Reposted from AAM

2027 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo

May 5-8, 2027 • Houston

The Call for Proposals Is Now Open

Take the stage at the 2027 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo in Houston, May 5-8. The call for proposals is open through September 21.

Submit your best proposal by learning more about the 2027 theme Mission. Value. Impact., the five session tracks, session formats, and tips for how to craft a great proposal.

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Reposted from Cultural Property News

2026 Cultural Property News Art and Heritage Law Report

The Antiquities Coalition:

Cultural Heritage Protector or Global Soft Power Agent?

Our latest Art and Heritage Law Report, The Antiquities Coalition: Cultural Heritage Protector or Global Soft Power Agent? examines the organization’s influence on U.S. and international cultural-property policy.

Our Report scrutinizes the Antiquities Coalition's terrorism, crime, and money-laundering narratives against contrary findings from the RAND Corporation and European and U.S. government research; explores the Antiquities Coalition’s nonprofit, governmental, and foreign-state ties; and examines its State Department funding alongside expanding U.S. import restrictions.

The Report assesses the consequences for museums, collectors, diaspora communities, and public access. It argues for heritage policy grounded in evidence, statutory limits, proportionality, and effective site protection.

Our 50-page report is available for free download on the Cultural Property News Website:

The Antiquities Coalition: Cultural Heritage Protector or Global Soft Power Agent?

Published by the Committee for Cultural Policy, Inc.

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Reposted from AASLH / NCPH

The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) and the National Council on Public History (NCPH) will hold their first joint conference September 16–19 in Providence, Rhode Island. In recognition of America’s 250th anniversary, this year’s theme, “The Work of Revolution,” explores how public historians, museums, archives, historic sites, and cultural institutions document change, interpret complex histories, and use the past to help shape the future. The conference will offer engaging sessions, workshops, tours, discussions, and opportunities to connect with history professionals and volunteers from across the field. Online registration has closed, but onsite registration will be available at the Rhode Island Convention Center.

Learn more about the 2026 Joint Conference

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Reposted from WMA

The Western Museums Association (WMA), in partnership with the Utah Museums Association (UMA), will hold its 2026 Annual Meeting September 23–26 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year’s theme, “ASPIRE,” invites museum professionals to imagine boldly and take meaningful steps toward transformation. Through dynamic sessions, networking, and shared learning, attendees will explore innovation, community engagement, stewardship, interpretation, equity, leadership, and ways to elevate underrepresented voices while shaping the future of museums. 

Learn more about the WMA | UMA 2026 Annual Meeting

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Reposted from Independent

Europol Warns of Increasingly Violent Museum Thefts

Art thieves have also shifted their attention to precious metals, jewels and cultural artefacts that offer greater profits, the EU's law enforcement agency said in a report Art thieves across Europe are turning to increasingly violent stategies as specialized gangs are replaced by informal opportunists recruited via social media, Europol reported on Monday. A high-profile raid at the Louvre Museum in Paris last October demonstrated this transition, Europol said, as robbers threatened guards and visitors before escaping with €88 million in jewels, including Empress Eugenie's tiara. In a new report, the EU's law enforcement agency noted that criminals over the past two years have redirected their focus toward precious metals, jewels, and cultural artifacts offering higher financial returns. Gold prices have surged 85% over the past two years as central banks and investors seek safe havens. The London Bullion Market Association, overseeing London's over-the-counter gold trading hub, warned that "as gold prices rise to historic levels, illicit flows and market distortions are also increasing." Highlighting the shift toward physical force, Europol noted: "offenders are breaching premises and display cases using tools such as sledgehammers, axes, crowbars and, in some instances, explosives." Where traditional gangs relied on stealth, deception, and niche expertise under central leadership, recent thefts are committed by decentralized, profit-motivated groups recruited online on a "crime-as-a-service" basis, the agency said.

Europol added that perpetrators are increasingly targeting gold items ranging from raw nuggets and coins to fine jewelry.

"Precious metals can be easily melted down, leaving no trace for law enforcement, and facilitating illicit sales during the fencing process. Precious stones in jewellery, on the other hand, can be easily removed and sold further," the report stated. In January of last year, thieves detonated explosives at a Dutch museum to steal a 2,500-year-old Dacian golden helmet and three ancient gold bracelets. The items were recovered and returned to Romania, though one bracelet remains missing.

Europol also recorded a rise in thefts of ancient Chinese porcelain artifacts, such as Ming Dynasty vases, driven by strong market demand.

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Reposted from IFCPP

Great events and strong security can go hand in hand. A few extra precautions help ensure the focus stays where it belongs—on your guests, your mission, and the collections you protect.

Reposted from ARSL

The Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL) will hold its 2026 Annual Conference September 16–19 in Montgomery, Alabama. With the theme “Rooted in Community,” the conference celebrates the strength, creativity, and resilience of rural and small libraries. The program offers practical education designed specifically for libraries working with limited budgets, staffing, and space—along with opportunities for networking, collaboration, and inspiration. Featured speakers include librarian and intellectual-freedom advocate Amanda Jones, bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson, and celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Learn more and register for ARSL 2026

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Reposted from ASTC

The Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) will bring science-center and museum professionals together for its

2026 Annual Conference - September 16–19 in Phoenix, Arizona. Hosted by the Arizona Science Center, the conference will explore audience engagement and inclusion, education and events, facility and exhibit design, organizational leadership, workforce development, community partnerships, museum operations, and emerging trends and innovations. The program includes educational sessions, hands-on experiences, museum expeditions, keynote presentations, networking events, and an exhibit hall. Learn more and register for ASTC 2026.

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Reposted from The Trump Administration

The Trump Administration’s Smithsonian Report: A Blueprint for Governmental Censorship “Saving America’s Story”

Our feature article is a must read for its analysis of the White House's latest cultural policy agenda - and the pithy quotes from our Founding Fathers that undercut its misleading and let's face it - erroneous arguments. Here are excerpts...

The White House Domestic Policy Council’s July 4, 2026 report, Saving America’s Story, is not a neutral audit of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History but rather a prosecutorial brief designed to declare the Smithsonian’s present leadership illegitimate and establish a political justification for intervention.

The report’s conclusion was written into its premise. The White House defines a successful historical museum as one that produces unity, pride, and affection for the nation. According to its point of view, this should be the goal of all Smithsonian museums.

In keeping with this pro-pablum policy, the report treats museum material that makes visitors feel uncomfortable as evidence of disunity and “ideological capture.” According to the report, historical accuracy is not determined by whether a museum’s presentation is rooted in historical evidence, but by whether the interpretation leaves visitors with the approved emotional response. Although the White house presently lacks authority to enter the American History Museum and change the museum’s exhibitions, its Executive Order 14416 directs the Secretary of the Interior and the National Park Service to put up temporary signage on the Smithsonian’s sidewalks regarding the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence; figures generally associated with the warm, patriotic feelings endorsed by the current administration.

Yet, the Founding Fathers had ideas of their own that might surprise the current administration – ideas about the value of free expression, education, and diversity. For instance, Thomas Jefferson’s Preamble to a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, Fall 1778, Papers 2:526—27

“…experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate... the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibited, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes… and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance . . .”

Regrettably, it is the word ‘disingenuous’ that most frequently comes to mind when reading the White House report. It states that museums should present “the good and the bad” while simultaneously insisting that the governing story must be one of national nobility, progress and redemption. Wrongdoing may be included, but only inside a narrative in which American founding principles are shown to have ultimately cured American injustice. The report’s rhetoric presents a fixed, incontrovertible narrative, oddly reminiscent at times of propaganda from the former Soviet Union. At the end of all human strife and the culmination of all social development, the outcome will be a sort of perfected Americanism. Russia’s answer was perfected Communism… and we all know how that ended.

Altogether this is a shoddy pretense of an analysis, from which actual analysis is missing. There is no methodological section explaining how displays were sampled, how interpretations were evaluated, which historians were consulted, whether temporary exhibitions were distinguished from permanent galleries, or whether the museum was invited to answer the report’s allegations. Instead, it compiles quotations, archived webpages, staff training documents, isolated labels and program descriptions into a case against the institution. It is an opposition-research dossier, not a professional museum assessment.

The report ultimately declares that the museum and Smithsonian leadership “cannot be trusted.” The administration has followed the report up with President Trump’s Executive Order 14416 in July 2026, “Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution,” ordering that warnings be placed at the museum entrances stating that “that current leadership of both the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum cannot be trusted to tell America’s story with honesty and gratitude.” That is not analytical language. It is delegitimizing language alleging that presenting controversial subjects is evidence of disloyalty.

The contrast between today and President Trump’s first term is striking. During his February 2017 visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, President Trump praised the museum for honoring Black men and women’s contributions to national heritage and described it as a source of national pride.

The president’s second-term posture is completely different. The Saving America’s Story report is the follow-up to Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” of March 2025, which declared that federal historical sites should be “solemn and uplifting” monuments to American greatness.

Executive Order 14253 instructed Vice President JD Vance, through his position on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to remove what the administration called improper ideology. It instructed Vance and the Office of Management and Budget to work with Congress to stop money supporting exhibits that allegedly degraded shared values or divided Americans by race. Under its terms any historically serious account of Indian wars, slavery, segregation, or immigration exclusion could be accused of dividing Americans “based on race” or “degrading a national value.”

So, what are our most important "national values"? Let’s ask James Madison.

“In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects… Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”

James Madison, Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788. Yale Law School, Avalon Project

The “Saving America’s Story” report is a skirmish in another battle that began with an August 12, 2025 White House letter to Secretary Bunch ordering a review of eight Smithsonian museums and compelling each museum to submit digital copies of past and future exhibition plans, copies of didactics and catalogs, labels, and social-media content... and for developing “narrative standards.” The stated goal was “alignment with American ideals,” but the process would enable an AI run-through to pick out keywords like ‘prejudice’ and other concepts too dangerous for public presentation. It also enabled assigning blame to specific people who approved a display or a signboard. Purposefully or not, it incentivized future self-censorship.

Our Feature Article is lengthy but well worth the time just for the Founders quotes, so follow the link below to access the whole. Meanwhile, we'll leave you with one more:

“Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness… To the security of a free constitution it contributes in various ways... by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority…”

George Washington, First Annual Address to Congress, January 8, 1790

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Reposted from Tim Richardson

The Things That Make Us Grow

When was the last time you deliberately did something that made you uncomfortable?

Not something reckless or unsafe, but something that stretched your confidence, challenged your assumptions, or required you to become a beginner again. Growth rarely happens when we stay inside the familiar. It happens when we are willing to take a step into the uncomfortable and discover that we may be more capable than we thought.

When was the last time you really stretched yourself?

When did you force yourself to do something uncomfortable?

What was the internal dialogue like before you tried something new?

I imagine it was uncomfortable. Maybe you never tried at all. Maybe you talked yourself out of it before you even began.

I recently finished reading The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter for the second time. In the book, Easter encourages us to push ourselves physically and mentally by participating in a misogi.

A misogi is a difficult challenge that pushes us beyond what feels comfortable. It should be hard enough that success is not guaranteed, but it should also be done safely. The point is not to prove something to others. The point is to discover what we are capable of when we stop letting comfort set the boundaries of our lives.

When we intentionally put ourselves on “hard mode” for a day, ordinary stressors can begin to feel more manageable. Traffic, a difficult email, or a delayed flight may no longer feel like an emergency. Easter explains that when we lack real challenges, our minds can move the goalposts. Small inconveniences can begin to feel like major crises. By choosing a meaningful challenge, we can reset our perspective.

It is certainly easier to do the things that make us comfortable. Yet growth often comes from taking on the things we fear most or the things that make us feel especially uncomfortable.

If the physical side of a misogi seems too difficult, consider beginning with a mental or emotional stretch. You might overcome a fear of public speaking, learn a new language, explore your artistic side through painting, ballroom dancing, or writing, or try something you have convinced yourself you could never do Consider overcoming a fear of public speaking, learning a new language, exploring your artistic side through painting, ballroom dancing, or writing, or trying something you have convinced yourself you could never do.

Tonight, I am doing something I could not have imagined doing just a few years ago. I am performing jazz piano in public.

Though I played piano through my mid-teens, I couldn’t fathom ever performing jazz piano for others. In high school, I joined the jazz band as a horn player, though I was not very good.

I could play a jazz riff and read music reasonably well. I learned one blues scale and played it repeatedly, never bothering to learn it in different keys. I could play a basic 2-5-1 progression, for those who know jazz music, but I did not learn much beyond that.

About 10 years ago, while listening to a jazz trio, I worked up the nerve to approach the young pianist. I asked her if she gave lessons. She was an outstanding musician and a serious student of jazz piano who had studied with a legendary instructor. I began working with her a short time later. Though I had always wanted to perform, the thought terrified me. I still remember the first few times I played in public and the feelings of inadequacy that came with it. I told myself I did not have the skills. I compared myself to musicians who were far better than I could ever hope to be.

Those voices can easily sideline us.

We have to learn to quiet the voices that tell us not to try. We have to remember that everyone starts somewhere.

Isn’t that true in almost every area of life?

When we believe we do not have the right skills, experience, training, or confidence, it is easy to let that internal dialogue determine whether we take action.

It is easy to keep doing the things for which we already have experience and confidence. The greater opportunity may be in the things that are newer, harder, and a little more uncomfortable.

What is one thing you have been talking yourself out of trying?

Maybe it is time to take the first step.

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