Directors' Meeting 2025

The annual Directors’ Meeting, exclusively dedicated to NEMO’s full members - national organisations that represent and support museums in their countries - took place on 26 October 2025 at FÆNGSLET in connection to NEMO's European Museum Conference 'Who cares? Museums, wellbeing, and resilience' in Horsens, Denmark.

The Directors' Meeting offers a unique opportunity for directors of national organisations representing museums to connect, exchange ideas, and explore shared challenges and trends in the museum sector. In 2025, we were excited to welcome Elizabeth Merritt to engage in discussions about the future of museums.

As the American Alliance of Museums' Vice President for Strategic Foresight and Founding Director of the Center for the Future of Museums, Elizabeth Merritt addressed the critical challenges facing U.S. museums, including the impact of recent executive orders on operations and financial stability. Attendees examined issues such as cuts to federal arts funding, cancelled grants, suppression of diversity programs, censorship, and threats to nonprofit tax-exempt status. Elizabeth also outlined how museum leaders and associations are responding to these pressures.

Following the keynote, participants joined open-table discussions on building alliances between European and U.S. museums, exploring future scenarios, and the role of national umbrella organizations in times of crisis and resilience.

Programme

10:00

Welcome and introduction

Moderated by Julia Pagel, NEMO

10:30

Impulse talk: A status report on US museums in 2025

Elizabeth Merritt (USA), American Alliance of Museums’ Vice President for Strategic Foresight and Founding Director of the Center for the Future of Museums 

Moderated by Julia Pagel

The US museum sector is reeling from the impact of presidential executive orders and actions that are disrupting their operations and their financial health. Federal agencies that fund arts, culture, history, and science have been decimated, thousands of grants cancelled, diversity, equity and inclusion programs suppressed, and censorship imposed on museum interpretation. There are also emerging threats to the system of nonprofit, tax-exempt status that is the bedrock of civil society in America. AAM Vice President Elizabeth Merritt provided a briefing on these developments, as well as an overview of how museum leaders and associations are responding to these challenges.

11:15

Nemo

Break

Stretch your legs and get some refreshments.

11:45

Open table discussions

Time to get talking in smaller group discussions on various topics:

  1. Bridging continents: Alliances between European and US museum sector
  2. Museums of tomorrow: Exploring future scenarios together
  3. Between resilience and crisis: The role of national umbrella organisations

13:00

Nemo

Lunch

We will wrap up the meeting with lunch.

Supported by

Logo of the European Union. The European flag is on the left. The text on the right reads "Co-funded by the European Union".