From Keepers to Catalysts: Museums as Engines of Equitable Tourism

A conversation with ICOM Board and ICOM-US Co-chairs

During AAM 2026 – Philadelphia

Museums are working to become innovation hubs—co‑creators of solutions to the most urgent social, cultural, and economic challenges. The International Committee on Museums (ICOM) recognizes that museums are uniquely positioned not only to cultivate informed, engaged citizens but also to fuel new ideas and models for more inclusive futures.

This conversation between one of ICOM-US co-chairs; Arthur Affleck, President & CEO of the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) and Kate Quinn, Executive Director, Mütter Museum and Historic Medical Library, and one of ICOM’s newest board members Daniel Hammer, President & CEO of The Historic New Orleans Collection, explores how museums can expand their public value by becoming engines of equitable heritage tourism, particularly at the neighborhood and city scale.

We invite museum professionals, funders, policymakers, and community partners to envision museums, with their public trust and community embeddedness, as avenues of uplift for cultural heritage economies for entire communities. Attendees will leave with strategies to:

• Advance equitable, sustainable models of heritage tourism
• Incentivize public and private investment in museums as social infrastructure
• Reimagine museums as co-creators of healthy, inclusive, and resilient communities

Equitable Heritage Tourism

Museums play a central role in shaping heritage tourism economies, but the benefits of these economies are far from equitably distributed. From Venice to New Orleans, the economies of global cultural destination often rely heavily on tourism. Cities like these offer a powerful lens yet racial income disparities remain severe and public investment in cultural infrastructure—historic preservation, museums, and community‑based cultural institutions—lags behind.
This conversation explores how museums can leverage their authority to contextualize, convene, incentivize, capitalize, and champion approaches that make heritage tourism more equitable and socially beneficial. The discussion will address how museum-led storytelling and community partnership can build more just cultural economies—ones in which local residents benefit as much as visitors.

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Host or Publisher Lord Cultural Resources and Museum of Toronto