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Developing a Participatory, Provocative History Project at a Small Museum in Minnesota: Interview with Mary Warner

Museum 2.0

Earlier this year, I was fascinated to read the account of a participatory project at the Morrison County Historical Society in Minnesota, in which community members were invited to write essays about “what’s it like” to have various life experiences in the County. How do we get the history of the poor?

History 51
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Adventures in Evaluating Participatory Exhibits: An In-Depth Look at the Memory Jar Project

Museum 2.0

Two years ago, we mounted one of our most successful participatory exhibits ever at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History: Memory Jars. Two years later, this project is still one of the most fondly remembered participatory experiences at the museum--by visitors and staff. He creates a visual representation of his story.

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What I Learned from Beck (the rock star) about Participatory Arts

Museum 2.0

Beck''s project is unusual because he deliberately resurrected a mostly-defunct participatory platform: sheet music for popular songs. In his thoughtful preface to this project, I reconnected with five lessons I''ve learned from participatory projects in museums and cultural sites. Constrain the input, free the output.

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12 Ways We Made our Santa Cruz Collects Exhibition Participatory

Museum 2.0

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. The content focuses on the question of WHY we collect and how our collections reflect our individual and community identities.

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Balancing Engagement: Adventures in Participatory Exhibit Labels

Museum 2.0

The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum recently loaned us some fabulous surfboards that tell the co-mingled history of surfing and redwood trees in Santa Cruz. We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way. Visitors have gone to town, writing both basic questions (“who made them?” “who

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Goodbye Consulting, Hello Museum of Art & History!

Museum 2.0

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

History 55
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Making Museum Tours Participatory: A Model from the Wing Luke Asian Museum

Museum 2.0

The new building was designed to meet neighborhood needs--not just in the content covered, but in the inclusion of spaces made for particular kinds of activities sought by locals (i.e. She did several things over the course of the tour to make it participatory, and she did so in a natural, delightful way. What made it so special?

Museum 51