AAMG Professional Documents

It’s here! AAMG’s Second Edition Professional Practices for Academic Museums and Galleries has officially launched.

This updated edition reflects the evolving priorities, challenges, and innovations shaping campus museums today, created by and for our academic museum community!

Thank you for your continued dedication to strengthening the academic museum community. We hope this resource supports your important work in the year ahead.

Remember that survey we asked you to take in 2022? Almost 200 academic institutions responded, and Wilkening Consulting compiled all the results for us!

We are so excited to be able to share the details of this inaugural survey and look forward to future iterations of data gathering to support you, our members.

Have you already made use of this survey advocating for yourself, your staff, or resources? We want to hear from you! Reach out to Alexandra, AAMG Director of Operations with details as to how you’ve been using this information. Any details you share will only help us in crafting the next field wide survey and ensure that we are gathering information YOU need!

A Ready Reference Guide for Academic Museum Professionals

Founded in 2009 under the aegis of Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (“AAMG”) and with critical support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Task Force for the Protection of University Collections brings together leaders from the American Alliance of Museums (“AAM”), the Association of Art Museum Directors (“AAMD”), the Association of Art Museum Curators (“AAMC”), the College Art Association (“CAA”), and the International Council of Museums/University Museums and Collections (“ICOM/UMAC”). The Task Force’s stated purpose is to serve as an advocate of and resource for college and university museums whose collections are under threat. Access to the full document is below.

In the event that a college or university collection is under threat (whether patent or latent), museum leadership is encouraged to contact the AAMG Task Force for the Protection of University Collections by emailing aacademicmg[at]gmail[dot]com. Please note that the scope of the AAMG Task Force is strictly limited to protecting college and university collections. As such, we cannot intervene in governance or management issues, including issues related to employment law, torts, contracts, free speech, academic freedom, etc.

This document, prepared and approved by the Board of Directors of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), with considerable advice from academic museum professionals nationwide, aims to assist academic museum staff and volunteers as well as those members of their parent organizations responsible for their success. These codified best practices draw from those of other museum organizations–American Alliance of Museums (AAM), Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), and Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC)–and are aligned with the categories currently used by AAM to better guide museums on the path to national accreditation or reaccreditation. Museums or museum directors that are members of any of the above are also charged to uphold the professional practices of those associations. We are deeply grateful to Max Marmor and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their support toward the printing and dissemination of this document.

While all museums are educational in purpose, academic museums are unique in their mission to teach and train succeeding generations of students. Their primary purpose is to support the mission of their parent institutions. As learning laboratories, they advance research and student achievement. They build cross-cultural understanding; create cross-departmental and interdisciplinary teaching opportunities; strengthen analytical thinking and creativity; offer real-world work experiences; model inclusion and access; and further civic responsibility in their efforts to improve the lives of people in their communities. As object-based centers of research and teaching, they sustain on-campus learning. They often serve as the front doors of their universities, connecting town and gown, the academy and the public.

AAMG encourages museum directors, their academic supervisors, university administrators, trustees, and advisory boards to support and affirm these professional practices in their museums. By embodying excellence in their profession, academic museum staff can better serve the mission and goals of their parent institutions and their communities at large. They will be better informed to care for and interpret their collections, which represent our natural and cultural heritage, and better equipped to address the challenges facing our institutions of higher education, our society, and the world. In doing so, they will be recognized as essential partners in the enterprise of higher education.

Jill Hartz
President, AAMG (2011-17)