Amy Hollander
STRATEGIST FOR HISTORIC SITES AND MUSEUMS
I am a storyteller, and a strategist. I excel at helping organizations navigate 21st century challenges by strengthening their institutions, exhibits or programs, and by developing comprehensive strategies that garner stakeholder support and utilize modern tools to make their vision, reality.
Collections
Collections are the heart of any museum. Each artifact and interactive is a gateway to a story. Who designed it? Who manufactured it? How did it transform the lives of the people in the community it served? These stories are key--serving as bridges between the past, the present, and the future.
Our challenge is to do this while overcoming a millennium of cultural bias by creating new collections policies which encourage and celebrate the rich diversity of our communities.
Education
The Museum Educator's role is to find pathways that forge connections, inspiring visitors to apply critical thinking and to become engaged in creating their own places in history and art.
Our challenges are to find ways to bring new voices to the table, to see our narratives with new eyes, to find meaningful ways to approach storytelling, to dispel cultural assumptions, and promote a new kind of narrative that peels back the layers of bias and encourages inclusion and diversity.
Exhibit
Museum exhibits are designed to help our visitors explore our complex past, ask questions that help them understand the present, and inspire them to generate ideas for the future.
The challenges we face are three fold: First we need to incorporate Universal Design into our exhibits. Second, we need to be thoughtful about using and not abusing new technologies. Finally we need to engage our audiences: include their voices, encourage their opinions and stimulate their creativity.
Fundraising
In many ways, fundraising is the biggest challenge we face. The competition for public and private funding is fierce. Raising the funds is only half the battle. Benefactors want tangible results and powerful narratives to showcase the impact of their donations.
We can no longer rely on traditional fundraising resources. We need to balance these solutions with innovative ones that utilize 21st century technologies.
Advocacy
Today, we need to expand the role of museum professional to be both historian and advocate. While we are preserving history, art and culture we must also be forging long-term, strategic alliances, not only with political leaders and social influencers, but within our communities. Building these relationships is essential if we want to be able respond to the shifting landscape with agility and speed.
Social Responsibility
.Whether we are addressing climate change, decolonization, or philanthropic indiscretions., it is essential that we, as museum professionals, embrace comprehensive strategies which address these challenges before they become issues,
if we want to change the world we have to start by changing how we do business. We must shift our perspectives, transform our expectations and create organizational-wide cultures of social responsibility.