Museums Today: Museums Becoming Good Ancestors in This Disrupted World

Wednesday, March 23, 2022, 6pm EST

Visit The George Washington University Museum’s Vimeo page by clicking here to access this recorded session.

Randi Korn and Emlyn Koster discussed museums’ relevance and purpose with a long-view perspective of our world and our impact on it. 

To be “a good ancestor” is an outlook that originated with Dakota elders. With similar aspirations, a century ago John Cotton Dana urged museums to fit themselves to the needs of their communities. As this century began Stephen Weil lamented that museums lack metrics to gauge their external value.

With today’s world facing unprecedented environmental and societal crises, a long-view ethos in the museum profession would strengthen its values, missions, visions, strategies and ultimately impacts. Museums will need to make profound gearshifts to illuminate humanity’s disruption of the Earth’s natural state – reimagining the nature and purpose of their collections, research, exhibitions, programs, development, marketing and messaging.

This collegial exchange between a geological thinker (Koster) and an impact-driven thinker (Korn) assert that the museum profession would benefit from a fresh and holistic outlook–one that blurs the traditional boundaries between museum types and the associations that represent them.   

About the Museums Today Series

Each month during the academic year, museum leaders lead lively online discussions about critical issues in the field. This series is presented in partnership with The George Washington University Museums. Browse upcoming programs