Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

In the spirit of a popular post written earlier this year , I want to share the behind the scenes on our current almost-museumwide exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz Collects. This exhibition represents a few big shifts for us: We used a more participatory design process. We had some money.

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

As of May 2, I will be the executive director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA (here's the press release ). Because of the increased workload I expect in the months to come, as well as the likely possibility that we will start a Museum of Art & History blog, I'm lowering my Museum 2.0

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History Museum Arts Consultant 55

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Visitors bond and bridge through participatory experiences at MAH. To apply the results of my analysis to produce a community-driven program design specifically for implementation at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (the MAH). You can download and read the full version of my thesis here.

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Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. It''s clear from the diversity of activities, the professionalism of the scaffolding, and the forms of access that they are serious about inviting meaningful participation in the Re:Make project. it''s carried on.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2011

It was Friday, a few hours before the drawing activity, and my colleagues were worried that it would be too challenging for people to draw the icons and landmarks selected. We often avoid drawing as a community art activity because visitors can get really judgmental of their own abilities, and our staff just felt that this might be too hard.

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Museum 2.0

JANUARY 11, 2012

We just started to try to live up to that vision, partnership by partnership, activity by activity. It also feels amazing to see some of my theories validated in this way--that giving people the opportunity to actively participate does really transform the way they see the institution and themselves. It feels pretty amazing.

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Audience Museum Participatory History 47

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2018

One that has found remarkable success is California’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. She says that the museum made changes in hiring and board recruitment practices, and invited the community in to help reshape the facility into a place that reflected and represented its people and their interests. The impact was dramatic.

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Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 20, 2013

This week, the Santa Cruz Weekly's cover story is about my museum (the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History ) and the work we have done to make it a more participatory, community-centered place over the past two years. I love this image--not controlling everything, just helping steer the way and keep us moving forward.

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Story Georgia Participatory Museum 31

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. This past weekend, in conjunction with our exhibition about Ze Frank's current participatory project, A Show , we hosted " Ze Frank Weekend "--a quickie summer camp of workshops, activities, presentations, and lots of hugging.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 28, 2011

We've been offering a host of participatory and interactive experiences at the Museum of Art & History this season. I loved Jasper Visser's list of 30 "do's" for designing participatory projects earlier this month. Different activities need different levels of materials to appear "open for business." It's just fun.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

This simple participatory project invites visitors to contribute their own small objects in little alcoves in our bathrooms. We have seven participatory elements in our current exhibitions on three floors, ranging from voting to talkback walls to an in-depth "make a memory jar" craft activity.

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Museum Difference Examples Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

APRIL 4, 2012

Museums have been grappling with this question for years ( here's a 2007 roundup of such projects ), most aggressively in zoos and natural history museums where staff hope to inspire conservation and in history/concept museums that focus on civic engagement and activism. No small task for a museum exhibition.

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Story Participatory Museum History 47

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

Originally posted in April of 2011, just before I hung up my consulting hat for my current job at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. In 2008 and 2009, there were many conference sessions and and documents presenting participatory case studies, most notably Wendy Pollock and Kathy McLean''s book Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions.

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

MAY 10, 2011

It's my second week as the Executive Director at The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, CA, and boy is my everything tired. I'm also making the 2011-2012 budget, getting to know our terrific staff and volunteers, and starting up a few small participatory projects to launch us into being a more community-driven institution.

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Museum History Participatory Arts 53

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 23, 2014

They give high-energy, interactive tours of the Metropolitan Museum and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). We interacted with the art and with each other through dynamic photo challenges, kinesthetic activities, and conversations. A new company in New York, Museum Hack , is reinventing the museum tour from the outside in.

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Museum Interview New York Interaction 55

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 26, 2015

Designing A Participatory Hook for a Virtual Meeting. This helped us do a better job of sense-making. This helped make the meeting more interactive and also helped participants think about what techniques they wanted to try after the session. Design must comes first. Finally, you identify next steps and follow up.

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Facilitation Virtual Arts Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2019

Today, I wanted to think about participatory elements, something so essential to this blog. With this in mind, when we produce participatory experiences, while our impetus is to serve our power users with extra content or “check for understanding” interactives, there are so many other ways to use interactives.

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Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've seen this line of questioning almost completely disappear in the past two years due to many research studies and reports on the value and rise of participation, but in 2006-7, social media and participatory culture was still seen as nascent (and possibly a passing fad). In 2008, the conversation started shifting to "how" and "what."

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Here's the short version (read the whole thing here ): The Museum of Art & History is committed to creating exhibitions that inspire our diverse audiences to engage deeply with contemporary art and Santa Cruz County history. We see our visitors as partners in actively interpreting and exploring exhibition content.

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Museum Artist Participatory History 38

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

Last week I was honored to be a counselor at Museum Camp , an annual professional development event hosted by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH). Each year they bring together diverse, passionate people for a sleep-away camp for adults where they learn together through active, creative workshops and activities.

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Causes Change Museum Social 50

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

The supervisors toured the exhibition with some of the 100+ local partners who helped create it. Then, for an hour, former foster youth who helped design the exhibition shared their stories with supervisors. They helped conceive it, plan it, and build it. This argument became one of the foundations of The Participatory Museum.

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Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 15, 2014

New laws and policies will help, but any movement toward greater cultural and racial understanding and communication must be supported by our country’s cultural and educational infrastructure. How can the museum help volunteers and partners address their own questions about race, violence, and community? Things must change.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 2, 2012

Today is my one-year anniversary as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We went through a dramatic financial turnaround and redefined our relationship with our community through a series of experimental participatory projects and new programmatic approaches. 85% of our visitors attend through events.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 21, 2014

I''ve now been the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History for three years. I helped them find funding and partners and time to make amazing work happen. I''ve never worked in such a supportive, energized, active environment. Participatory work can be very labor-intensive. Sometimes it is.

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2012

How do you help visitors know what they can and cannot do in your museum? I grew up professionally in the science and children's museum field, where touching is guaranteed and floor staff spend more time helping visitors learn and ensuring their personal safety than they do protecting the objects. Focus on family audiences.

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Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2013

Thank you to everyone who recommended a favorite post from the past or who helped out with a guest post. You''re in for a treat, with upcoming posts on creativity, collections management, elitism, science play, permanent participatory galleries, partnering with underserved teens, magic vests, and more. As the readership for Museum 2.0

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Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

--Helene Moglen, professor of literature, UCSC After a year of tinkering, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is now showing an exhibition, All You Need is Love , that embodies our new direction as an institution. This post focuses on one aspect of the exhibition: its participatory and interactive elements.

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 16, 2010

It's not topic-specific; I've done these exercises with art, history, science, and children's museums to useful effect. What's the value of this activity? But watch visitors move around a museum, and you'll quickly see the activity flare up around specific exhibits and not others. To me, emulation is a kind of learning activity.

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2009

It was held in Newcastle in the north of England, and about 70 folks from around the world (but mostly Europe) came to play, learn, make stuff, and help each other work out challenges inherent in trying to make risky ideas happen. Thank you to everyone who came and helped co-create an exciting experimental event in a beautiful city.

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Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

These are the slides and notes for the talk I gave at the American Alliance of Museums conference on Monday, April 27 about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. When I became the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago, I took this work with me. We exist for people who live in Santa Cruz County.

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Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

The majority of our public programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History are created and produced through community collaborations. We look for partners who have: An understanding of and desire to help meet your community’s needs. Help them learn from the experience. Can't wait to hear what you think.

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Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I used the example of two very different exhibitions that solicited visitor-contributed content: Playing with Science at the London Science Museum, and MN150 at the Minnesota History Center. The Minnesota History Center team solicited visitor nominations for exhibition topics and then built an exhibition out of those contributions.

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Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 5, 2006

As I am an avid viral video fan and spend way too much of my own time seeking and sorting out great video and audio about sustainability, science and activism (primarily) I started two tagged feeds called " I Like To Watch " for video and " Juicy Pods " for audio. Juicy Pods is not really running yet. Why do you tag?

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Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

Visitor Co-Created Museum Experiences This session was a dream for me, one that brought together instigators of three participatory exhibit projects: MN150 (Kate Roberts), Click! Some of the key lessons we discussed were: providing crystal-clear criteria and constraints to help participants focus their work.

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Slides Participatory Museum Children 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2011

They designed a participatory project that delivers a compelling end product for onsite and online visitors… and they made some unexpected decisions along the way. These really informed the project, and helped get the word out about the gallery. We ended up with a very multi-departmental team, and that helped too.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

--Elaine Heumann Gurian, The Importance of "And" Recently, I''ve been embroiled in local and national conversations about the relationship between active participation and quiet contemplation in museums. Our museum in Santa Cruz has been slammed by those who believe participatory experiences have gone too far.

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Participatory Museum Arts History 53

Museum 2.0

JULY 2, 2009

We've all become familiar with online retailers who address you by name and offer suggestions--some helpful, some annoying--based on your past activity and purchases. You may buy a ticket to a special exhibition or show, or actively elect to take up an audio guide or exhibition brochure. They have direct personal impact.

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