Kim Rogers, Business Development Manager
I have been talking about AAM 2026 to anyone who will listen since I got back, which tells you everything you need to know. Two days that genuinely changed how I am thinking about the sector, and more great conversations than I can count. If you work in arts and culture and you have never been, put it on your list.
I came away with my head full, in the best possible way, and a much clearer picture of where arts and cultural organizations are heading and what that means for the technology serving them.
Museums are more important now, not less
The keynote framing was striking. We are living through a period of real societal fragmentation. Misinformation, political polarization, declining trust in institutions that used to anchor public life. Media, government, higher education: all facing credibility challenges to varying degrees.
And then there are museums.
The keynote led with data that genuinely stopped me mid-scribble. 95% of Americans see museums as educational assets. 91% would think positively of elected officials who support them. 96% support maintaining or increasing federal funding. In a world where bipartisan credibility feels almost impossible to find, museums somehow still have it. I think that is remarkable, and I am not sure the sector talks about it enough.
Elizabeth Merritt from the Center for the Future of Museums put it plainly in her session on AI: trust is the sector’s superpower. In a world increasingly saturated with synthetic content and AI-generated information, the ability to say “we are a trusted, human-led interpreter of knowledge and culture” becomes more valuable, not less. It actually made me want to stand up and cheer a little.
AAM’s new 2026-2031 strategic plan is built around exactly that idea. But what struck me most was the operational implication: if museums are increasingly expected to serve as civic conveners, community platforms, advocacy voices, and economic contributors all at once, the complexity of running one of these organizations is only going up. That matters enormously for everyone who works alongside them.
AI is coming, and the sector is thinking about it the right way
Merritt’s session on AI was one of the best I have sat in on the topic, period. She was honest about the risks without being alarmist, and equally honest about the opportunities without being naive. The most useful thing she said: neither the utopian nor the dystopian AI future is predetermined. What happens depends on the values-based decisions being made right now by institutions, governments, and technology providers.
For arts and cultural organizations, that means AI adoption should not be driven by novelty or competitive pressure. It should be evaluated through the lens of mission: does this deepen or weaken trust? Does it support human creativity and expertise? Does it improve access?
There is also a distinction worth naming. Creative AI, the kind that generates content, interpretation, or audience-facing experiences, gets the most scrutiny, and rightly so. But operational AI, the kind that helps organizations coordinate scheduling, optimize resource use, and reduce the administrative load on already stretched teams, is a different story. There is genuine appetite for that. And the conversations I had in the hallways confirmed it. People are not anti-technology. They are anti-technology that does not understand them.
The operational gap is the real opportunity
Here is what I keep coming back to. The sector is being asked to do more with the same, or fewer, resources. Deliver more community programming. Demonstrate economic impact. Coordinate more partnerships. Advocate more loudly for public funding. All of that requires better operational infrastructure, not just better programming.
The institutions that will lead this next phase are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones that can coordinate their people, spaces, data, and workflows well enough to focus the majority of their energy on mission delivery rather than administrative friction.
The organizations I spoke to are not shopping for feature lists. They are looking for partners who genuinely understand what they are trying to do, and can grow with them as that mission gets more ambitious.
That was the part that stayed with me most. Walking away from a conference feeling like the sector is in good hands, asking the right questions, and ready to back the partners who are asking them too.
I am already looking forward to the next one.