Ohio Museums Association

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Ohio Museums Association Be sure to check out OMA on Instagram . More information is also available at www.ohiomuseums.org. For more information visit www.ohiomuseums.org.

Visit us to learn how you can become an OMA member and help support the Ohio museum community! Founded in 1976 by members of the Ohio's museum community, OMA works with a variety of museums, museum professionals and providers of museum services to strengthen the state's museum, foster excellence in the field and support the museum community. OMA holds an annual conference that is held each spring in a different area of the state. OMA also publishes the "Ohio Museums Monthly" - a monthly e-newsletter that includes topics like People and Museums in the News, Professional Developement opportunities, Job Openings, and more. Just a few of the additional resources the Ohio Museums Association offers the museum community in Ohio are:
- The OMA Job Board on www.ohiomuseums.org
- Advocacy on both the state and national level
- The Annual Visual Communication awards which recognizes excellence in museum's communication material
- The Awards of Outstanding Achievement which recognizes museum professionals and institutional excellence
- Workshops throughout the state that cover a wide variety of topics and job specialties
- Collaborative programming with other state-wide and national organizations
- Diverse online and social networking resources

Membership is available for institutions, individuals, students, and museum service providers.

Two things to do before you log off today! We get it. It’s Friday. It’s time for the weekend.But before you close down f...
10/16/2026

Two things to do before you log off today! We get it. It’s Friday. It’s time for the weekend.

But before you close down for the day, there are two OMA things you don't want to forget!

1️. SUBMIT YOUR OMA 2027 SESSION PROPOSAL
Have an idea worth sharing? A challenge you're working through? A practice that's making a difference? A lesson you learned the hard way? A question you think our field needs to be asking?

Today is the LAST DAY to submit a session proposal for OMA 2027!

Our 2027 conference, “Moving Forward: What Comes Next?” will take place in Canton, April 10-12, 2027. We hope you can join us!

Submit your proposal: https://buff.ly/7YXvl68

2. REGISTER FOR OMA'S OCTOBER WEBINAR
Today is also the last day to register for:
Nothing About Us Without Us: Engaging Authentically with Marginalized Communities, October 19 from 10-11am.

How can museums move beyond telling stories about marginalized communities to creating opportunities to tell stories with them?

Join our panelists for conversation about building trust, sharing decision-making power, avoiding tokenizing or extractive approaches, and creating meaningful, ongoing relationships with communities.

Register: https://buff.ly/PlPIlf3

Submit your conference idea, register for the webinar, and let the weekend begin!

To celebrate & kick off season, we'll be highlighting the 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout October!W...
10/16/2026

To celebrate & kick off season, we'll be highlighting the 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout October!

We are featuring these Award Winner Spotlights during Arts and Humanities Month to help champion the amazing projects, programs and professionals that make Ohio's museum community strong.

Today, we're spotlighting Akron Children's Museum, winner of Best Community Partnership, organizational budget over $500,000 for “Explore Galore with Monsters and More!” https://buff.ly/sFBlU8p

Have an awesome exhibit you want to nominate for an OMA Award? Submissions are now being accepted! To learn more about the 2026 OMA awards and how to nominate your museum, visit https://buff.ly/2OwPkdE.

“Meaningful community engagement” sounds great, but what does it actually look like when you're doing the work?How do mu...
10/14/2026

“Meaningful community engagement” sounds great, but what does it actually look like when you're doing the work?

How do museums build relationships and trust beyond a single project? Listen to community expertise without making assumptions? Amplify marginalized voices without speaking over them? Navigate multiple perspectives while creating respectful, relevant interpretation and programs? Recognize when engagement is meaningful—and when we're accidentally slipping into tokenizing or extractive approaches?

These are some of the questions we'll explore during OMA's October webinar, “Nothing About Us Without Us: Engaging Authentically with Marginalized Communities,” October 19, 10am-11am.

Register here: https://buff.ly/PlPIlf3

Organized by the Empowering Museum Voices Fellowship, our panelists will share ideas and perspectives on moving from inclusion as a checkbox toward meaningful partnership, shared authority, and ongoing relationship-building.

THE WAIT IS OVER! OMA Mascot Name Madness has its winners!After seven rounds of fierce competition, hundreds of votes, a...
10/13/2026

THE WAIT IS OVER! OMA Mascot Name Madness has its winners!

After seven rounds of fierce competition, hundreds of votes, and a truly charming amount of public investment in naming two plushie mascots, WE HAVE OUR WINNERS!

Meet your official OMA mascots:
🦊 Scioto
🦝 Erie

These two have their names, and they have YOU to thank for them!

A huge thank-you to everyone who voted, cheered on your favorites, and helped make Mascot Name Madness so much fun.

You didn't just name two plushies—you helped welcome two new members of the OMA family!

Scioto and Erie are officially here to stay. Now, let the mascot adventures begin!

To celebrate & kick off season, we'll be highlighting the 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout October!W...
10/13/2026

To celebrate & kick off season, we'll be highlighting the 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout October!

We are featuring these Award Winner Spotlights during Arts and Humanities Month to help champion the amazing projects, programs and professionals that make Ohio's museum community strong.

Today, we're spotlighting Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, winner of Best Community Partnership, organizational budget under $500,000 for “Common Currents.” https://buff.ly/ZYAwqFd

Have an awesome exhibit you want to nominate for an OMA Award? Submissions are now being accepted! To learn more about the 2026 OMA awards and how to nominate your museum, visit https://buff.ly/2OwPkdE.

You know that idea you've been thinking about? The one where you keep telling yourself:“Someone should do a session abou...
10/12/2026

You know that idea you've been thinking about? The one where you keep telling yourself:
“Someone should do a session about this.”
“I should probably write this up sometime.”
“I'm not sure it's really conference-worthy.”
“Maybe next year.”

This is your sign!

OMA 2027 is looking for people who are doing the work, figuring things out, trying new approaches, asking hard questions, and learning along the way.

You don't need to have everything figured out. You don't need a groundbreaking new theory. You just need something worth sharing!

Our theme is Moving Forward: What Comes Next? So tell us what you're learning, what you're wondering, what you're trying, and what you think our field needs to be talking about.

Session proposals are due this Friday, October 16.
Submit yours: https://buff.ly/7YXvl68

What does it really mean to tell stories WITH a community—not just ABOUT them?It's easy for museums to say we want to am...
10/09/2026

What does it really mean to tell stories WITH a community—not just ABOUT them?

It's easy for museums to say we want to amplify marginalized voices.

But meaningful engagement asks us to go further. Are we building relationships? Are we listening to community expertise? Are we sharing decision-making power? Are we creating space for communities to shape how their histories and experiences are represented?

Join OMA October 19 at 10am for our webinar, “Nothing About Us Without Us: Engaging Authentically with Marginalized Communities.”

In this Empowering Museum Voices Fellowship developed webinar, our panel discussion will explore what authentic, collaborative engagement can look like in practice—and how museums can move beyond inclusion as a checkbox toward meaningful partnership, shared authority, and ongoing relationships.

Whether your museum is just beginning this work or looking for ways to deepen existing relationships, this conversation will offer ideas, questions, and inspiration for moving forward.

When: October 19, 10–11 a.m. Register: https://buff.ly/PlPIlf3

To celebrate & kick off season, we'll be highlighting the 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout October!W...
10/08/2026

To celebrate & kick off season, we'll be highlighting the 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout October!

We are featuring these Award Winner Spotlights during Arts and Humanities Month to help champion the amazing projects, programs and professionals that make Ohio's museum community strong.

Today, we're spotlighting Kent State University Museum, winner of Best Exhibition Catalog, organizational budget over $500,000 for “A Meeting of Cultures: Fashioning North Africa.” https://buff.ly/2zbTBIR

Have an awesome exhibit you want to nominate for an OMA Award? Submissions are now being accepted! To learn more about the 2026 OMA awards and how to nominate your museum, visit https://buff.ly/2OwPkdE.

Ohio museum folks: What do YOU want to talk about at ?Not what you think a “conference session” is supposed to be. What...
10/07/2026

Ohio museum folks: What do YOU want to talk about at ?

Not what you think a “conference session” is supposed to be. What are you actually thinking about right now?

Maybe you're wrestling with a problem your colleagues might be wrestling with, too.

Maybe you've found a solution that you wish someone had shared with you five years ago.

Maybe you've tried something that worked brilliantly—or spectacularly did not work—and learned something worth sharing.

Maybe you're asking a question you don't have an answer to yet.

That’s a perfect OMA 2027 conference session!

OMA 2027 is all about Moving Forward: What Comes Next? And we want the program to reflect the real questions, ideas, experiments, challenges, and possibilities museums are facing right now.

So don't wait for someone else to submit the session you wish existed. Submit it yourself!

OMA 2027 Annual Conference
April 10–12, 2027 - Canton, Ohio
Session proposal deadline: October 16, 2026
Submit your idea: https://buff.ly/7YXvl68

What comes next for museums? Let's figure it out together.

To celebrate & kick off season, we'll be highlighting the 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout October!W...
10/07/2026

To celebrate & kick off season, we'll be highlighting the 2025 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout October!

We are featuring these Award Winner Spotlights during Arts and Humanities Month to help champion the amazing projects, programs and professionals that make Ohio's museum community strong.

Today, we're spotlighting National Museum of the Great Lakes, winner of Best Exhibition, organizational budget over $500,000 for “Dark Waters: True Crime & Mystery on the Great Lakes.” https://buff.ly/XowwCFT

Have an awesome exhibit you want to nominate for an OMA Award? Submissions are now being accepted! To learn more about the 2026 OMA awards and how to nominate your museum, visit https://buff.ly/2OwPkdE.

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Columbus, OH

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+16142972375

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