemic Museum is a book about the future of American museums. Like other institutions, museums and zoos, historic sites, gardens, and arboreta, were powerfully affected by the nested crises of the pandemic. These unprecedented crises challenged American museums. Adapting to novel circumstances and uncertainty became the order of the day; improvisation in policy and practice the new norm.
Amidst upheavals and disruptions, a number of American museums have charted new directions for themselves and their communities. Many museums have taken a decisive turn to digital programming. Others have taken a turn toward community, developing new kinds of collaborations with their neighbors and local audiences. Still others have moved issues of equity and justice―internally and in the world―to the center of their institutional concerns.
In every part of the country―and in every type of museum--museum workers are challenging old assumptions, conventional narratives, and customary practices as they look to the future. In Change Is Required, a unique array of 50 museum professionals--representing different disciplines, positions, and experiences--share their thinking about assessing needs and possibilities, managing people and resources, and building productive new relationships with neighbors, communities, and partner organizations.
These authors argue that change is necessary--inside and beyond the museum. It is futile and unproductive to default to the old “normal.” To achieve greater relevance, impact, equity, and inclusiveness, museums need to reconsider their leadership models, organizational culture, internal structures, and community collaborations Bristling with personal passion, informed by experience, and focused on the future, the essays in this volume convey the urgency to rethink traditional museum practice, offering visionary―yet practical―routes to future museum success in a volatile, complex, and ambiguous world.
In its depth and range, this book constitutes an invitation to join in the growing, lively discourse about possible futures for museums in America. The invitation extends not only to museum professionals, but to all those interested in cultural affairs and institutions.
Avi Decter, Managing Partner of History Now, is known for interpreting difficult subjects, including labor unrest at the Boott Cotton Mill Museum in Lowell, MA; civil war at the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, PA; and genocide at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Over the years, he has helped to plan new museums in six states and the District of Columbia. Decter is the author of Interpreting American Jewish History at Museums and Historic Sites (2016) and Exploring American Jewish History through 50 Historic Treasures (forthcoming). With Ken Yellis, he writes the "History in Progress" column for History News.
Marsha Semmel is an independent consultant working with cultural and educational organizations on leadership development, strategic planning, and partnerships. In 2019, she published Partnership Power: Essential Museum Strategies for Today’s Networked World. Semmel has served as Senior Advisor to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement, and the Noyce Leadership Institute. She has taught at the Bank Street College Graduate program in museum education since 2015. Previously, Semmel served in leadership roles at the Institute of Museum and Library Services and NEH. She has been President/CEO of Conner Prairie, in Indiana, and Women of the West Museum in Denver.
Ken Yellis, Principal of Project Development Services, served as guest curator for Passages through the Fire: American Jews and the Civil War. A historian with four decades in the museum field, Ken has been involved in over 100 history, science, and art exhibitions. Ken served as grant writer and content developer for The Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present and Future (2009-2011). He has worked for the Touro Synagogue Foundation, the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Plimoth Plantation, and the National Portrait Gallery.
