Thanks to the Cultural Arts Capacity Building Grant from the City of Durham, the Museum’s Director of Operations, Jeanette Shaffer, had the opportunity to attend the Alliance of American Museum’s annual conference that took place in New Orleans in May. The conference brought thousands of museum professionals together to share their work and to engage in new ideas. This year, the conference theme “Sustaining Vibrant Museums” offered a variety of workshop sessions that focused on celebrating community diversity through programming, creative exhibit design, innovative museum technologies, and much more.

“The conference was a great opportunity for me to learn from other industry professionals. I was able to speak with curators from larger institutions, like the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, as well as people from other smaller local history museums. Sharing our work with each other helped me think critically and creatively about how we communicate with the Durham community. Our museum is so unique in our storytelling methods– in using individual stories rather than artifacts– I was so proud to see that we are already going above and beyond with equitable interpretation of history,” said Shaffer. She also attended a session with the American Alliance of Museum’s Latinx professional network to discuss resources for the Museum’s upcoming exhibit Nuevo Espíritu de Durham: New Spirit of Durham.