Belonging, storytelling, and collaboration take center stage at national gathering of academic museums.

From June 24–26, 2025, a cross-departmental team from The Block Museum of Art—including Erin Northington (Campus and Community Education), Teagan Harris (Terra Engagement Fellow), Lindsay Bosch (Communications), and Kirsten Lopez (Collections and Digital Interpretation)—attended the annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), held this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

With the theme “Belonging in Academic Museums,” the conference offered a dynamic platform for exploring how academic art museums are rethinking practice—from the stories they tell to the spaces they shape.

“There’s something really energizing about being surrounded by people who believe deeply in the power of academic museums. It’s a chance to see how others are approaching similar questions in completely different—and inspiring—ways.”
—Erin Northington, Associate Director of Campus and Community Education and Engagement

Shared Themes Across the Field

Across plenaries, panels, workshops, and hallway conversations, the conference made clear that academic museums are embracing bold, generative shifts in how they operate, teach, and engage. Rather than offering one-size-fits-all solutions, presenters shared approaches grounded in reflection, experimentation, and collaboration. Several key themes emerged:

Belonging as both ethos and action
Sessions across the week foregrounded belonging not simply as a goal, but as a framework for decision-making. Presenters shared how museums are cultivating belonging through reimagined teaching models, collections practices, and community partnerships—emphasizing sustained, relational work over one-time inclusion efforts.

Shifting narratives and authorship
Storytelling surfaced as a central tool for institutional transformation. Panels explored how new forms of interpretation—student-led, multilingual, digital, zine-based, and community-authored—can shift the museum voice and invite layered, polyvocal understandings of artworks and histories.

Reimagining museum space
From flexible gathering rooms to community commissions, the conference highlighted the museum as a social and civic space. Presenters shared how responsive design and co-created programming can build a sense of safety, welcome, and relevance within academic institutions.

Student agency and leadership
Across dozens of sessions, student voices were not only invited—they were centered. Museums shared models for student-curated exhibitions, paid internships, and collaborative research, framing students as essential partners in shaping museum futures.

Sustainable, intentional collecting
What belongs in a collection—and why—was another thread throughout. Presenters explored community-driven acquisition planning, ethical deaccessioning, and approaches to aligning collections growth with institutional values and teaching goals.

Block Museum Contributions

Current and former Block Museum staff participated in four panels that exemplified these themes:

Erin Northington presented in Creating New Narratives in the Academic Art Museum, alongside Elizabeth Manekin (Ackland Art Museum, UNC-Chapel Hill) and Rachel Heisler (Williams College Museum of Art). Erin offered a case study on the exhibition Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland, sharing how The Block collaborated with Indigenous artists and curators to center Indigenous methodologies, reframe institutional authority, and create space for new frameworks of knowledge and care.

Teagan Harris spoke in You Have the Floor: Creating Spaces for Communities to Gather Inside of the Museum, with Devon Akmon (MSU Museum), Lauren Turner (Ackland Art Museum), and Allison Portnow Lathrop. Teagan reflected on the co-design of The Woven Being Community Room as a space created by and for Indigenous communities and open to all. They described how the room functions as both a site of intergenerational gathering and important community welcome —offering board games, hands-on art-making, and space for connection.

Lindsay Bosch co-led The Role of (Digital) Storytelling in Fostering Belonging, Community, and Empowerment on College Campuses alongside Amanda Potter (Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College) and Isabel Cuellar (Bloomberg Connects). The session explored how digital platforms can open new pathways for student voice and co-authorship in the museum. Lindsay presented three case studies from The Block that demonstrate how blogs, virtual tours, and student-produced content support interpretation as an inclusive, evolving process. Emphasizing storytelling as both a practice and a product, the panel examined how even small-scale digital initiatives can deepen campus connections, center student perspectives, and humanize the museum experience.

América Salomón, former Block staff member, contributed to What Belongs? How Collection Planning Shapes Strong Museums and Builds Community, with Mary Hauser (Gregg Museum of Art & Design), Hope Saska (CU Art Museum), and Ashley Offill (Hood Museum of Art). America spoke to the importance of aligning collecting practices with institutional vision and values—foregrounding transparency, responsiveness, and community collaboration in collection stewardship – and highlighted the Block Museum Student Acquisition as a case study.

In addition to presenting, Block staff engaged in sessions on digital interpretation, collections accessibility, and collaborative exhibition design—bringing back fresh ideas and national context to support The Block’s evolving work.

“AAMG not only affirmed how vital our behind-the-scenes work on metadata, cataloging & accessibility is for connecting to the public, excellent peer initiatives also inspired new ways of demystifying the museum for students, integrating them into the institution at all levels, & learning from their expertise.”
—Kirsten Lopez, Curatorial Coordinator for Collections Information and Digital Interpretation

While in Albuquerque, the team also had the opportunity to visit the University of New Mexico Art Museum’s exhibition Push and Pull, which explored abstraction and process-based experimentation, and the Tamarind Institute. These offered timely inspiration ahead of The Block’s fall exhibition Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper. The conference also included a visit to Santa Fe museums, and to the campus of IAIA, the Institute of American Indian Arts, where participants had an opportunity to visit with faculty, staff and students of this prestigious arts institution and enjoy a campus tour.

“What’s so special about academic art museums is how different we all are—each shaped by the needs of our universities and communities. But even with that variety, there’s so much we can learn from one another. AAMG brings together innovative thinkers who are generous with their ideas, and you leave inspired to try something new.”
—Lindsay Bosch, Associate Director of Communications

From storytelling to space-making, AAMG 2025 highlighted the essential, evolving role of academic museums as places of connection, inquiry, and care. The Block’s staff were honored to contribute to this ongoing conversation—and excited to bring new ideas into practice on campus and beyond.