Ethical Leadership for the Museum of the Future
Sally Yerkovich has been engaged with ethical issues in museums throughout her career, She is Adjunct Professor of Museum Anthropology at Columbia University in New York City and Director of Educational Exchange and Special Projects at the American-Scandinavian Foundation. A cultural anthropologist with more than thirty years of leadership experience in museums and cultural institutions in New York and Washington, DC, she held positions at the South Street Seaport Museum, Museum of the City of New York, and Museum for African Art in addition to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. She was President and CEO of The New Jersey Historical Society and is currently on the Board of the Merchant’s House Museum
Dr. Yerkovich serves as the Chair of the Standing Committee on Ethics of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and is leading the revision of the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums. She will also chair the revision of the Code of Ethics for the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) as AAM’s resident ethicist. She served on the AAM Executive Board and chaired the Direct Care Task Force that defined the term “direct care of collections” for the field in Direct Care of Collections: Ethics, Guidelines and Recommendations; she also chaired the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH) Committee on Standards and Ethics, revising the AASLH Standards and Ethics statement as well as overseeing the creation of “Valuing History”, a position paper on deaccessioning collections. She is the author of A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics and is increasingly engaged with how museums will face the ethical challenges of the future.
