maam2025buildingmuseums

Hello and Welcome to the 20th annual Building Museums™ Symposium located at the “Gateway to the West:”

On behalf of the Mid Atlantic Association of Museums (MAAM) Board and the Building Museums™ Planning Committees, we are excited to welcome you to St. Louis, MO for the 2025 Building Museums™ Symposium. What better way to celebrate this landmark year for Building Museums™ than to host it in a city filled with unique museums and inspirational architecture. We are excited to bring you several new experiences in the program this year. As a national conference dedicated to addressing best practices in constructing new buildings, rehabilitating existing structures, and/or renovating museum spaces, we welcome you to engage in purposeful, relevant, timely and meaningful discussions and, together, develop new paths to creating structures that serve everyone.

We are proud to present sessions that will actively engage you in discussions on the life-cycle of museum building projects. The many session panelists and keynote speakers you will encounter represent museums across the U.S. and Canada from all types, disciplines, and sizes. Moreover, our attendees represent the leadership in the field that guide how our cultural institutions look, feel and function. These buildings are physical representations of not only our missions and affect how we serve our communities, preserve and protect history and culture, but also exist to provide a space for contemplation and respite in an increasingly challenging and complex world. 

This conference is proudly put together by a dedicated group of volunteers who have tirelessly worked to review proposals, secure sponsorships, and ensure that we have a superior conference experience. Their names are listed under the Committee Tab in Sched. Please stop and thank them as you move through the events and sessions over the next two days. Additionally, we are grateful to our fellow MAAM Board Members for their support and guidance in the planning of this year’s conference as well as to our fearless executive director, Kahla Woodling DeSmit. We would like to offer a special thanks to those museums that opened their doors for private, behind-the-scenes events. Finally, MAAM and the Symposium planning committee are deeply grateful for the generous support of our sponsoring firms. Our sponsors are an invaluable resource for this program and the museum community as a whole. 

Lastly, we welcome your feedback as an integral part of helping us improve future convenings. Session evaluations, in-person comments and feedback given to MAAM in other ways are all important to our planning committee as we develop future programming.

It has been our honor to serve as co-chairs of the 2025 Building Museums™ Symposium. We have done our best to create a program that is thoughtful, useful, and energizing, but we hope to hear from you! 

Enjoy the Symposium!

David Searles

Co-Chair, Building Museums™ Symposium 2025

Melissa Kiewiet

Co-Chair, Building Museums™ Symposium 2025