This session focuses on how museums bridge generational gaps to ensure long-term vitality. Leaders from the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Nora Eccles Harris Museum, and Kimball Art Center share innovative strategies for engaging children, college students, and seniors. This panel explores how tailoring programs to specific life stages fosters community engagement. Attendees will walk away with a "Life-Stage Toolkit" to broaden their audience base and build sustainable, inclusive institutional models resonating across the patron lifespan.

Museums in historic buildings come with their own set of challenges such as accessibility, environmental concerns in collections, and ongoing building maintenance. Because of these issues, our "wins" or measures of success often look different from those museums in purpose-built, modern facilities. Explore how reframing those metrics can demonstrate relevance to your community, improve staff mental health, and celebrate the unique things historic buildings can offer that more traditional museums often cannot.

Discover how the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden's "50 for 50" initiative is redefining collections care through a national model that shares American art across all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Examining the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art's role as the host venue for Utah, this session highlights creative strategies for reimagining storage and stewardship through cross-institutional partnerships. Attendees will walk away with practical approaches to enhance collections care and access through intra-museum collaboration.

This session will address three of the top strategies that museums of various sizes can use when seeking funding from a variety of sources: Individuals, Foundations, Corporations, Government Agencies, Membership, Planned Gifts, and Capital Campaigns. These skills can be used by development professionals and any other staff involved in fundraising requests. This session covers basic Development skills as explained by seasoned Development professionals.

What does it mean to lead with vulnerability in museum spaces? Grounded in Brené Brown's research, this panel explores how courage, trust, and authenticity strengthen teams and institutional culture. Presenters will share real-world examples, challenges, and practical strategies for applying vulnerability-based leadership in museums. Attendees will leave with actionable tools to foster connection, resilience, and innovation within their organizations.

Donor cultivation is an ongoing and deeply critical, component of development work. In this session, we will explore the challenges, constraints, and opportunities for building and maintaining these important relationships. After a rapid-fire series of short presentations in which development professionals from a variety of institutions share their own successful strategies for engaging donors, attendees will ask questions, engage in broader conversation, and think deeply about their own work.

Data acts as a "crystal ball" by leveraging predictive analytics, AI, and integrated data sets–such as visitor behavior, market trends, and historical performance–to forecast future outcomes. Learn how museums can collect valuable data and use it to transform raw information into predictive models, actionable insights, and data-driven decisions. From guest sentiment to retail sales, explore different data streams, how they can identify trends, and inform decisions across a wide range of museum operations.

This session will begin with several graduate students sharing their thoughts, fears, and concerns as they enter the museum field in the midst of a myriad of challenges. It will then broaden into a fishbowl session with others joining in the conversation. Leadership from WMA and other organizations will be in attendance to learn how to support, attend to, and address these issues into the future.