To Matti Hammett, Accessibility Programs Manager at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS), “accessibility means working towards opening doors for audiences that may not have been historically focused on or prioritized.” Earlier this year, HMNS achieved recognition as a Certified Autism Center by theInternational Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards (IBCCES), demonstrating their commitment to creating accessible and inclusive experiences.

In 2019, the Jewish Museum in New York, New York launched new audio tours intended to illuminate the Museum’s collection. Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the tours bring new perspective to a museum visit through artists’ voices, a variety of lenses grounded in Jewish traditions and rituals, lively conversations with grade-schoolers, and more. The tours are available via the web at Tours.TheJewishMuseum.org and are easily accessible for both on-site and off-site use.

 This month we speak to JiaJia Fei, Director of Digital, and Nora Rodriguez, Interpretive Media Producer, at the Jewish Museum about conception and creation of the tours. 

Meet Me at the MoMA, a program developed for patrons with dementia by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York, has influenced museums both nationally and internationally. None have had such expansive and wide-ranging success, both in terms of geographic area and diversity of organizations, as SPARK!

SPARK! Ignites

With the mission of making Wisconsin a leader in addressing challenges posed by Alzheimer’s, the Helen Bader Foundation (now Bader Philanthropies Inc.) sent out a request for proposals to every museum in Wisconsin. Taking cues from Meet Me at the MoMA, the Foundation aimed to bring similar opportunities to their home state. 

Abigail Diaz, Director of Education at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, won a John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts LEAD Award for Emerging Leaders last year for her work on field trips at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. “For me, accessibility means total physical, cognitive and social access to learning and engagement. It’s intersectional; when you make things better for accessibility, it becomes better for everybody.”

Born in Williamsburg, Virginia, Abbie Diaz spent countless field trips and birthdays in museums. “I knew that museums were for me, and I wanted everyone to love museums as much as I did,” she shares of her passion and decision to pursue a career in education. Diaz is also sister of and caregiver to a young man with disabilities and found it difficult to share her enthusiasm with him; “I always imagined that we would go to museums all over the country together, but we were constantly fighting to allow him to engage in the space physically.”