Session Content

“Each year AAM’s Center for the Future of Museums publishes TrendsWatch, a foresight report exploring major forces of change shaping society and exploring the implications for museums and the communities they serve. This presentation for the Chocolate Heritage Society Meeting will premiere the featured trends for 2025 (currently embargoed). CFM director Elizabeth Merritt will present an overview of significant shifts in culture, technology, and policy that will influence museum operations in the coming decade and suggest actions museums might take in the face of these challenges.

Speaker Biography

Elizabeth is the American Alliance of Museums’ Vice President for Strategic Foresight and Founding Director of the Center for the Future of Museums – a think-tank and research & development lab for the museum field. She studied ecology and evolution as an undergraduate at Yale and received her masters in cell and molecular biology from Duke University. Her museum career has included working in a children’s museum, as well as natural history and history museums, and she is a graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute’s Museum Management Program.

Prior to starting CFM, Elizabeth literally wrote the book on museum standards and best practices, as director of the Alliance’s accreditation and excellence programs. She notes this was perfect preparation for her current role as agent provocateur—challenging museums to question assumptions about traditional practice, and experiment with new ways of doing business. Elizabeth is the author of the Alliance’s annual TrendsWatch report and works with museums around the world to help them build a better tomorrow.