Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

"Our job is not to give people what they want but what they need." It''s presumptuous to suggest that we know what people "need" in a cultural context. Very, very few museum visitors are in the "dog and baby" category. In my experience, the "needs" of audiences often look suspiciously like the "wants" of the people speaking.

People 54

People Articulate Culture Teen 54

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 12, 2011

This week, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy released a new paper by Holly Sidford called Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change. We may say that we want to support programming and cultural opportunities for low-income and non-white people, but that's not where the money is going. The title may sound innocuous.

Arts 52

Arts Fund Artist Houston 52

Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton – Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab. Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image. Trying to engaged the teen-to-twenty-something who normally may not use the research library.

Game 140

Game Culture Museum Change 140

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). It's easier to secure grants for community-based programming or exhibitions, but it's not easy to get funding for some of the core work that museums do.

Arts 46

Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Over 150,000 people have accessed the free online version. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" A black box with people crowded around, talking and sharing and making and doing.

Participatory 20

Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 6, 2016

For the last time this summer, I'm sharing a chapter from my new book The Art of Relevance to celebrate its release. FoodWhat's staff and teens have taught me a lot about what it really means to be relevant to people who are often overlooked or ignored. Read more online and buy your own copy today. Shut themselves down.

Teen 25

Teen Arts Classroom Student 25

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

One of the best personal brands that I’ve seen on Instagram from a nonprofit leader is Thomas P Campbell the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum. This shot is a painting at a museum visited during a professional conference for museums. He gives you the inside story about the work of art. Visibility. What to Post?

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Personal Create Photography Museum 50

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?"

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Museum Difference Participatory History 29

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2009

This week, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience , featuring rock posters from San Francisco in the heyday of Bill Graham and electric kool-aid. It is an incredible museum experience. The visitor is given a copy of her poster and the museum keeps a copy as well.

Denver 21

Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2007

But I’d been scribbling notes for an art museum label post for awhile, and then yesterday, the NY Times had a review of a new show at MOMA, Comic Abstraction. And it ended with this: No wonder it [MOMA] ends up showing shallow, label-dependent art rather than work that offers deeper, more contradictory encounters.

Arts 30

Arts Museum Artist Audio 30

Connection Cafe

OCTOBER 19, 2015

After jumping in, you swam across the short length of the hole (about 10 yards), and emerge, wet and freezing, only to get to race through temps in the teens to try to warm up in a lukewarm hot tub. Museums, zoos, and aquariums are finding that crowdfundraising can be a strategic tool to add to their fundraising playbook. Denver Zoo.

Arts 20

Arts Wisconsin Los Angeles Denver 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2010

Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. During the ensuing discussion, one woman asked, "Which audiences are least interested in social participation in museums?" Many teens love to perform for each other. First, teens often have incredibly tight social spheres.

Teen 49

Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2017

This is the second installation in a series of posts on the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH)'s development of Abbott Square , a new creative community plaza in downtown Santa Cruz. MAH staff and trustees see downtown as a vibrant retail, dining, and entertainment district, packed with diverse people.

Community 34

Community Build Arts History 34

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? When you say you want to be relevant, that usually means "we want to matter to more people." Or different people. But there was no such program focused on the arts.

Teen 20

Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

I've been spending time recently interviewing people who run unusual cultural and learning venues. Art spaces masquerading as laundromats and letterpresses. 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.

Culture 49

Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

It's not every day that a visitor buys pizza for everyone in the museum. Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. It was an opportunity for people who participate with Ze Frank's projects online to come together in real space and connect with him and with each other.

Reflection 43

Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

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.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Last Friday night, my museum hosted a fabulous (in my biased opinion) event called Race Through Time. It was a local history urban scavenger hunt that sent teams of 2-5 people out into the city to track down as many historic checkpoints as they could over the course of an evening. Performances just for teens.

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Audience Develop Museum History 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2013

I spent the weekend queuing up posts for my forthcoming blog-cation--nine weeks of guest posts and reruns from the Museum 2.0 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.

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Museum Participatory Reflection Conference 35

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 3, 2005

Some of the entries of what you can read on the Walker Blog, may appear at first glance to be mundane details of cube life , but then you remember that it is a museum blog and it makes the institution seem more human. This Walker Blog let's us peer into the inner workings of the art institution. I saw your posts on Art Mobs.

Artist 50

Artist Arts Process Remix 50

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2008

Thanks to Bryan Kennedy from the Science Museum of Minnesota for providing this overview/reflection on the Museums and the Web conference that recently concluded in Montreal. Museums and the Web 2008 guest blogger Bryan Kennedy here. The Walker Art Center is turning its teen website over to the teens.

Museum 20

Museum Web Teen Flickr 20

Tech Soup

JUNE 21, 2012

Here in TechSoup’s San Francisco office, we use audio and video conferencing every day to talk with people working remotely in the Bay Area, New York, or Seattle, as well as with our partner nonprofits around the world. Teen Outreach Pregnancy Services. " —Laura Pedersen. Executive Director.

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Foundation San Francisco Donation Los Angeles 63

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 People who engage deeply in any online community, whether a bulletin board or social networking site, want to meet in person. The event brought hundreds of hip, young professionals to the museum for lots of booze and partying.

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

APRIL 8, 2015

I''m getting ready for the American Alliance of Museums conference later this month. In addition to reconnecting with old friends and mentors, I want to meet people who aren''t on my radar who will help me learn and grow. Contact people who share your interests and set up meetings with them. Follow people, not topics.

Museum 20

Museum Mentoring Linkedin Hints 20

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.

Game 52

Game Culture Change Museum 52

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." This seems like an appropriate time to share the story.

Museum 52

Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

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. Santa Cruz Collects is based on collections and stories from people throughout our county.

Participatory 44

Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2007

This week, thoughts on Chapter 12 of Elaine Gurian’s book Civilizing the Museum , "Threshold Fear: Architecture program planning." In this essay, Elaine discusses the various barriers to entry for non-traditional visitors to museums, that is, the threshold fear that keeps such potential visitors from walking in our doors.

People 20

People Museum San Jose Chapter 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

The chairs were cast-off art, reclaimed as art, available for people to take off the hooks and use. What kind of an art institution is this? It encourages process-driven performances and art projects. It takes the kind of risks that a university art gallery should take. They were there for artist talks.

Process 20

Process Share Philadelphia Arts 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite museums are small, funky places run by iconoclasts—but that’s not useful to most professionals who work for organizations in which they have little control over size or leadership matters. I worked on one project in which the client institution thought they wanted unfettered teen expression.

Project 22

Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

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.

Community 22

Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation.

Participatory 27

Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

APRIL 22, 2015

Communities are made of people, not rhetoric. You can define a community by the shared attributes of the people in it, and/or by the strength of the connections among them. It is made up of the people attached to a given location: a city, a district, a neighborhood, a country. People who go to midnight movies.

Community 20

Community Minnesota Teen Movie 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 13, 2007

The essays in this section, on “Expressing and Co-Creating,” present projects in which visitors create exhibition content, contribute to its creation, or get a heavy done of meaning-making in their experience of museum content. Who controls the content in the museum? Who controls the museum experience? First, museum content.

Voice 20

Voice Create Museum Arts 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 4, 2007

On Tuesday, I reviewed Elaine Gurian’s essay, Choosing Among the Options , on museum archetypes and self-definition. Today, discussion with Elaine about ways museums choose their direction, how change is possible, and new museum types to be added to the list. What if you don’t want to be identified as one type of museum?

Museum 20

Museum Puerto Rico Change Boston 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

People answer questions differently in harshly lit interrogation rooms than they do in welcoming therapists' offices or in the privacy of their own computer terminals. 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."

Design 31

Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

I just returned from the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia. I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. what is the value of the exhibition experience to non-participants, that is, regular museum visitors?

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Slides Participatory Museum Children 20