REBUILDING AFTER DISASTER: Designing resilient museums of the future (Interactive Session)

ID: WMA2026_625

Track:

Rebuilding after loss demands new thinking. In this interactive session, museum leaders and staff will explore how to balance institutional history, emerging community needs, and future priorities when sites, collections, or landscapes are gone or transformed. Through small-group exercises and roleplay, participants will examine what to preserve, reinterpret, or leave behind — and develop a practical framework for designing with loss, turning moments of disruption into opportunities for renewal.

Session Information

Format: Regular session/panel (roundtable, single speaker, etc.)

Uniqueness: Session integrates a real disaster-recovery case study with scenario-based roleplay, equipping participants to develop community-centered frameworks for rebuilding, decision-making, and institutional reinvention amid diverse forms of loss.

Objectives:

This session combines an exploratory case study with an opportunity for attendees to play out scenarios relevant to their own work. The presenters will share an active case study of a public exhibition and education space destroyed by fire, and the challenges and opportunities inherent in rebuilding.

The project raises themes that will be mined in depth through conversation and role-playing. We anticipate this session will resonate with many participants whose institutions contend with loss. While the case study relates to a climate disaster, the conversation will be relevant to other kinds of threats — from political upheaval to funding insecurity to gentrification and generational change.

Attendees at this session will:

• Understand the role of community relationships in rebuilding after loss. How can project leaders collaborate effectively with constituents in the wake of tragedy? How can we listen through the noise of competing voices?
• Identify opportunities for growth and reinvention rooted in community needs. How can redesigning a place that was “lost” become an opportunity for strength, unity, and renewal? Begin to develop a framework for decision-making after loss—exploring what to keep, what to remember, what to let go of, and what to push forward. How might such a framework account for the broad perspectives of diverse stakeholders?

Engagement: Museum professionals will engage in facilitated discussions, as well as a small-group exercise that incorporates roleplay scenarios grounded in a disaster-recovery case study, applying concepts to their own institutional contexts. Participation emphasizes collaborative decision-making, stakeholder negotiation, and framework development. Resources include case study materials, scenario prompts, facilitation guides, writing materials. The session will need a/v support for presentations and group work.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Curators/Scientists/Historians Facilities Management Personnel Other Registrars, Collections Managers Technology 

Professional Level: All levels 

Scalability: As a case study exploration, this session is fundamentally designed to apply to a range of organizations and scenarios. The focus is on applying learning from one case study in disaster recovery to multiple real-life or hypothetical situations—we intend for participants to bring their own lens of professional experience to steer the conversation together toward resiliency and transformation.

Participants