Over the past few years, New York’s museums have placed a greater emphasis on fostering and deepening their community connections, aligning and elevating institutional missions while strengthening education, sustainability, and a crucial sense of civic belonging. Nearly 90 percent of American museums now center their audiences and communities in their mission and vision statements.* Their missions and work focus on expanding and diversifying their audiences and engaging with their local communities. 

But what is community? Who are the members of our communities?  How can we evaluate our internal structures to help us better understand our organization, define our audiences, and serve our communities?  How do we bring all communities together to support our field? How can we support and develop our internal community of staff, volunteers, and board members? How can we advocate for funding that meets operational capacity needs and includes equitable staff support? What changes do we need to make to prioritize the health and well-being of our museum workforce that will support the longevity and sustainability of our institutions and strengthen our ability to build meaningful community relationships?

MANY welcomes proposals for conference sessions, workshops, panel discussions, facilitated discussions, and peer-to-peer learning experiences focusing on our 2025 conference theme, Cultivating Community: Looking In, Reaching Out. We will be gathering in Ithaca, in the Southern Tier Region of our state, located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ (the Cayuga Nation).

Submit a Conference Proposal

Click here to view the proposal submission form as a PDF.

We’re looking for conference sessions that are 75 or 90 minutes in length or two to three-hour long, immersive, and interactive workshops.

Proposals should share how you and your colleagues recently:

• Aligned values with mission to create inclusive experiences for our communities;
• Created positive and healthy work environments;
• Connected with and grew organizational and human resources;
• Built capacity, revenue, and access;
• Increased participation and engagement of new or existing audiences;
• Used objects and collections to tell complicated stories;
• Wrote new cases to support internal and external communities and increase economic impact;
• Identified digital divides and integrated virtual access;
• Changed organizational culture to build equity and inclusion within your staff;
• Created opportunities to support democracy and/or encouraged civic participation;
• Supported staff leadership and professional development;
• Developed and prioritized interdepartmental and/or community partnerships;
• Advocated for equitable funding.

MANY’s annual conference helps museum professionals build a network to share perspectives, tools, and skills that develop excellence across the field. Our goal is to nurture a community of practice, advance institutional change, and create an inclusive and expansive New York team of collaborators who learn together.

2024 conference presenters and attendees. Photos by Alex Cassetti

Proposal review process

Proposals will be peer-reviewed by a committee composed of MANY board members and museum professionals from New York's Southern Tier REDC region.

The strongest proposals will:

→ share the “why” as well as the nuts and bolts,

→ present case studies with input from all involved,

→ share projects that question foundational processes,

→ and propose discussions about challenges that we all face.

Proposals that include only one voice and one perspective will not be competitive.

Have an idea, but you are not sure it fits the theme? Looking for a partner to present with you? Send an email to conference@nysmuseums.org and we will arrange a time for you to speak with MANY staff.

Speaker honoraria

If your proposal for our 2025 conference is accepted by the review committee, we are pleased to offer a modest honoraria of $50 per presenter; $200 maximum for group panel discussions. This opportunity, limited to the 2025 conference, is an acknowledgment of the work that our colleagues invest in preparing a proposal and presenting at a MANY conference. Presenters will also receive a discount on conference registration.

Important Dates

Deadline for proposal submission: Friday, November 8, 2024

Notification: December 2024

Conference Registration Opens: Monday, January 13, 2025

The 2025 annual conference is April 5 to 8 in Ithaca, NY.