A major pillar of the work I do is community building. That’s radical in a time when the public discourse is so much more about shutting down voices of dissent.

To give us all a little grace, I'm leaving the doors open to join the next cohort of CARE (the Consortium of Arts Related Entrepreneurs) for just a little longer.

I know my work is better when I do it with others. That can be true for all of us if we think of ourselves as parts of an ecosystem. Our outputs can be as rich and varied as a forest when we share resources the way woodland species do.

I’m looking forward to pirating my way around Baltimore for the American Alliance of Museums conference this year.
I’m looking forward to not having a single soundbite to describe my work.
I’m looking forward to telling the story of my work in a variety of ways that don’t have to conform to a set job title. Which, of course, you can still do even if you do have a set job title.

As my Cornucopia Year comes to its close, I’ve been doing a good job keeping my guiding question in mind: How can I turn toward and foster abundance?

I did it by prioritizing moments of peak joy and collectivity in a season of dark and cold and a moment of socio-political doom and gloom.

And I’m doing it by hosting a drop-in Year End Reflection Session that you can join.

Percolate: My ideas have been steeping and infusing me with plans like the rich red-brown of tea leaves curling through hot water.

Cultivate: Cultivating requires action, but it can’t be rushed. It can only happen at the pace the plant is ready for. And when done steady and well, it’s what creates those resilient, tender-firm, green, little shoots that poke their heads up toward the sun and thrive.

The doors to the field seemed to be open in both directions this year, not just offering a one-way path out … MCN2019 felt like self-care for the maintainers of cultural sector transformation.

In a moment where the world feels consumed by divisive rhetoric and relentless, reactionary anger, this year’s MCN conference took a different path.

It was a conference where I was alternately drained by, gaining from, and giving back to a community I love. And that’s what things we love do for us. We love them when they’re messy and maddening, and they’re always there when we need them.

The MCN community is a tribe of rabble-rousers. We rouse museum rabbles. We don’t accept that because something’s already out there, it’s necessarily out there at its best. We question and poke and push, because we know there are better things ahead, and we want to reach them. We want to create them. We want to share them with all the people who visit museums, physically or virtually.

What makes an object real? Who determines that realness? How important is that realness to a museum visitor? And, maybe most importantly to those of us in the museum field, how can a museum balance out the nebulous concept of realness with an authentic, true experience.