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Garry Golden commented, “There is always risk of being seen as trendy or just buzz– but ‘engagement’ is a huge concept being explored today by people across the learning world…. I think engagement is a concept worth exploring.” And blogger Gretchen Jennings responded, in a post on her Museum Commons blog,  that she has and continues to “[urge] museum educators to focus less on formal education materials and methods and more on interpretive planning in exhibitions and visitor engagement in the museum, both on site and online. So I have decided to explore engagement in more depth. What is it, anyway? What would it mean for the-profession-formerly-known-as-museum- education to facilitate visitor engagement?

a new collections policy that requires Smithsonian museums to collaborate with the communities represented by their holdings and to return or share ownership of items that might have been previously stolen or acquired under duress.

The policy requires human remains “be treated with dignity and respect, as those once living, and not objectified as a scientific resource.”

As Smithsonian officials celebrated the deaccessioning of works held by its African Art museum, they ignored another 21 Benin sculptures in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History