Join your museum colleagues from across New York State this April for our 2025 annual conference "Cultivating Community: Looking In, Reaching Out."

100 speakers from across New York State will share their experiences and offer actionable solutions to help New York's museum professionals successfully meet the challenges they face and achieve progress across 25 concurrent sessions.

Register Now | See the full Conference schedule

Sessions like...

Making Together: Launching and Sustaining Community-Engaged Family Learning Spaces explores two intergenerational spaces at Brooklyn Children’s Museum whose missions were directly informed by community feedback: ColorLab, an art-making space inspired by Black artists throughout history and the world, and Nature’s Engineers, a STEM-making space. Learn how each space centers, reflects, and engages the communities we serve through delivering fun, mission-driven, hands-on learning experiences for makers of all ages.

Engaging Emergent Technologies to Reach New Audiences will discuss how museums are leveraging technology to enhance human connections examining the development of pop-up exhibition "Video Games: The Great Connector” at The Harlem Gallery of Science (HGS) inspiring Black and Latinx youth to explore career opportunities in the global digital gaming industry, how Ma’s House has woven Bloomberg Connects into their recent “Reclaiming Death” exhibition enhance visitor experiences and engage new audiences, and recent collaborations at The Heckscher Museum with digital artist Han Qin celebrating the local immigrant community and partnering with middle school students from Girls Inc. to develop a Soundwalk.

"My History Doesn't Matter": The Case for a Fresh Look at Our Collections will take a closer look at existing collections to re-examine them with fresh perspectives can help us expand and diversify our interpretation and collections, connect with under-reached communities, and mentor future generations of museum professionals. 

Building Up Museums: Cultivating Community through Transformational Expansion Projects will share five perspectives on how each museum fostered deeper connections with their communities, executed their missions, and strengthened their educational offerings in a sustainable way, by establishing new physical environments and reflect on their experiences of planning and implementing transformational construction projects.