LEAD in San Diego: Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability

The westmuse is please to help promote the upcoming 10th annual Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability conference from August 25-29, 2010 in San Diego, California.  Conference sessions on August 25-27 and the Capacity Building Workshop on August 28-29 will take place at the Courtyard Marriott San Diego Airport/Liberty Station. Conference sessions on August 28 will take place at cultural arts organizations in Balboa Park.

Per the event organizers:

2010 is a momentous year. Aside from being the 10th gathering of the Kennedy Center’s Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability network, it is also the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a key civil rights law, and the fourth anniversary of the ground-breaking international recognition of the rights of people with disabilities by the United Nations General Assembly – a vital step towards addressing human rights internationally.

LEAD 2010 presents us with an opportunity to look back upon the past 10 or 20 years to see how our work to eliminate barriers and create welcoming, accessible and inclusive cultural experiences has ensured that people with disabilities and older adults can exercise their civil and human rights. It is also a chance to look forward and to discover new ways to address ongoing challenges and new questions. Legislation and regulations are updated, new technologies come and go, our audiences and their needs and wants evolve but the challenge to guide our communities and institutions in making choices that acknowledge the right of all to participate in the cultural arts – and to do so with independence, dignity and respect – remains.

We meet that challenge by coming together once a year to hear from knowledgeable individuals in the field; engage in a dialogue with patrons and visitors with disabilities; carry on discussions with our peers; and learn about and share resources, best practices, and solutions.

And this year the LEAD network is gathering in San Diego, California in partnership with the San Diego Zoo and Kids Included Together. And I think we know who runs the zoo…AAM’s recently appointed Chair of the Board Douglas G. Myers.  (Congrats to WMA Board member William T. Harris for his appointment to the AAM BOARD!)

More Road Trip Destinations

By Susan Spero

Wander through the western region with me in this second road trip post on destinations collected via contact suggestions and help from the web.  Read he other half of the region, here. This part of the journey goes through Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and California. It is a tiny slice of what is out there, of course, especially since our territory in the Western region is so geographically vast that it covers approximately 40 percent of the country. Know of something I missed? Please add it in the comments.

Last summer I took a really long road trip across most of the U.S, from Columbus, Ohio to northern California, visiting 17 museums and sites in 10 days with stops that took anywhere from an hour to a full day.   This experience helped me recognize the varied character of the site options listed by my Idaho contact. Her suggestions range from small community focused centers like the Nez Pearce County Historical Society to museums that concentrate on a specific themes like the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa,  a site that seems designed especially for airship and WWII buffs.  Also on the Idaho list was one of the more unusual sites I remember from WMA in Boise three years ago:  The Old Idaho State Penitentiary a place that was creepy yet fascinating at the same time.  Currently on view is Marked Men- Tattoo History which explores the history of prison tattooing.

Heading south from Idaho, The Nevada Historical Society is in the last few days (through July 31) of showing the Johnson-Jeffries Centennial Exhibition (scroll down to find it) that celebrates the historical fight of the century of Jack Johnson and Jeff Jeffries (the great white hope) in Reno, Nevada on July 4th, 1910. I’m told what makes this exhibit a must see is the ten original oil paintings representing moments leading up to and during the historic fight, all created by well-known Seattle sports artist, Thom Ross.   The exhibit includes the Society’s original photographs, maps, ephemera and artwork to help tell the story about this important event in Reno, Nevada that impacted the whole country.

If you can’t make it to Reno by the end of this month, in mid-August you can see Chester Arnold: On Earth as It Is in Heaven presented as part of the Nevada Art Museum’s Art + Environment Series that focuses on ideas pertinent to the intersections of art and environments. Arnold crafts luscious large-scale oil paintings in the tradition of 19th-century European artists focused on subjects ranging from land use and environmental issues to the global impacts of human and industrial consumption, accumulation, and waste.  You can get a sense of the work at the artist’s website, although I can only imagine that these are even more powerful seen in person.

Moving on to Utah where the huge range of content options within the west continues.  How about seeing the largest open pit copper mine in the country?  At the Kennecott Utah Cooper Mine you can go to the visitors center to learn about the processes and products, as well as get a great view of the working mine. If dinosaurs are your thing:  in Salt Lake City, Thanksgiving Point has the distinction of being the world’s largest display of mounted dinosaurs.  If you are truly a dinosaur maniac (or a child you know is) you can sign up for a Dinosnorzz where you can sleep “under the belly of a dinosaur.”

My Utah contact also offered two park and native culture focused options.   The Fremont Indian State Park consists of the largest Fremont village uncovered in Utah. There is a museum showcasing the artifacts and a walking path takes visitors to the village ruins. There are 687 rock panels on site.    The museum at Edge of the Cedars State Park has the largest collection of Anasazi Indian pottery in the Four Corners area. Visitors can walk along a path around the pre-Colombian Pueblo Indian ruins of the village and also get to climb down a ladder into a kiva.  All of these Utah options feel very western to me having been raised as such a mid-western girl.

Janice Klein offered several options for Arizona travelers with this starting caveat:

Usually when my colleagues ask about museums to visit in the Phoenix area I send them to my two favorites:  the Desert Botanical Garden and the Pueblo Grande Museum.    Since we’re now dealing with temperatures over 100 degrees, probably for the rest of the summer and both of these museums are outside, here are three air-conditioned museums to consider if you find yourself Arizona’s Central Valley this summer.

The newly renovated Tempe History Museum has challenged the traditional chronological presentation of history and arranged its exhibits thematically, focusing on Surviving in the Desert, Building Our Community, College Town and Living Together.   There are plenty of touch-screens (called Explore Stations) that provide visual and written materials, as well as oral histories.   A huge interactive map has displays keyed to each thematic area.    I really enjoyed the one of historic sites that provided photographs and descriptions of buildings that can still be seen around the city.      The Tempe History Museum is also one of the few places that I’ve seen the Phoenix immigrant experience explicitly addressed.   In addition to cases showing objects from Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, Danish and Laotian and other immigrants, there are also kiosks with both written descriptions and oral histories provided by each group.  There’s also a Kid’s Place and plenty of interactives that, although geared for children, are lots of fun for adults too, including a Tempe Police Kawasaki motorcycle that you can sit on.   Vrroom!

At the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum you’ll find a wonderful mixture of old-fashioned wooden cabinets with shelves lined with brightly colored and odd-shaped minerals and fossils and brand new displays on mining and the earth’s history.   Of particular interest to me were the micro-crystals brought to visible size by a rotating microscope and the huge pieces of historic mining equipment on display outside the museum.   Somewhat outside the scope of the museum, but non-the-less fascinating is the Mofford Gallery which has about 1000 items of Arizona memorabilia acquired by former Secretary of State and Governor Rose Mofford (a champion of the museum) during her 51 years of government service.   Finally, the gift shop is a real treat, with spectacular gems, minerals, and jewelry, much of which is extremely affordable.   This is certainly the place to do your holiday shopping no matter what time of year.  There are plans to turn the Mineral and Mining Museum into the Arizona Centennial Museum, so make sure you visit here soon.

Phoenix’s newest museum is the Musical Instrument Museum which truly brings “global music” to life.    The museum is beautifully designed and provides a light and airy atmosphere for the display of all types of musical instruments from every country in the world.   Almost every display has accompanying audio and video of the instruments being constructed and/or played.   The sound is transmitted to visitors through wireless headsets (included in the admission cost)  from “hot spots” around the museum giving an immersive experience without creating a cacophony of noise in the galleries.   The main galleries are organized by continent, but there also thematic galleries, including the hands-on Experience Gallery, where visitors can try out a variety of instruments, ranging from the Indonesia gamelon orchestra to the Theramin, an early electronic instrument played by waving your hands around it, but not touching it.   A changing Artist Gallery focuses on a broad range of musicians, composers and inventors.   Right now Eric Clapton’s Brownie guitar and the piano on which John Lennon composed Imagine share space with Snoop Dog’s microphone and Dick Dale’s surfboard.    There are also diorama-like displays of various instrument workshops, including Steinway pianos and Fender and Martin guitars.    While the displays are not yet 100% complete there is so much to see and hear that the gaps are hardly noticeable.

Moving into Southern California, and sticking with the music theme for a minute, find yourself in San Diego at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park where you can see Taking Aim: Unforgettable Rock ‘n’ Roll Photographs Selected by Graham Nash.  The music will run through your mind as you see the energy, attitude, and essence of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest performers and performances through a collection of 100 photographs chosen by the legendary rocker.

Then, as you drive north through the state, Cheryl Hinton offered a great coastal California stop:

If you have a chance to visit Big Sur this summer, you will travel along the dramatic cliffs of the south coast on historic California State Highway 1. This amazing highway edges the cliffs and contains communities of artists and writers. Among the most famed can be seen at the Henry Miller Library.  Henry Miller lived in Big Sur for 20 years and wrote about it. The library holds a very unique collection of books and photos about his life, and features several other artists and writers like Anais Nin a french author.   It also includes a bookstore and a stage where we once saw John Doe of X perform one summer. This is a unique and eclectic place of history and controversy suited for a Summer’s Journey. It is truly breathtaking, we go there often to camp at Kirk Creek along the bluffs overlooking the ocean; a glass of red wine, a gourmet camp meal and the sunset watching breeching whales, circled by seabirds and dolphin… now that is California at its finest.

And as a final destination I propose a site near me:  From now until May 2011, you can take a hike and see a site based art exhibition made for “animal clients”.   Presidio Habitats was produced by the FOR-SITE Foundation, in partnership with the Presidio Trust.   The experience features 25 proposals, and 11 installations placed on the trails and pathways of the Fort Scott District.   You will encounter  elegant blue-and-white glazed porcelain vessels,  a small garden,  a soaring metal sculpture, and a word-laden grove while trekking through this National Recreation Area near the Golden Gate Bridge.  Visiting the temporary exhibition pavilion alone makes the trip worth it as the space is elegant and one I could see duplicated in multiple places.

I don’t know what your summer timetable is. Mine used to end the day after Labor Day, and now my son’s school starts mid-August.   So I have a month to get on the road.   Have you been somewhere in the region worth mentioning?  Planning a trip? Please, do tell.

Not Another Conference!

Yeah, I know. Belts are tight. Budgets are tighter. Everyone is working to “do more with less.” Maybe that means taking on the workload of colleagues who have been laid off–without getting an increase in pay. Maybe that means furlough days when you aren’t supposed to work and you aren’t getting paid to work, but if you don’t work, you’ll never get unburied from that growing pile on your desk.

Time is money and both are in limited supply. Travel money is gone and professional development feels more like a luxury than a necessary part of one’s career.

All the more reason why you should register for the 2010 Western Museums Association annual meeting now. Like, right now. Why? Well, do it right now because it will save you some money; early bird registration ends July 31. Why do it at all? For a lot of reasons.

1. When morale is low and work feels more like drudgery than the vital mission you signed on for, meeting in person with your colleagues can reinvigorate you, leaving you feeling refreshed instead of burnt out and better prepared to delve back into the fray.

2. You can learn approaches to overwhelming problems that you haven’t tried before, not just from attending the sessions, but also in conversations in the hallways and at evening events.

3. Attending sessions and pre-conference workshops can help you brush up on both basic skills and cutting-edge best practices to keep your job performance at its peak.

4. If you are looking for work, this is a great place to circulate your card, network and get your name and face out to a number of people all at once.

5. There are going to be some fantastic sessions this year. Sure, you could go download the program yourself over on the Portland 2010 page of this site, but I’ll just go ahead and share with you a session titles:

The Weirdest Places I Ever Found Money
Museums Coming Back from the Brink
Building a Fundraising Plan that Works
What Got Me This Job
It’s Alive, Or Used To Be

6. Portland is AWESOME. Heaven for foodies, art collectors, outdoor enthusiasts, lovers of history, and those who appreciate the quirky, Portland has something for everyone. Oh, and might I add that for those who do love eating, shopping and generally spending money, there is no sales tax.

7. It’s WMA’s 75th Anniversary and we are looking to celebrate!! Fun is actually one of our official organizational values and we hope that you’ll come share the fun with us!

Road Trip Destinations

By Susan Spero

Every summer I get an enormous road-trip itch. I want to just jump into the car and head out to almost anywhere.   Inevitably, given my addiction for visiting museums, I head towards one, or to a park where I am sure to see the visitors’ center.  This year, as this itch hit, I reached out to contacts for suggestions on what to see.  What follows is a highly eclectic compilation of places to visit and special events to attend in the nine U.S. states in the WMA region plus B.C., Canada.  Some of these are obvious suggestions; many are way off the beaten path.  In the comments please crowd-share your own adventures to cultural sites,  grand and small, sure hits and quirky suggestions.    This post covers half the region:  Hawaii, Alaska, B.C. Canada, Washington and Oregon.  Next week’s second installment highlights the other half (Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California).

Start out in the Pacific in Hawaii where all of us will be able to be there in person during our conference in September 2011.   In Hawaii, where it really is forever summer, get your surfboard thrills at the Bishop Museum and see Surfing, featuring historic surfboards from the museums collections.   Also on view is E Kū Ana Ka Paia that brings together the three largest Kū images in the world in a collaboration of the British Museum, The Peabody Essex and the Bishop .

Next fly north towards Alaska where on May 22, 2010, the Anchorage Museum opened their final expansion projects.  Now when you visit you can also see the Thomas Planetarium, the Conocophillips Gallery, the Imaginarium Discovery Center as well as the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center.   This 170,000 square foot place seems to offer much to see and experience. If you’ve been there please tell us more, the images of the new facility on the website are enticing.

Moving south into B.C.  Canada, contacts offered time-specific events:  On Saturday, August  7 attend the Nanaimo Museum Chowderfest at the Swaylana Lagoon.  Chowderfest teams up with the Symphony in the Harbour this summer where you pick your spot for the Symphony and try up to 10 different seafood chowders prepared by local chefs.  When you have tried them all you are eligible to place a vote to help determine the Best Chowder in town.  While in Nanaimo (after July 16) you will want to catch the opening of their latest permanent exhibition Nanaimo Museum Coal Mine Experience

While still in Canada experience the Richmond Maritime Festival held on August 20 – 22. This free family event attracts 25,000 people over three days and celebrates Richmond’s traditional connections with the sea at the Britannia Shipyards National Historic Site. Participate by knot tying, rope making, model boat building, and net mending (all within the wafts of sea air, I assume).

Keeping with the sea-loving theme a contact in Washington wrote:

Personally, I *LOVE* the MAST (Marine Science and Technology Center) at Highline Community College in Des Moines. It’s a pier with a free (free!) aquarium, classroom, community/student volunteers, summer camps, great public programs, etc. They just had a big party to celebrate the release/graduation of their octopus George. It’s way off the beaten path, but I think they do a terrific job of connecting with locals, celebrating nature, and getting people jazzed about science. Recently, they were assigned the task of dissecting/flensing/cleaning the dead grey whale that washed up in the South Sound. They are tweeting and facebooking the process, which is awesome!

Soon enough, we will all be in Portland, Oregon for the conference in October.  Just down the road a bit, off of I-5, you can see the new exhibit at the Lane County Historical Museum in  Eugene,  Tie-Dye And Tofu: How Mainstream Eugene Became A Counter-Culture.  Alice Parman tells me:

It’s a kick because of the unique objects, memories, and handmade aesthetic associated with businesses, bands, publications, politics of the late60s/early 70s in Eugene. Some of the businesses have endured and prospered, e.g., Springfield Creamery, owned by Chuck and Sue Kesey (Chuck is KenKesey’s brother). They make Nancy’s Yogurt…

It’s also a kick because the Lane County Historical Museum is housed in a barn of a building with lots of 19th century and early 20th century vehicles etc. that can’t be moved aside. But the TIE-DYE AND TOFU exhibit works well; its splashy colors make the scattered elements easy to find and fun to discover. The museum’s attendance has boomed. Exhibits Coordinator Mary Dole grew up in Eugene in the late 60s/early 70s. She put out an invitation for contributions of information, objects/images, and financial support on craigslist and got an amazing response.

More summer travel suggestions to come next week.  As a side note, in gathering information for this I found the Wikipedia museum lists.  I must confess that as I waited for information to come in from far corners,  I was tempted to compile this post based on a random draw from the 10 tables.  If you want to use this idea: search [state-of your choice] Museums in Wikipedia  and you get Wikipedia’s version of the cultural institutions located in our region.   These lists make my personal goal of seeing almost all of the museums in the west, much, much more daunting.   In the meantime, where are you headed and what have you seen this summer?

Portland Tips: airport to hotel round-trip for under $5

Travelzoo popped a message into my inbox last week announcing that Alaska Airlines has a fantastic new fare on its San Jose-Portland route.  I checked it out, and sure enough the fare was the lowest I’ve seen in a long time, so I went ahead and booked my flight to the WMA conference (October 17-20).

I worked my way through college as a travel agent (back in the day when everyone had to go through a travel agent to get anywhere beyond their own neighborhood), and I still love to build an itinerary, so I started checking into some details for this Portland trip.

Portland has a great public transportation system.  The light rail service’s Red Line makes it very simple to travel between the Portland airport and the conference hotel.  The trip takes just under 30 minutes, and the ticket price is only $2.30 one way.

The Doubletree Hotel is located 1/2  a block from the Lloyd Center/NE 11th Avenue station (8 stations from the airport).   Check out the TriMet YouTube video to see how simple it is.

Trimet also has links to over 30 apps for you smartphone users.  Oh, and by the way, the hotel is situated on the edge of the Free Zone, so travel into and around downtown on light rail and streetcar won’t cost us a dime.  That’s cool!

(One more thing: if you will be on a tight schedule, you might want to check out the average TSA security wait times at the Portland airport. )

See ya in Portland!

Lydia Johnson

AAM Recap: “Design for Participation”

by Alice Parman

The session on “Design for Participation” was full of great ideas. The Machine Project capped it off with their uniquely original slide presentation, narrated by a singer/songwriter [Emily Lacy] who accompanied herself on the banjo. Her song had many verses and was often hilarious. I would consider moving to Los Angeles to participate in events organized by the Machine Project. For example, Building Rome, a 24-hour session at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Participants made scale models of ancient Roman buildings in a gallery of antiquities, building Rome in a day. Then they became Visigoths and sacked the city in (if memory serves) 27 seconds. I took fairly complete notes during insightful presentations by Dan Spock, Kathy McLean, panel chair Nina Simon, and Kris Morrisey. But multi-sensory impressions of “the banjo incident” will linger longest in my subconscious.

Home Lands: How Women Made the West

When is the last time you read labels in an exhibit? Not just skimming, but really reading? Be honest! Experienceology’s Stephanie Weaver recently found herself so completely enthralled with an exhibit that she was really reading the labels, while admiring the creative use of materials, the seamless weaving in of A/V components and the use of social media as a “talkback feature.”

What is this amazing exhibit? Home Lands: How Women Made the West, currently on view at The Autry through August 22, 2010.

But don’t take my word for it; to hear what Stephanie has to say herself, view photos of the exhibit and read details on the exhibit development process from designer Tim McNeil and curator Carolyn Brucken, visit Stephanie’s post over at Experienceology!

And better still, if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area before the end of August, go see the exhibit for yourself!

Have you seen a really great exhibit lately that took your breath away? Let us know! Do you think that exhibit would make a good candidate for the Charles Redd Award for Exhibition Excellence? Nominate it!

Muse Award Winners in the West

Congratulations to our colleagues in California, Nevada, and Washington who earned recognition for their outstanding achievements in museum media at AAM’s 2010 Muse Awards last night.

The Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA) won the top award in the Public Relations and Development category for Raising Spirits.

“Raising Spirits takes our world-renowned collection “on the road” via a plasma screen into private dining rooms of our patrons, while host Kirsten Shilakes—a museum-trained docent—tells tightly woven stories about art, food and wine, taking guests on a multi-sensory aesthetic and culinary journey. The result is a fully-conceived food and wine experience for our patrons that places the Asian Art Museum collection – in its digital form – as the centerpiece.”

The judges said, “…Raising Spirits is a comprehensive public relations package designed to promote a traveling, multimedia art history presentation showcasing the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco’s permanent collection. The package juxtaposes earthy and textured print materials with professionally produced digital content to create a balanced and complete project…very high marks for image quality, design and overall appeal.”

The Nevada Museum of Art (Reno, CA) won the top award in the Video category for Between Grass and Sky.

“Much like visual art, the enduring tradition of cowboy poetry is a rich and vital form of cultural expression in the American West. This film, created and produced for the 2009 exhibition Between Grass & Sky: Rhythms of a Cowboy Poem, is inspired by the widely-celebrated poem Grass, which was written by legendary Texas poet Buck Ramsey. The exhibition featured a selection of historical and contemporary paintings, photographs, and sculptural works combined with the spoken voices of renowned cowboy poets in the film, this unique exhibition offered insight into the varied experiences arising from life in rural and ranching communities.”

The judges said, “An absolutely beautiful video, the Nevada Museum of Art has created a moving piece which effectively transports the viewer right into the West. Really lovely introduction to a genre unfamiliar to many. Stellar editing and beautiful art direction. We loved hearing the three poets collectively recite the work with such genuine passion, and the film made us want to discover more cowboy poets.  This was the only entry where the entire room of jurors sat silent from beginning to end. Though clearly a polished production, it was the power of the readers’ voices combined with the beauty of the poetry that won us over.”

The Washington State History Museum (Tacoma, WA) won silver in the Community category.

“COLUMBIAKids is a free online magazine that features exciting, interesting, and informative articles and stories based in Pacific Northwest history. Our target readers are children up to age 14 who live in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska, but we are also happy to find that our readers come to us from all over the world. We support family literacy both by working with established children’s authors and by using varied media and formats to help kids explore the amazing people, places, objects, and events in Northwest history.”

The judges said, “…The site should be commended for involving children’s authors and illustrators to work on the content which makes the site more appealling to the young readers. It is a useful resource for teachers. The site has many interesting sections to engage the readers – the jurors especially like CollectionConnundrum which teaches children how to look at objects and podPuzzle.”

The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, CA) won the silver in the Video category for  Making a Spanish Polychrome Sculpture.

“In conjunction with a long-term didactic exhibition on the J. Paul Getty Museum’s sculpture Saint Ginés de la Jara by Luisa Roldán, we produced a video comprised of animation and live action to demonstrate the carving and painting techniques used in Spain hundreds of years ago….Presented in-gallery and distributed online on www.getty.edu, ArtBabble, and YouTube, we intentionally approached the subject in a manner that would make it a relevant resource for understanding the methods used to create any Spanish polychrome sculpture.”

The judges said, “This is a fine example of technology effectively used to clearly demonstrate an intricate artistic process. It’s the combination of the digital imagery with the live footage of an artist that makes this video exciting and fascinating for all kinds of audiences.  The entire film really promoted a deeper appreciation of the art form, far beyond what a viewer might get from just seeing the work in a museum. The footage of the artists’ hands creating the pieces was really magical to watch. The computer-generated animations were just the icing on the cake. To see the traditional process put into use in a contemporary is what put this video above typical ‘here’s the process’ videos.”

Letitia Carper Long, a Museum Studies student at John F. Kennedy University (Berkeley, CA) won the bronze in the Student Award category for her video project in partnership with the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA), Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam & Burma: Conserving the Collection.

The Emerald Cities exhibition was composed entirely of objects from the museum’s permanent collection. Most objects date from the 19th century, and quite a few had been damaged or deteriorated over time. Art conservators worked some 7,500 hours to prepare the objects for the exhibition. The video, which was shown on a loop in one of the galleries throughout the exhibition’s duration, needed to tell three stories:

• The principal story is a “behind-the-scenes” view of the process, procedures, and methodology of art conservation.
• The video also provides a brief introduction to the art and culture of 19th-century Siam and Burma, and tells a key story of Buddhism, which is the theme of the artwork presented.
• Finally, because some 70 percent of the objects came from the collection of the late Doris Duke, the video also delves briefly into her story as a collector of Southeast Asian artwork.

The judge said, “Overall, I believe this video to have greatly enhanced the corresponding exhibit. So many times, you visit a gallery and see the objects and read the labels, but with this video, you get to look behind the scenes. The quality of the video is outstanding– both in content and appearance.”

Congratulations again to all our colleagues!

You can find more information and photos about AAM’s 2010 Muse Awards on the Media and Technology Committee’s website.

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Lydia Johnson

WMA @ #AAM10

This year at AAM the Western Museums Association has a lot to celebrate: AAM is in our region; we have a new look, we are in the midst of planning two awesome conferences–2010 in Portland and 2011 in Honolulu–and it is our 75th anniversary! So come help us celebrate; we have fun give-aways and treats, you can learn more about our upcoming conferences, nominate someone for an award, learn about our scholarship program, get ideas for auction donations, sign up for our new Peer to Peer program or just hang out and chat with WMA Board members! And be sure to bring your business cards–we will be raffling off one free registration to the Portland annual meeting! We look forward to seeing you at booth #108 in the Expo Hall!

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Allyson Lazar

WMA Introduces P2P

Recently some of you may have received emails reminding you to renew your membership with the Western Museums Association. In light of that fact, I thought I’d take a moment to mention a brand new membership benefit that we will soon be introducing: the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) program.

The primary purpose of the P2P program will be to match museum professionals with the expertise they need to address critical questions concerning their work and/or professional development. The program is specifically aimed at meeting the networking, mentoring and information sharing needs of museum professionals who might not otherwise have the opportunity to pursue these avenues on their own–or simply don’t know where to turn for support.

The program consists of two groups of people: Peer Advisors and Peer Seekers.

Members interested in serving as either a Peer Advisor or a Peer Seeker can sign up at the WMA booth at AAM–booth number 108 in the Exhibit Hall. You can learn more about the program here.

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Allyson Lazar