NMPS History, Mission, and Audience

Begun as a small seminar in 1989, the NMPS has become a vibrant biennial conference, welcoming professionals from the museum publishing world and beyond.

Mission

As repositories of the nation’s cultural, historic, and scientific resources, museums are in a unique position to develop specialized publications that reflect their educational missions and collections. Museum publication programs serve many purposes: scholarly, documentary, and informational. The purpose of the National Museum Publishing Seminar is to foster rigorous, informed conversations on the role of museum publishing today.

Audience

Speakers and attendees are drawn from the publications, digital media, and marketing departments at art, science, and history museums, as well as academics and professionals from university presses, small publishers, and design firms. They are joined by sponsors and exhibitors who serve museums and their needs by providing paper, printing, photographic expertise, design, writing, editing, packaging, web design, and other services.

Attendees come from a variety of personal and professional contexts, but are united in their desire for deep discussion around scholarly publications and their appreciation of museum books as art objects in their own right.

Program Archive

The NMPS was founded in 1989. Each year, we produce a print program listing all of our speakers, panels, and events. To learn more about previous conferences, please explore the resources below.