11:00 am – 12:15 pm

Learning Format: Passive Learning

Since 2007, the Tucson Museum of Art has partners with the Alzheimer’s Association Desert Southwest Chapter to provide a program for people with dementia and their caregiver. In this session, learn about how the program is designed, how staff and volunteers are trained, and what successes and failure the program has had. Hear from both the museum as well as the Alzheimer Association to understand the benefit of a program like this.

Learning Format: Active Learning

This session will explore innovations, impacts, and strategies for fostering collaborative and community-based curation. Presenters, comprised of community collaborators and museum professionals, will share a case study from the Tucson Museum of Art that offers a framework, tools, and questions for consideration when co-creating interpretative content. To illustrate community-curation practices, attendees will workshop a selection of artworks and themes from art of the American West to explore a 21st century vision of cultures and ideas.

Learning Format: Passive Learning

Learning Format: Active Learning

Talkback exhibits prompt visitors to respond on Post-it Notes, notebooks, or digital platforms, bringing their perspectives and voices into exhibitions. Such exhibits have become commonplace in museums, but few are treating the responses as data sources and mining them for insights into visitor engagement, meaning-making, and dialogue. In this session, presenters will discuss case studies and provide frameworks for analyzing different types of talkback data. Attendees will share their talkback data and develop analysis plans.

Learning Format: Conversation

Join a conversation with three unique organizations who are on a path of decolonization – from policies, programs, collections management, historical designations, to name changes – The Museum of Us, Burke Museum and The Confluence (formerly Fort Calgary) will discuss their paths to truth and reconciliation.

Learning Format: Conversation

This roundtable discussion will foster dialogue related to art museums with affiliated outdoor spaces (landscape settings, sculpture gardens, or parks). Focused breakout discussions will consider how to ensure that outdoor space use promotes deeper connections with visitors, staffing, interpretation, and programming practices, the potential for revenue, and how museums can acknowledge the histories of the land on which our outdoor spaces sit, including centering Indigenous peoples.

Learning Format: Active Learning

5 Museum industry themed challenges
4 Teams
3 Hosts
2 Much Fun!
1 Winner
Join a team and join the fun. This whirlwind competition will pit museum professionals against each other in a range of interesting and interactive games. 

Learning Format: Passive Learning

Learning Format: Active Learning

If the thought of advocating every day sounds exhausting, this session will help you approach it from a different angle. At its core, successful advocacy is simply articulating throughout the year why your museum adds value to your community. We will share resources and tools available from state museum associations to help museums of any size advocate for themselves and the field as a whole. All of us have a part in advocating for museums.

Learning Format: Passive Lerning