AAM Standards and Best Practices
for U.S. Museums

As the national association representing museums of all kinds, AAM serves as a forum in which museum professionals come together to formulate standards and best practices that guide museum operations. 

• Standards are generally accepted levels that all museums are expected to achieve.
• Best practices are commendable actions and philosophies that demonstrate an awareness of standards, solve problems and can be replicated. Museums may choose to emulate them if appropriate to their circumstances.

These voluntary national standards and best practices are benchmarks against which museums measure their own performance. They also help policy makers, media, phil­anthropic organizations, donors and mem­bers of the public to assess museums’ achievements.

The standards and best practices currently approved by the AAM Board of Directors were developed with extensive input from the field through the AAM Accreditation Program and the Ethics Committee of the AAM Board. While the names of these documents reflect the fact that many of them were developed in these venues, the standards and best practices they establish apply to all museums, regardless of whether or not they are AAM member museums, or accredited.

AAM Standards and Best Practices for U.S. Museums address “big picture” issues about how museums operate—for the most part they define broad outcomes that can be achieved in many different ways. There is a rich field of museum literature regarding technical standards—how to perform specific tasks, such as numbering objects, or for determining appropriate climate specifications for particular materials. For more information on technical standards, see Other AAM Resources on Standards.

AAM Standards
Best Practices 

For many years AAM’s Standing Professional Committees have worked to articulate standards and best practices relat­ed to specific functions within museums, such as education and curating. The AAM Board and Accreditation Commission are working with the SPCs to review and approve these standards as well. AAM will continue to work closely with other museum professional associations as they expand upon and refine these national standards and to clarify how they apply to museums in specific disciplines.