Join us as we welcome attendees to Reno, present the 2025 Awards – the Charles Redd Center Award for Exhibition Excellence, the WMA Leadership Award, and the WMA Impact Award–and get inspired by the 2025 keynote speaker!

Opening Remarks
Jason B. Jones, Executive Director, Western Museums Association

Local Welcome
TBD

WMA President's Address
Noelle Kahanu, Acting Director, Museum Studies Graduate Certificate Program, University of Hawaii, Manoa.

Kick off your conference experience with a lively hour of Speed Networking! Bring plenty of business cards, your sense of humor, and comfortable shoes. Everyone is encouraged to join us for a friendly, timed-interval business card exchange social hour. This people-rotating format encourages brief individual introductions between everyone in the room. Want to keep the conversation going? Following the structured program, we will save time for mingling before continuing on to the Opening Reception.

Over the course of four consecutive days at WMA’s 2025 Annual Meeting, headquartered at the Renaissance Reno Downtown, attendees will attend a fantastic lineup of engaging, informative sessions, and can participate in multifaceted learning opportunities including the perennially popular Poster Session, casual Roundtable Discussions, and hands-on Activity Stations.

WMA's Annual Meeting Keynote Speaker is Kirsten Pai Buick, Ph.D., of the University of New Mexico!

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Learning Format: Active Learning

The California Collections Resource Center at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) houses the largest collection of California-focused art and artifacts in the state. We'll share the steps of recent internal partnership-based projects that have increased access to art, history, and natural science collections items for a wide range of people, including OMCA staff, researchers, Native American tribes, other institutions, and the general public.

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Learning Format: Active Learning

Recent executive orders have changed the landscape of arts organizations. Funding sources, grant institutions, research and community representation have all been impacted. You - the audience - are the panel for this moderated discussion. Please come ready to share how your museum or organization is responding to policy changes, and addressing challenges we are all facing. This conversation will leverage the strength of the WMA community to build collective resilience for the communities we serve. 

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Learning Format: Active Learning

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Learning Format: Conversation

Through the summer of 2025, WMA members will convene virtually to share, discuss, debate and determine their approaches to America 250. Based on these rich virtual dialogues, the WMA Programs and Innovation Committee will provide key takeaways and materials created to continue the conversation through an engaging and interactive conference session building upon last year’s initial informational session.

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Learning Format: Active Learning

This tool talk is nuts…and bolts! Whether a seasoned professional or new to the responsibility, we all find ourselves responding to the media at one time or another. Sharpen your skills for offering an engaging interview and learn to respond effectively in a crisis. This workshop will offer tools for presenting yourself as a professional spokesperson with the most exciting of messages while strategically responding to difficult or uncomfortable situations.  

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Learning Format: Conversation

How can you help your exhibits deliver “more” for your visitors? We will explore case studies of how exhibits have been developed as platforms for both unfacilitated and facilitated learning opportunities. How do we turn neurology puzzles into a sensory brain bar? A story nook into a community conversation spot? A playful roleplay spot into a cultural heritage moment? We will then break into mediated roundtables with participants to explore exhibit/program scenarios suggested by attendees.