Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 17, 2012

When I started this blog in 2006, I made a multi-media introduction to the concept of "museum 2.0" Venue as content platform instead of content provider: the museum becomes a stage on which professionals and amateurs can curate, interpret, and remix artifacts and information. The museum gets better the more people use it.

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Museum Artist Remix Professional 47

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

North Carolina Museum of History 1988.39.4 I’m always amazed when my colleagues tell me that the biggest barrier they face to “opening up” the content at their museums is from registrars—the people who care for collection objects. Followers of Museum 2.0 Do these two directives and perspectives have to be at odds?

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Accessibility Open Museum North Carolina 44

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Dear Museums on Twitter, Thanks for experimenting in a new and largely uncharted online environment. So here is a list of suggestions that hopefully will improve the way your museum thinks about using Twitter. Or it's rainy so you suggest I visit the museum? Note: this is a geeky post that assumes familiarity with Twitter.

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Museum Twitter Open San Francisco 46

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2012

A year ago, I wrote a post speculating about whether events (institutionally-produced programs) might be a primary driver for people to attend museums, with exhibitions being secondary. Many museums, big and small, thrive on events. At our museum, about 68% of casual visitors (non-school tours) attended through events this year.

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Museum Arts Dallas History 53

Museum 2.0

JUNE 24, 2010

Last week, I visited the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle. I've long admired this museum for its all-encompassing commitment to community co-creation , and the visit was a kind of pilgrimage to their new site (opened in 2008). I'm always a bit nervous when I visit a museum I love from afar. The exhibits are exciting.

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Museum Participatory Model Seattle 51

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

This is the last of the guest posts offered during this fall season, and it dovetails with last week''s post about opening up collections access nicely. George Scheer is the director and co-founder of Elsewhere Collective, a fascinating "living museum" in a former thrift store in Greensboro, NC.

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Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 21, 2011

Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image. People are now coming to the library to see it as it includes content by all the 500 participants from that night. Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 9, 2010

Recently, I was giving a presentation about participatory techniques at an art museum, when a staff member raised her hand and asked, "Did you have to look really hard to find examples from art museums? Aren't art museums less open to participation than other kinds of museums?" I was surprised by her question.

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Museum Difference Participatory History 29

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 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. I''ve spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums.

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. But the point is that the MAH, like just about every other museum in the known universe, was content to define the museum experience as something removed from the outside world, a rarefied church-like space of refined artistic reflection.

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Museum History Arts Work 31

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 23, 2008

One of the best projects that illustrates the basic idea of Web2.0 - listening and conversation and stakeholders creating their own experience with your organization - comes from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. All evaluations are private; all artists are unnamed. They are sensitive to the artists who are being judged. s Blog about?

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Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

The book of the same title that he edited is rocking my world, both as a museum professional who cares about inclusion and as a new mother. In the case of the Stanford study, I was fascinated to learn that the content of the music video was significant in terms of signaling change in prejudice.

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Measure Arts People Museum 47

Museum 2.0

APRIL 2, 2014

There are many artistic projects that offer a template for participation, whether a printed play, an orchestral score, or a visual artwork that involves an instructional set (from community murals to Sol LeWitt). Beck talks about this in the context of learning to play music as a young artist. There are twenty songs in Song Reader.

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Participatory Arts Music Learning 52

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

The conventional wisdom on museum memberships is that they are "one size fits many" programs whose primary benefits are free entrance to the museum and insider access to exhibition openings. But what about all the other people who love your museum? Want to know how the Brooklyn Museum is answering this question?

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Museum Audience Program Artist 24

Museum 2.0

MAY 18, 2011

Jason Beaubien was reporting on the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City, the gleaming new art museum built as a "gift to Mexico" by the world's richest man, Carlos Slim. The news report , strangely, focused on the question of whether the Soumaya Museum is a rich man's indulgence or a truly "worthy" cultural institution.

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Classes Mexico Museum Columbus 55

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

When you find a bar with your favorite song on the jukebox, or a museum room that feels like your grandmother's living room, you suddenly feel a strong affinity and are able to see yourself reflected in the space. It may be great for a natural refuge to remain hidden, but that sounds like a disaster for a restaurant or museum.

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Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Model 34

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

From a museum perspective, I think there's a lot to learn from these venues' business models, approach to collecting and exhibiting work, and connection with their audiences. It's run by Jon Rubin, an artist and professor of social practice at Carnegie Mellon, and his students.

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Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 14, 2010

The whole idea got started a year ago when James Leventhal who is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum asked me if I would design some trainings for the local arts community. Participants Are The Content. This opened up a great peer discussion, completed with great advice, and peer support.

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Social Media Media San Jose Social 99

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

I''ve mostly seen museums employ one of two methods for formal community advisors: Create special "spots" on the board of trustees for certain kinds of community representatives. CON: can feel disconnected from the primary governance of the museum or can feel like a second-class board overall. I struggle with both these options.

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Community Story Museum Map 39

Museum 2.0

MARCH 25, 2008

I love carrying a social object with me that opens up casual conversation with strangers on the street. I'd love to see a museum offer temporary tattoos instead of stickers at entry. They are the kind of people we can't even get to the museum door, let alone through it. I love having a permanent piece of symbolic art on my arm.

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Museum Arts Artist Culture 23

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 1, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0. I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. There are so many more people who join social networks, who collect and aggregate favored content, and critique and rate books and movies. And yet many museums are fixated on creators.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 5, 2016

When writing The Art of Relevance , I knew I wanted to share a bit of his story and the ways artists negotiate the relevance of their own work. RELEVANCE IS A MOVING TARGET FOR CONTENT Most of us aren’t steering whole institutions and mission statements. We’re working on a smaller scale, with specific content or programs.

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Arts North America Music Hawaii 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 26, 2012

Way better than that video at Museum X where the director drones on about the new initiatives of the year. I know I have a lot to learn from the content AND the format of this report. We're working at my museum on a strategic approach to our educational outreach with K12 classes and students. How should (and do) we treat them?

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Denver Museum Arts Participatory 33

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

Last week, I was in Minneapolis for the American Association of Museums annual meeting. Kathleen McLean led a terrific session called "Dangerous Ridiculous" about risk-taking in museums. Interestingly, at my museum, our team is naturally better at ridiculous than we are at dangerous. I found this idea really powerful.

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Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Last Friday night, my museum hosted a fabulous (in my biased opinion) event called Race Through Time. Everything about the event--from the time slot to the tone of the content to the music played--was designed for that audience. Late night mixers at museums for young adults. Museums are not for specific crowds alone.

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Audience Develop Museum History 52

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 24, 2011

This post features an interview with Sarah Schultz, a museum staffer at one of the institutions Light profiled in the book (the Walker Art Center). Guard staff who are willing to let an artist step between two panes of glass to perform. A crew that has the capacity to build a sign at the last minute. It's inherent in what we do.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. There are so many more people who join social networks, who collect and aggregate favored content, and critique and rate books and movies. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Second, open-ended self-expression requires self-directed creativity.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 14, 2007

Let’s say you wanted to find a model museum using Web 2.0 A place that does all this in the context of a fairly traditional collections-based museum. A place that does all this in the context of a fairly traditional collections-based museum. It’s the Brooklyn Museum. to support programs and exhibits.

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Museum Interview Flickr YouTube 27

Museum 2.0

MARCH 8, 2011

Last month, artist and game designer Nikki Pugh led an utterly charming, often hilarious community residency at the City Gallery in Leicester, UK. There was a large mind map on the wall with a prompt in the middle encouraging visitors to imagine a slightly distant future with no staff present to enforce the rules in galleries or museums.

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Interview Museum Badge Game 37

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 20, 2007

What do we do with content that is controversional and, potentially, uncomfortable? Like other museums that have hosted Bodyworlds and its sequels, the exhibit has doubled overall museum attendance for 2007--and it's only been here for three months. Bodyworlds is fascinating as a case study in content comfort.

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Content Museum Voice Wikipedia 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 15, 2010

People often ask me which museums are my favorite. I visit lots of perfectly nice, perfectly forgettable museums. In some cases, that's based on subject matter, as at the Museum of Jurassic Technology or the American Visionary Art Museum. Some are scrappy and iconoclastic, like the City Museum in St.

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Support Museum St. Louis NSF 41

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 29, 2007

Thanks to Kyle Evans, who forwarded me the fascinating, lengthy master’s dissertation.art: Situating Internet Art in the Modern Museum by Karen Verschooren at the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. In it, Karen provides a survey of the evolving relationship of Internet art to art museums. Citizen science programs. On the website?

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Museum Web Arts Internet 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2007

Recently, I’ve become a little disheartened by the extent to which the web has dominated my—and others’—thinking about ways that museums can integrate 2.0 But today I had an experience that reinvigorated my love for and belief in tangible projects that can fill museums with content that is user-generated, shared, and explored.

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Generation Content Lesson Museum 30

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2008

It's been awhile since I've shared the progress of The Tech Virtual , the web and Second Life-based virtual exhibit workshop that The Tech Museum of Innovation opened in December of 2007. Some of these people are professional artists or exhibit designers, but most are just talented folks with an interest in museums.

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Museum Virtual Tech Second Life 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

Last week marked four years for the Museum 2.0 People--especially young folks looking to break into the museum business--often ask me how I got here. Ed Rodley recently wrote a blog post about museum jobs entitled "Getting Hired: It's Who You Know and Who Knows You." hour at the Museum. I made $26/hour at NASA and $7.25/hour

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Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

Museum 2.0

APRIL 16, 2008

I've written before about the inspiring work that the Brooklyn Museum of Art is doing with their community-focused efforts. Click is an exhibition process in three parts: The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations.

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Museum Participatory Artist Arts 24

NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton - Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History Elaine Charnov - The NY Public Library Jason Eppink - Museum of the Moving Image Syed Salahuddin - Babycastles Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library 100 Years of the flagship library in New York.

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Game Culture Change Museum 52