Physical security walked into a bar… and got carded! Museum security is no joke, but it can be enjoyable. In this session, museum operations and security personnel will work with audience members to troubleshoot challenges in real time. Drop your own public safety quandary in the hat and collaborate with peers to find solutions. 

Museums are often seen as permanent stewards…but what if we reimagined our role as temporary, ethical custodians? This session introduces the "Third Place" model, where museums provide culturally responsive interim care for ancestors when direct Tribal possession is not immediately feasible. Grounded in sovereignty, trust, and accountability, this framework reduces barriers to repatriation and reframes stewardship as transitional, collaborative, and community-driven.

If Saint-Exupéry was right, "a goal without a plan is just a wish," then join us and get excited about planning. Explore practical tools to create and work with your plan. Gain a deeper understanding of why we plan and how plans are practical tools across museum activities – exhibitions, programming, annual goals, "what if" scenarios. Bring your planning challenges and explore tools that can help you be successful now and in the future.

For many indigenous communities, darkness is a time of creative genesis and regeneration, a time for hope beyond the fear. From fiscal constraints to grants that have disappeared to federal staff that are no longer in positions of leadership and support, the impacts and despair are real and reach across our museum field. In these troubling times, we will hear from multiple museum practitioners who will share their programs, exhibitions, practices and beliefs that will help attendees keep the fire alive, stirring our passions and purposes.

Museums often face the challenge of attracting and retaining talented staff in a field where compensation lags behind other industries. This session examines how museums can become employers of choice by strengthening the employee experience beyond wages. Using various initiatives and case studies as a foundation, this session will highlight approaches to recognition, growth, and culture, followed by a facilitated discussion to surface practical, adaptable strategies across diverse museum contexts.

Do you often feel pressure to do it all? Museum staff  face large, complex projects when preserving collections held in public trust. Small museums with limited staff and tight budgets must make difficult choices, while larger institutions, despite greater resources, may still struggle to prioritize and allocate time and funding effectively. In many cases, collections staff carry the burden of trying to do everything. This discussion-based session shares strategies for using resources wisely and challenges the expectation of doing it all.

How do you design galleries that reflect a divided public? This session shares a process for developing exhibitions that give equal authority to stakeholder perspectives and historical evidence. We will discuss the internal framework that kept our team steady while navigating social and political tensions as we collaborated with stakeholders across the state. Attendees will learn a practical path for balancing historical facts with authentic, object-based storytelling to create galleries where visitors see themselves in the stories being told.

In a groundbreaking program at the Shangri-La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, PhD student Hossein Nakhaei explored their collection of Persian luster tiles. The institution opened itself to meaningful critique as he focused on their most prized possession, a luster mihrab, one of only six in the world. Learn what happened when they connected via zoom with community members standing in front of the empty space where the mihrab once belonged.

Leaders work hard to cultivate cultures of trust, collaboration, and creativity, but who supports them? Data shows we are burning out generations of leaders in the creative sector, particularly women of color. How might we find new ways to connect, support, and ultimately thrive in this field? Join this facilitated discussion to explore what some institutions are doing to bring greater balance to their workplace and find new ways of working.