Come Back Together in Boston

After a time of unprecedented losses and disruptions, one thing remains true: there is unparalleled power in being together in person. At the 2022 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo we’re gathering for rejuvenation and inspiration so that you are invigorated to play a critical role in the future of the museum field. 

At #AAM2022, you’ll join an incredible cadre of professionals with the same drive to propel the field forward, creating solutions to the biggest challenges facing museums today. #AAM2022 is the only event of its kind that brings together the  entire  museum ecosystem to collaborate across disciplines to tackle our most pressing issues.

On May 19-22 we will be converging in Boston, a city brimming with vibrancy and culture. With a diversity of distinct and unique neighborhoods, nearly sixty museums and many more cultural destinations, innovative tech hubs, and a deep and palpable history, Boston is a magnetic city for us to come together again.

Whether you miss having spontaneous hallway conversations, diving deep into challenges and opportunities with colleagues, exploring museums together, reconnecting at a happy hour, or getting your hands on new products in the MuseumExpo, you have a place at #AAM2022.

What’s Changing About the

Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo?

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged all of us to rethink our processes and how we deliver our core programs. Taking this challenge to heart, we’re reshaping  our  longest-running program: the museum field’s largest conference. Our plans for 2022 are currently evolving as we determine how to best bring the museum field together safely.

As we plan, we are led by two guiding priorities. First and foremost is your safety. We are working closely with Boston health officials in establishing a comprehensive safety plan for the 2022 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Our second priority is disrupting our traditional conference model to create a one-of-a-kind experience–the most dynamic and interactive Annual Meeting yet.

We’re focusing on what makes meeting in person so special to create a more intimate, highly interactive meeting where museum professionals come together to tackle the most pressing issues facing our field. We want you to leave the Annual Meeting reinvigorated and ready with innovative solutions and new connections that will move you, your museum, and your communities into a brighter future.

Stay tuned and save the date for May 19-22. We can’t wait to see you in Boston.

Four Key Focus Areas

Tackling the Museum Field’s 

Biggest Challenges

Designed to catalyze new opportunities, advance innovation, and foster an environment for creating solutions to our field’s most pressing challenges, #AAM2022 will center on four key focus areas, as opposed to organizing under a single theme, enabling you to customize an experience that’s right for you.

Each of these focus areas will coalesce around an inspirational Keynote followed by interactive, hands-on breakouts designed for you to dive deeper with peers and come away with practical tools and techniques. The interpersonal nature of these sessions will foster high levels of collaboration and connection with other professionals of the same and different disciplines, all with the same drive to power the future of the field.

FAQ

Over the past few weeks, we’ve received some great questions from you that are helping to inform our plans. Here are some of the most common ones:

When is registration opening and how much will registration cost?

We are hearing a lot of excitement for #AAM2022 and have received a number of requests asking to open registration before the end of 2021! We are working hard towards opening registration in late fall/early winter.

Registration prices have not yet been determined and will be set based on the costs of the 2022 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo and the needs of our field at this time. Despite the rising costs of hosting in-person meetings, we are determined to maintain similar registration prices to our most recently scheduled in-person meeting which would have been held in San Francisco. We will provide more information on rates as soon as they’re available.

We ask that you keep in mind that as a nonprofit organization, proceeds from the AAM Annual Meeting also help fund our year-round work such as advocating for critical support for museums and museum professionals, which between 2020-2021 resulted in over one billion dollars in federal financial relief saving countless museums and museum jobs, and offering thousands of free and low-cost programs and resources to museum professionals, including over 600  COVID-19 response resources .

Will there be a virtual equivalent to the Annual Meeting?

We have learned so much from the last two years of virtual Annual Meetings! We will continue to use these lessons moving forward in creating some form of a virtual event later in 2022, however, it will be separate and distinct from our Annual Meeting. We will provide more information as plans evolve in early 2022. 

When will more details be available?

With experimentation, changes to our traditional model, and the planning contingencies we’re all facing this year, we are taking our time to make intentional and thoughtful decisions to give you the best possible experience in Boston. We are very excited to share more details with you as soon as we can. Sign up to receive updates as soon as they’re available (be sure to check “News About AAM’s Annual Meeting” on the form). If you’re already signed up for our email list, the form will offer you a prompt to update your email preferences as desired.