Facing the Future - Museums as Catalysts for Change

From the desk of Lori Shepherd, Executive Director

TJMHC’s Programming & Education Director, Emily Hager, and I have just returned from The Association of Holocaust Organizations’ (AHO) Summer Conference in Detroit, which brought together Holocaust educators, museum professionals, scholars, archivists, and community leaders around the theme of Facing the Future: Museums as Catalysts for Change.  This four-day conference was hosted in partnership with the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) and sought to inspire and empower attendees in a period marked by rising antisemitism, social polarization, and challenges to historical understanding. Detroit's robust history of innovation, reinvention, and community-building provided a powerful backdrop for our discussions about memory, resilience, and civic engagement.

Throughout the conference, participants explored strategies for Holocaust education, preservation of survivor testimony, exhibition development, public history, and community partnerships. Sessions highlighted the evolving role of museums in fostering dialogue, combating misinformation, and strengthening public trust. I was honored to serve as moderator and panelist for a plenary session titled One Museum: Dual Stories, where my colleagues and I talked about the importance of integrating regional Jewish stories with Holocaust education and history.  

As with my own session, a recurring theme across the conference was the responsibility of institutions not only to preserve the past, but also to help contemporary audiences understand the relevance of Holocaust history to present-day challenges. Emily will get to do a deeper dive than most, as she was recently accepted into a partnership between the Zekelman Holocaust Center and AHO, known as Learn to Lead, a professional development and training program that brings together emerging professionals from Holocaust museums and institutions from the US and across the world. You can read more about the experience on her blog.

We each left with a renewed sense of commitment to advancing Holocaust education, strengthening Jewish cultural institutions, and ensuring that survivor voices and historical truth continue to inform future generations.