Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2013

Last week, my museum hosted Hack the Museum Camp , a 2.5 day adventure in which teams of adults--75 people, of whom about half are museum professionals, half creative folks of various stripes--developed an experimental exhibition around our permanent collection in our largest gallery.

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Museum Arts History Professional 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2019

Me with a friend As I keep saying, I’ve been to a few museums of late. In reflecting on the sample, I’ve made some broad reflections on museum workers and visitors. Our visitors often see museums as a genre, not unlike hospitals or libraries. But, while adjacent, museums differ from formal classrooms in numerous ways.

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Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

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

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. There's just too much involved in the first few months of taking over a struggling museum to realistically imagine that I can also make enough fun stuff happen to keep me satisfied. Let me be frank.

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Museum History Participatory Arts 53

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? Give me a game, like the Smithsonian's name that artifact gambit.

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Museum Twitter Open San Francisco 46

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. Of course, the problem with all of this is that it sounds crazy from a business perspective.

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Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Model 34

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2012

When talking about active audience engagement with friends in the museum field, I often hear one frustrated question: how can we get adults to participate? In children's museums and science centers, this relationship is at its most extreme. They're playing video games. But I don't think that theory holds up.

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Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

Today, the Luce Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is launching what they claim is the first ever alternate reality game (ARG) in a museum. Why would an art museum create an ARG? The game website is clear. can experience the game in full without prior participation.

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Game Museum Arts Alternative 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009

Between high-altitude hijinks, run-ins with wildlife, and very long days of hiking, I finished John Falk's new book, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. In other words, if you are a curious person, you will go to museums to learn new things.

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Museum Maslow Facilitation Personal 28

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. So I felt lucky last week to learn not only about an innovative arts exhibition employing geocaching, but to discover that its exhibit developer, Seth! to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more.

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Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

How do you find your way around a multi-faceted museum? I spent some time playing with this question last week at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a large general museum that is moving toward redesign of the permanent galleries. Do you interrogate the map? Create a plan for yourself? Get deliciously lost?

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Experiment Lesson Learning Museum 44

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

I've long believed that museums have a special opportunity to support the community spirit of Web 2.0 This month brings three examples of museums hosting meetups for online communities: On 8.6.08, the Computer History Museum (Silicon Valley, CA) hosted a Yelp! To some people, these events may sound like losers.

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

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. I spoke with Nikki this week to learn more about the Ministry and their fun and games. How did the museum staff respond to this experience? How did this project come about?

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Interview Museum Badge Game 37

Connection Cafe

MARCH 18, 2020

Unsurprisingly, many of the tips revolve around finding a good workspace and getting ready for the day , so shower and get off the bed before reading this and you’ll already be ahead of the game! . It sounds basic, but get organized as soon as possible – set up a working office, don’t have things in boxes or feeling temporary.

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South Dakota Tips San Diego Social 35

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2007

Thanks to Paul Orselli for the link to this week's game, "game, game, game, and again game" by Jason Nelson , self-described new media artist and poet. The game is an odd collection of chicken-scratch drawings, Mario-esque navigation, surprising flurries of poetry and sound, and strange home videos.

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Game Artist Influence Arts 20

Nonprofit Tech for Good

DECEMBER 14, 2022

For example, if you join a modern art museum, there is a good chance you won’t have to pay admission to other modern art museums. Creative stuff: Things unique to your organization including the ability to create art, music, poetry, dance, etc. You just need to show proof of membership. It was super cool.

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Donor Sponsor Accessibility Music 337

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. We tried collecting dreams, collecting smells or sounds or stories, but memories was most resonant.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

JUNE 17, 2010

This morning, I gave the keynote address for the Washington Museums Association annual conference. It features lots of museum-based examples. But in this post, I wanted to highlight a goofy little (non-museum) project that inspires me in its simplicity and openness to mass collaboration. It's called One Million Giraffes.

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Collaboration Museum Minneapolis Oakland 34

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 17, 2007

Last week I announced the end of Game Friday. But this week, I got the opportunity to interview Jason Nelson, creator of digital art and avant garde game wonder game, game, game, and again game and how could I resist? game, game, has had about 5 million hits. game, game, and.

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Discussion Game Oklahoma Museum 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. The Museum 2.0 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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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Last week, Jim Richardson and I hosted MuseumNext , a 24-hour workshop for museum professionals focused on bringing new, wild museum projects into the world. We also ended the entire event with one of my favorite exercises, the Exquisite Corpse game, in which participants co-created comics of their craziest museum dreams.

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Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 22, 2006

Every year, there’s a Flash festival/conference, Flashforward , that highlights novel uses of flash in web navigation, art, games, instructional demos, and more. That all sounds pretty New Age-y. Tags: game. The metaphor of a garden is apt; I feel like my contribution is helping “grow” a more loving place. I’m immersed.

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Game Utah Flash Management 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2009

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission.

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Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

Rabinowitz commented that "as a 40-year veteran of history museum interpretation, I can say that I never learned so much from and about visitors." This is the opposite situation of the previous design goal, one typical in science and children's museums.

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Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 9, 2007

I'm gearing up for some conference talks next month, and one of these is part of a very cool session, Eye on Design, at the Western Museums Association conference. The coordinator asked several folks to pick a design trend from outside the museum world and discuss how they might be applied to museum design. the list goes on.

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Museum Participatory Interaction Captivate 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve long admired Improv Everywhere , the NYC-based participatory public art group. Steve has a deep, fake “god” voice, which makes him sound both benevolent and like someone you want to please. But it’s rare that museum exhibit designers or audio tour developers are willing to explicitly require certain kinds of actions by visitors.

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Instruction Instructional Nicaragua Experiment 21

Neon CRM

OCTOBER 25, 2023

But if you’re a nonprofit that is holding events regularly or is looking to take your events fundraising game to the next level, finding an event management solution is a must. Sound good? Arts People Arts People (hey that’s also us!) Request an Arts People Demo 3. We’re here to help! Find My Neon CRM Group Demo 2.

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Software Management Guide Registration 52

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

It made me think in ways that I haven't before about the relation of art--as expressive culture--to democracy. 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.

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Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

EveryAction

MARCH 16, 2017

Game-Changers. Sheroes in the Arts. Gentileschi is remembered, however, as an accomplished Baroque artist whose trials did not define her art. Are you inspired by women in the arts? Do you like the sound of powerful political women? Shero Game-Changers. Thought Leaders. Revolutionaries. Future Sheroes.

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Story Angola Sierra Leone History 133

Museum 2.0

MAY 14, 2009

I've become convinced that successful paths to participation in museums start with self-identification. The easiest way to do that is to acknowledge their uniqueness and validate their ability to connect with the museum on their own terms. Who is the "me" in the museum experience? Not so at museums.

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Museum Personal Experiment Profile 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2009

This might make Advice sound more like an educational program than an exhibit, or like a failure on the unfacilitated front. They reminded me of street vendors or great science museum cart educators, imparting an energy to the space without overwhelming it. This is a good lesson for museum talk-back design.

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Advice Museum Facilitation Student 31

Bloomerang

NOVEMBER 5, 2021

Well, that 80%, 60% of that money goes to large institutional organizations like hospitals and universities, and large cultural institutions, like museums, zoos, and libraries, and religious organizations. And you know, great questions like that, what’s been their best gaming experience? And I know that sounds expensive.

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Money Personal Relationship Raise 99

Bloomerang

APRIL 2, 2021

it’s not just games, by the way. I know everyone maybe thinks of Twitch and they think of gamers and video games. There are people doing art. So instead of Meet and Learn, it’s An Evening of Photography and Poetry, which is what it actually was, which sounds a lot more interesting to me than a meet and learn.

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Social Media Trend Video Marketing 79