2025 Homepage
2025 AAM ANNUAL MEETING & MUSEUMEXPO
MAY 6-9, 2025 • LOS ANGELES
BE A PART OF AAM 2025 IN LOS ANGELES!
MUSEUMS & TRUST
AAM 2025 Theme
Museums have long inspired high levels of public trust, surpassing news outlets, government organizations, researchers and scientists, corporations, and social media platforms. This consistent finding underscores our institutions’ unique position in society as stewards of knowledge, culture, science, and history—areas where credibility and reliability are paramount.
In an era marked by mistrust and misinformation, museums have a rare ability to counterbalance the proliferation of false narratives and polarized perspectives. Using our trusted position, we can cultivate a more healthy, empathetic, and informed society. But to do so, we must maintain our credibility proactively, embracing thoughtful, transparent, and collaborative practices that will defend against influences like bias, resource challenges, abuse of power, and social injustice.
At AAM 2025, join thousands of museum professionals from across the field in Los Angeles to explore how to mitigate these threats and defend truth and trust from within any area of museum work.
WHAT CAN I EXPECT
AT AAM 2025?
Connect with Your Peers
Each year, the conference is designed to help attendees feel reinvigorated and more deeply connected to our field. At AAM 2025 you won’t find a shortage of opportunities to expand your network and connect with peers over challenges, successes, new ideas, and inspiration.
Session Tracks for All
AAM 2025 programming will be divided into four tracks that explore the theme of Museums & Trust: Purpose, Practice, Process, and Programs. Each session will offer something for everyone, leaving you inspired and challenged to amplify the impact you can have. Attendees say that this conference is one of the best professional development experiences of their lives.
An Incredible MuseumExpo
AAM is again partnering this year with the Museum Store Association to host an incredible combined expo hall. Find the most innovative services, products, and solutions in the museum field. With 350 exhibitors, you are bound to find the right partner for your museum’s current challenges and opportunities.
Hands-on Workshops & Learning Labs
Take full advantage of this conference for your professional development and deepen your practice through hands-on workshops and learning labs that offer foundational and practical techniques that you can apply to your own context and community. These sessions will focus on the “how-to” and provide attendees with tangible tools and outcomes you can bring back home.
SESSION TRACKS
The 2025 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo conference programming will be divided into four dynamic tracks, each aimed at exploring the theme of Museums & Trust:
Purpose
Explore how museums articulate and demonstrate their mission, vision, and core values to foster trust among stakeholders through organizational culture, governance, and leadership strategies.
Process
Focus on the guidelines, protocols, processes, or ethical frameworks governing museum operations that engender trust in collections, facilities, conservation, finance, curation and research, education, ethics, and DEAI.
Practice
Sessions address museums’ methodologies and approaches in education, exhibitions, curation, and collections stewardship to seek truth, validate information, and uphold integrity.
Programs
Discover initiatives, outreach efforts, and programs developed to foster dialogue, understanding, and collaboration; leverage technology; forge new approaches; and strengthen community partnerships.
PEOPLE AND LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Every community owes its existence to generations from around the world who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some were brought here against their will, some were drawn to leave their distant homes in hopes of better lives, some were forced from their homelands, and some have lived on this land for more generations than can be counted. Honoring truth is essential to building a just and equitable world. While acknowledgment is important, it is only a beginning.
We acknowledge the Piscataway people, on whose ancestral lands the American Alliance of Museums’ office is located. Los Angeles, the city we celebrate during this Annual Meeting, is the ancestral homeland of the Gabrieliño Tongva people.
Please take a moment to consider the many realities of violence, displacement, migration, and colonization as we gather together for the 2025 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. We must hold ourselves accountable for the necessary work to uncover truths in the museum field and beyond. We encourage you to use this native lands map so you can learn what lands you occupy—visit: native-land.ca.
About the American Alliance of Museums
Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo
The AAM Annual Meeting first started in 1906 in New York with under 200 museum professionals and has grown to over 5,000 attendees, becoming the largest museum conference in the United States.
The AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo is the largest museum conference in the world. It is the only event of its scope and scale that brings together museums of all types and sizes—from art and history museums to zoos and botanic gardens—to share ideas and make transformational connections. It’s a place where all museum professionals learn from one another, create partnerships, and leave inspired to make an impact on their museums, communities, and the world.
Need help with your membership? Email: membership [at] aam-us.org
Need help with your registration? Please contact amme_registration@goeshow.com or call 847-620-4238
Revisit past Annual Meetings
The American Alliance of Museums’ mission is to champion equitable and impactful museums by connecting people, fostering learning and community, and nurturing museum excellence.
