AI: A Museum Planning Toolkit

In 2019 the Museums + AI network, led by Dr Oonagh Murphy, Lecturer in Arts Management, engaged with 50 senior museum professionals, and leading academics across the UK and US to develop new insights into AI in a museum context.

Alongside industry focussed events Dr Murphy ran a series of events called Curator: Computer: Creator that encouraged diverse voices to join the conversation on what AI might look like for museums in the near future in partnership with the Barbican Centre (London), and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (NYC).

During these workshops and events, she worked with a network of museum professionals to test, challenge and refine models of practice, workshop formats, and development tools – this toolkit is one of the results of that work.

“We hope the toolkit will serve as key resource for museums when developing future AI projects. The toolkit is designed to start a conversation, it does not provide all the answers, or indeed offer solutions, but instead it serves as a foundation for critical engagement with these technologies and the possibilities and challenges that they offer”. Dr Murphy