Museum TrendsWatch 2025:
For Your Radar and Trend Alert

Each year, the Center for the Future of Museums (under the American Alliance of Museums) publishes the TrendsWatch report. In response, I offer “TrendsWatch (TW) snapshots” to help museums distill and apply the insights.

Today’s post will focus on two pieces from the 2025 report: For Your Radar: Managed Retreat and Targeted Universalism and Trend Alert: An Artifact from the Future: the 990 of 2035. For each of these trends, I’ll provide a summary of the topic as presented by the Center and offer analysis, insight, and tie-ins to related subjects.

Managed Retreat

TW defines “managed retreat” as: the proactive relocation of people and infrastructure in the face of climate change.

Climate change has been on the minds of collection stewards for at least the past decade. It’s likely with this in mind that TW included this new term as part of its “For Your Radar” section.

This section of TW includes a map of the United States from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), highlighting climate risks across the US—with color-coded visual warnings to high-risk areas along the coastlines and more moderate risks for landlocked regions.

The article notes that approximately 33% of US museums are within 100km of the coast. While the oncoming climate crisis isn’t new to the field, the concept of unavoidable but managed retreat is new. This raises major questions for museums—especially those within 100km of the coast.

There is a very real challenge of moving physical assets from what was considered a permanent museum building. The costs are high, the logistical challenges are numerous, and we have yet to see any materials for what a museum’s managed retreat could look like. This is an area ripe for development and I hope it happens quickly, as museums are not fast or nimble institutions. Managed retreat must be made manageable, but for museums currently, such an action feels impossible.

Targeted Universalism

Definition: An approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) that seeks to be effective while minimizing backlash.

Essentially, the Targeted Universalism approach is to pursue shared goals that are broad enough to encompass the majority of people while also targeting and addressing areas of inequity. TW refers to these broad goals as “universal” policies and mentions social security as an example of such a policy. However, since this article was written, the social security program has faced significant changes, framed as efforts to reduce inefficiencies. It seems social security is not a universally valued policy.

Targeted universalism is perhaps a theory that exists best on the page, as its success relies on society’s willingness to define and act on shared values. This type of society is, unfortunately, not our current reality, which renders this approach ineffectual. That doesn’t mean it won’t ever have an effective application; it just may be a while before adoption of this approach is practical for US-based museums.

Trend Alert: An Artifact from the Future: the 990 of 2035

The premise of this short piece is to observe how numbers—specifically those on IRS form 990—can tell a story. Layered on top of this premise is the encouragement to believe that this 990 form is from 10 years in the future: 2035. This foresight exercise is intended to illustrate what may come to pass and the lessons we may be able to glean from it.

Among the observations made by TW are:

• Doing Business As (DBA): Museums may be renamed as part of a rebrand. Specifically, museums moving away from referring to themselves as a museum, which can have negative connotations. However, TW also suggests other organizations with names not already including “museum” may move in reverse in order to claim “museum” and the presumed trusTWorthiness the name can bestow.
• Address Change: Museums will need to relocate, especially from coastal areas. See Managed Retreat above.
• Number of Voting Members of the Governing Body: Museums may wish to increase the number of board members in order to accommodate the historically wealthy members while also opening up opportunities to include the community. Specifically, without concern regarding the member’s ability to financially contribute to the museum.
• Total Number of Volunteers: Museums may see a continued decrease for reasons articulated in the first article: TrendsWatch: The Next Era of Volunteerism. TW also suggests that other museums may see an increase in volunteers if they expand their program for a new cadre of volunteers.
• Contributions and Grants: Museums may see an increase or decrease in individual contributions. TW hedges its bets here with a side box that explains that charitable giving could be impacted by the omission of “non-itemizer” deductions as well as potential tax implications if nonprofits are soon required to pay regular corporate taxes. Unfortunately, there is now a new disastrous consequence to befall US museums and one not spotted in this foresight exercise: the complete gutting (and likely full closure) of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). These few federal funding sources are lifelines for many museums and cultural heritage organizations in the form of direct grants or federal funding distributed at the state level. This removal of funding has had knock-on consequences to the rest of the funding ecosystem, as the few external financial resources available to US museums become even harder to get. With this news, and assuming the gutted agencies remain so (pending ongoing litigation), this line item has the potential to look even worse.
• List of the Organization’s Current Officers, Directors, Trustees: Compensation requirements will increase, especially as the recruitment of skilled leaders becomes more difficult due to burnout and the increasing pressure to fundraise. TW also suggests there may be a decrease in leadership salaries to rebalance the ratio of the highest-paid staff member with the lowest.
• Reportable Compensation from the Organization: Related to TW observations made for Number of Voting Members of the Governing Body (above), they suggest compensation of board members may begin or be increased in recognition of the need to pay community members for their labor.

Moving from Foresight to Action

There are many issues facing museums (especially in the US) that could either worsen or improve in the next 10 years. It is hard not to feel overwhelmed by the presentation of these short takes, especially when there are no resources to go to nor a clear path ahead. While it is helpful to anticipate the issues ahead, the true gap is in figuring out the specifics of how to navigate these issues. This is where national leadership from organizations such as AAM is needed most.

Until then, we can continue to seek and share knowledge with professional organizations and with each other; data gathering is the first step toward building a national strategy.