Leadership Matters

First published in 2013, this revision of Leadership Matters features nine new profiles and a new chapter of emerging museum leader voices, proving that leadership is as much about individuals as institutions.

Using personal insights from the history museum field’s most engaging, innovative and entrepreneurial leaders, these profiles focus not only on museum directors and CEOs, but also on the “leaders within”—deputies, department heads and team leaders -- and those demanding change from the community. Baldwin and Ackerson weave together the voices of 21st-century museum leadership at its best, creating a resource for graduate students, mid-career professionals, institutions, and boards of trustees to move from the status quo to being agile and influential, fostering leadership that will make a difference.

Too many museums and heritage organizations still consider leadership development a ‘nice-to-have’, but not a necessary component for a successful executive director or department head. The field struggles to address a new round of cultural warfare fueled by widespread societal division and the overwhelming lack of diversity and equity in museum leadership at all levels, including boards of trustees. Additionally, the field continues to ignore the gender pay gap despite a workforce hovering at 50-percent female and with the potential to grow significantly over the next decade. More than ever, successful museum leadership isn’t the result of longevity, scholarship or curatorial achievement. In fact, today’s successful museum leaders bring myriad skills to the table, creating a style that works both personally and professionally. This snapshot of museum leadership focuses on history and cultural heritage organizations to help readers understand the power of individual leadership and its relationship to organizational strength.

This book features:

• 36 interviews – nine of them brand new to this edition -- with leaders in the field from a range of positions and institutions

• 10 myths of museum leadership and why they’re wrong

• 10 simple truths of museum leadership

• A leadership “agenda” with criteria and goals for individual and organizational development

Joan H. Baldwin

A former museum director, Joan Baldwin has devoted the last two decades to thinking, writing and speaking about museum leadership. More recently she has turned the lens on issues of gender, leadership and the museum workplace. She is the co-author, with Anne Ackerson, of Leadership Matters and Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Workplace. She is the principal author of the blog Leadership Matters which has more than 48,000 views in 2018, and readers in 144 countries. Her work has appeared in History News, The Museum Blog Book, and the American Alliance of Museums. She is a co-founder of Gender Equity in Museums (GEMM), and teaches (with Ackerson) in the Johns Hopkins Museum Studies Program. She is currently curator for Special Collections at The Hotchkiss School, a lively, challenging independent school for grades 9-12.



Anne W. Ackerson

Anne W. Ackerson served as director of several historic house museums and historical societies in central and eastern New York, director of the Museum Association of New York, and executive director of the national Council of State Archivists. As an independent consultant, Anne focuses on organizational development and planning, and governance issues for the smaller nonprofit cultural institution. She is the co-author with Joan Baldwin of Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Workplace (2017) and Leadership Matters (2013), a book examining history museum leadership for the 21st century. She co-teaches a leadership of museums course with Baldwin for the Johns Hopkins University Museum Studies program. She is a co-founder of the Gender Equity in Museums Movement (GEMM).