PND (7/25/2000) -- Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds Help Museums Meet Community Needs

The New York City-based Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds have awarded $300,000 to the American Association of Museums (AAM) to help museum professionals develop new standards for meeting the continuing challenge of making their institutions more attractive to larger, more diverse audiences.

The funding will allow AAM to convene a series of nine regional discussions, or "Common Dialogues," over the next 18 months. The meetings will give museum professionals and community leaders the opportunity to discuss ways to identify and better serve the needs of their communities. Based on those discussions, a national task force will recommend a set of service-related core values to be adopted by the AAM board of directors.

The Wallace Funds' grant to AAM builds on its support to a variety of arts organizations over the last decade. With the help of those grants, museums around the country have organized their permanent collections in ways that elevated service to people and better reflected the interests of the audiences they wished to attract.

A recent fund publication, Service to People: Challenges and Rewards, outlines the successful visitor-centered practices of several museums that received support from the funds. The report is available through the publications section of the Wallace Funds' Web site.

FCnote: The Wallace-Readers Digest Funds (NY) had assets of $1,436,236,974 and made grants totaling $64,243,554 in the year ending 12/31/98.

"Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds Support the Creation Of New Standards for Ways Museums Serve Their Communities." Wallace Funds News Release 7/6/2000.

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