Multimedia Forum

How can museums support individual and community wellness, belonging, and resilience? Hear a case study from the Palo Alto Art Center about Creative Attention, an initiative that included an exhibition, artist residencies, an art therapy residency, public programs, and wellness programs. As part of the session, participate in a virtual meditation with our wellness program provider and use the prompts created by our art therapist in an artmaking session.

Open to Directors, Deputy Directors, CEOs, CFOs, Leadership Team Members, and Trustees, this luncheon welcomed guest speaker Micah Parzen, CEO, Museum of Us, for a talk about changing the Museum’s name and the work that came after. This luncheon was sponsored by Mad Systems.

Museums provide space for people to engage in critical conversations. In this session, participants will hear from four museums on their relationship between the curation/exhibitions and education/community programs departments, how educators navigate complex and sometimes controversial topics with visitors, and how program organizers create public discussions on critical topics. Participants will also have the opportunity to speak with other museum professionals on how they address critical topics and foster dialogue and civil discourse.

As natural disasters and crises become prevalent, hear how four museums responded to wildfires and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Learn innovative ways to help your community heal. Each museum will share how they addressed local crises in thoughtful and meaningful ways while staying true to their missions and protecting their collections. Through partnerships, interactive social media platforms, creative artmaking, reflective exhibitions, collecting oral histories, and developing programs, each museum became a place of gathering, engagement, connection, reflection, and support.

How do museums and historians shape a person’s legacy, for better or for worse? Join us for small group conversations as we investigate the stories of aviation pioneers Pancho Barnes and Amelia Earhart through an LBGTQ+ perspective. We’ll consider the wider challenges of representing the diverse ethnicities or sexual/gender identities of historical individuals with today’s language, and examine how what museums say (and don’t say) about a person’s life has a profound impact on visitors