Museum Leadership House
is a non-profit platform connecting museum leaders with futurists, scientists, artists and sociologists to explore the role of museums in society and to shape actionable strategies in times of change.
The world is facing a resurgence of risks like rising cost-of-living, geopolitical tensions, the rapid and unbounded advancement of technologies and the escalating impact of climate change. This convergence shapes a decade ahead that is turbulent as not previously not seen by this generation of business leaders and public policy-makers.
As museums find themselves reaching the limits of the models upon which they were established, they need to look for new strategies in their day-to-day operations, new revenue-generating models, and to rethink the ways of providing value to society.
The Museum Leadership House brings together a group of individuals, who share a common concern for the future of museums and strive to make a difference. Our members are notable museum leaders, policymakers, members of academia as well as experts from all corners of the globe.
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Museum Leadership House takes many shapes: we meet in different homes around the world.
MLH Nice 2023
Reimagining the value of museums
In September 2023, museum professionals from 11 countries came together in southern Europe for a "Museum Leadership House: Reimagining the Value of Museums."
25 international museum leaders convened alongside experts from politics and technology to discuss how cultural organisations can take proactive steps to address risks emerging from the ongoing economic, social, environmental, and technological challenges facing society, as outlined by the Global Risks Report 2023 published by the World Economic Forum. The program focused on identifying practical and usable actions that can be taken today, allowing museums to achieve longer-term stability in the face of crises and disruptions. By bringing diverse global perspectives together, the gathering sparked conversations about the relevance of cultural institutions and created the possibility for a more comprehensive understanding of the important role they can play in addressing these challenges together with their communities.
MLH Vienna 2022
The Museum Leadership House members came together for the first time in November 2022 in Vienna. The first meeting was structured around three main themes - meanings, formats and structures. Read below to find out more about the main outputs of the discussions.
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The conversation focused on the meaning and relevance of museums in the digital context, with four objectives driving the discussion. Participants reflected on the shift in the meaning of museums from places for historically significant objects to places for individual and collective experiences. Museums of the future are expected to become platforms for stories and networks that reveal obscured connections. Digital tools have the potential to deliver rich personal experiences but also act as drivers of social fragmentation and division. Participants explored ways to reconcile the capabilities of digital with the future meaning of museums, emphasizing the need for digital tools to help museums self-define as central spaces for the community.
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The discussion defined "digital content" as a tool, act of expression, output, or source of informational and educational enrichment, with its meaning unique to each museum. A value-led approach to technology was emphasized, with museums setting expectations for healthy digital engagement through social contracts. Guiding principles were proposed for museums as digital content producers, including considering relevance, FAIR principles, visitor and community wellbeing, consistent engagement, sustaining a creative platform, collective action, managing criticism, signaling visitor experience, and supporting an embodied digital experience.
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The participants identified five threads: advocacy, alliances, adoption, approval, and applied knowledge. For advocacy, the need for clarity and consistency in the language used to speak about "digital" was highlighted. For alliances, the importance of collective acts of advocacy and partnerships that share rather than compete was emphasized. For adoption, it was noted that organizations have different relationships with change and transformation, and processes of adoption and adaption must be informed by unique contexts, identities, and aims. For approval, the need for organizational processes and systems to foster innovation and imagination was highlighted, along with collective advocacy to governments for more agile structures in museums. Finally, for applied knowledge, the idea of a shared, open-sourced infrastructure for capacity building and the setup of a "Digital Technology Leadership Academy" was proposed, which would involve museums partnering to build capacity through staff exchanges, joint projects, and knowledge sharing sessions.
Keys in the bowl!
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Maybe you are curious to hear more. Or you want to partner or sponsor the event. Possibly you have a stunning house in the middle of nowhere to host a group of bold museum directors?
