MAAM 2026 Annual Conference

Somerset County, New Jersey is home to many small, all-volunteer historic house museums struggling to find and train volunteer staff. The Somerset County Cultural & Heritage Commission, with the support of local museums, developed the Somerset County Docent Training Program - a countywide initiative to recruit, train, and match volunteer docents with open positions. Grounded in museum education best practices and emphasizing inclusive storytelling, the program provides foundational training in interpretation and visitor engagement. This presentation will explore the program’s design, implementation, and outcomes, including how one museum was able to double their open hours within 6 months of participation; as well as discuss how the program can be replicated with similar partnerships between museums and local government agencies.

Session Takeaways:
•Learn how local government agencies can bring museums together to develop collaborative projects and shared solutions.
•Explore how Somerset County, NJ, created a Docent Training Program to help small museums solve one of their most pressing and ongoing challenges – staffing.
•Examine program outcomes, including how participation helped one museum double its open hours within six months.
•Gain practical guidance on the key components needed to replicate a similar volunteer training and placement program in your community.

Museum collections are not static, despite their typically stationary nature. Each item requires active, never-ending tasks to manage condition and utility. How can museums ensure that current and future generations of visitors continue to engage with their collections when maintenance and access are challenged by geography, funding, and environmental conditions? This panel will share how Historic Hudson Valley overcame these challenges and used interdepartmental partnerships to establish physical and intellectual control over historical collections originally held in disparate locations. Audience takeaways include strategies for developing their own collections management practices and utilizing cost-effective methods to meet project and organizational needs.

Session Takeaways:
•Identify strategies to adapt existing infrastructure and cultivate staff capabilities
•Innovate ways to use lower-cost technology to create high-impact solutions
•Understand benefits and challenges of interdepartmental communication, collaboration, and prioritization
•Gain insight on the relationship between providing visitor access to and ensuring protection of historical collections

The Delaware Art Museum turned decades of deferred growth into a bold reinvention—boosting earned income by 250% while advancing accessibility and community engagement. These investments enabled DelArt to address long-standing needs while rethinking its business model, in part, by reconfiguring spaces and strengthening its community connections. This interactive panel discussion shares the practical tools and creative partnerships behind the transformation, offering attendees strategies to increase earned revenue, improve accessibility, and strengthen community engagement.

Session Takeaways:
•Examine practical tools for identifying, diversifying, and maximizing earned revenue, including rentals, retail, admissions, and programming
•Develop a “toolkit for reinvention” by identifying at least one specific strategy (e.g., creating low-effort engagement opportunities, considering new ways to activate public spaces, or reassessing core value) to pilot at their home institution.

How can virtual reality technology benefit museums? What outcomes justify the investment of significant financial and staff resources? For staff at the Intrepid Museum, virtual reality seemed like the key to unlocking unrestored, inaccessible ship spaces. The Museum prototyped a virtual reality experience centered on digital recreations of the ship’s engineering compartments, the most asked-about unrestored spaces on Intrepid. This panel brings together staff from different departments to share what they learned from the development of Explore Intrepid: Engines and Boilers.

Session Takeaways:
•Explore the opportunities and challenges of “digital restoration”
•Understand digital accessibility needs and the role of iterative feedback and updates
•Assess the value of on-site use and app store distribution

This session will share key findings from the HueArts & Cultures initiative, demonstrating how mapping can illuminate networks of cultural memory, and explore how museums of color anchor community stories in the land itself. Participants will gain insights into how these institutions have been reshaping the museum field by linking storytelling, place, and cultural preservation.

This initiative examines how these museums function as gathering grounds where land, community, and cultural memory intersect. Session speakers will discuss how institutions of color steward stories embedded in place while fostering cultural continuity, community voice, and social change.

Session Takeaways:
•Explore how digital mapping and national research can reveal geographic patterns, networks, and collective impact among museums of color.
•Identify community-centered practices that connect museums’ missions to place, cultural memory, and social justice.
•Apply insights from the HueArts & Cultures initiative to strengthen storytelling, placekeeping, and community engagement within their own institutions.

How can "Please Touch" replace "Hands Off"? This session explores The Active Power of Touch, a landmark exhibition at the Peale Museum curated by a blind professional using a nonvisual curatorial process. By centering tactile engagement from the outset—spanning sculpture, textiles, and kinetic art— this exhibition disrupts traditional museum norms to foster deep visitor connection. We will examine the journey from nonvisual artist selection to the practicalities of tactile installation. Attendees will learn how welcoming touch transforms visitor behavior, inspires sighted artists to create multisensory work, and creates a truly inclusive environment where blind and sighted visitors engage as equals.

Session Takeaways:
•Nonvisual Curatorial Frameworks: Strategies for selecting and organizing artwork through both tactile and visual aesthetics.
•Tactile Installation Logistics: Practical methods for securing works in clay, metal, and wood to allow for safe, high-traffic hands-on exploration.
•Fostering Universal Engagement: touch facilitates intergenerational and cross-ability dialogue among visitors, moving accessibility from "specialized" to "universal."

Meet three new and emerging museums in New Jersey bringing fresh topics, STEM interpretation, and interactive spaces to the state. Featuring the Einstein Museum of Science, the Black Inventors Hall of Fame Museum, and the Museum of Makers + Innovators, this panel will explore: the process and experience of developing a new museum; how museums centering diverse audiences, innovation, and discovery can offer insights for the field at large; and ways museums can partner to help support emerging projects and achieve shared goals in the process. 

Session Takeaways:

• Insights on institutional growth, programming, and audience development from three new and emerging museums in New Jersey
• Ideas for innovating spaces, creating wonderment, and attracting new audiences with a particular focus on STEM, science history, and young audiences
• Learn about the role of advocacy, collaboration, and support in stewarding new museum projects