Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" Over the past four years, I''ve been running a small regional art and history museum in Santa Cruz, CA. and "why?" to "how?".

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2016

Here's one of my favorite stories about the London Science Museum and their work to make their science shows relevant to families with deaf or hearing-impaired family members. To get into this chapter, imagine that your institution/program/art is a room. Or you can change the programming within the room itself.

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Museum Arts Language Chapter 20

Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 21, 2011

Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image. Staged a major exhibition celebrating the spectrum of what is in the library, public programs partners with The Moth. Trying to engaged the teen-to-twenty-something who normally may not use the research library.

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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

Get Fully Funded

AUGUST 24, 2021

For example: “Many teen girls struggle with their self-esteem thanks to Instagram and Snapchat. Please help us open the door for a teen to attend our personal development conference, benefit from having a mentor, and get on a path to college and a career.” . What part(s) of your program does your donor care about?

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Results email Fundraising Story 122

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? Community First Program Design At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we've gravitated towards a "community first" program planning model.

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Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 11, 2016

Most of the nonprofits are using it as a form of clever newsjacking — discovering that the nonprofit’s office or program location is a Pokemon stop and have snapped a photo for social media posting. Museums , gardens, and parks have jumped on it. Others are using it to lure visitors to their location. A Few Concerns.

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Ohio Hype Nonprofit Teen 50

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. He doesn’t just share the standard PR about the Met and its programs. This shot is a painting at a museum visited during a professional conference for museums.

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Personal Create Photography Museum 50

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. The group was mostly young (teens to thirties) and nerd-diverse: a little bit punk, a little bit hacker, a little bit craft grrl. It was pretty freaking amazing.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 12, 2011

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. But a lot of the questions and issues described in Sidford's paper are as applicable on the level of individual programs or institutional priorities as they are for funders and foundations.

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Arts Fund Artist Houston 52

Tech Soup

JUNE 21, 2012

In case you haven’t heard, 501(c)(3) private foundations are now eligible to receive donated video conferencing, online collaboration, and remote desktop solutions from the Citrix Online Donation Program. In addition to the Citrix program, there are many other donation programs on TechSoup that are open to private foundations.

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Foundation San Francisco Donation Los Angeles 63

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

This summer, I worked with the Chabot Space & Science Center on a design institute in which eleven teens from their Galaxy Explorers program designed media pieces for an upcoming Smithsonian exhibition on black holes. There was no initial design, no graphics, and no idea of where the teen' work would fit into an overall structure.

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Teen Volunteer Create Design 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more. Sounds like there might be some overlap with your museum audience? Both geocaching and museums are fundamentally about exploration and discovery.

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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. When Friday night rolled around, we did see a crowd that skewed decidedly younger and hipper than our standard museum audience. Performances just for teens. Late night mixers at museums for young adults.

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Audience Develop Museum History 52

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.

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Museum Web Teen Flickr 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 6, 2016

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. Doron runs a youth development program called FoodWhat in Santa Cruz County, California. FoodWhat empowers teens to change their lives through farming and food justice. Stand out in some way.

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Teen Arts Classroom Student 25

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). Sarah has worked at the Walker since 1992 and is currently the Director of Education and Community Programs. In the 1990s, we decided we wanted to engage a teen audience.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

APRIL 8, 2015

I''m getting ready for the American Alliance of Museums conference later this month. How can you tell if you want to go to "Museums and Communities" or "Museums and Social Issues" or "Museums and Very Cute Lizards"? If the best part of the conference isn''t on the agenda, how the heck are you supposed to access it?

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Museum Mentoring Linkedin Hints 20

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. Both staff and visitors host TV programs in the space that range from interviews to game shows to salon chair ministries. is in conflict with (currently, Iran).

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Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Very, very few museum visitors are in the "dog and baby" category. Some need to conduct programs in multiple languages. But I don''t typically hear this phrase deployed to argue in favor of a risky program format or an unusual piece of content. She needs to nap when she gets cranky, even though she keeps flailing her limbs.

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People Articulate Culture Teen 54

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

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

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. If your institution says it is bold and fearless, how do your programs support that? It’s nice to have both.

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Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

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.

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Arts Wisconsin Los Angeles Denver 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 18, 2015

The people were of all ages--moms with babies strapped to their fronts, six year-olds using skillsaws, pre-teens building robots, teenagers doing homework. There are lots of great science museum resources, but not where these kids can walk after school. The Mission location is still a useful hub for San Francisco school programs.

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Green Interview Share Community 20

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 made a giant mobile for the center of the museum out of origami birds folded from visitor comments received in the past year.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 7, 2008

For many museums, visitor research--how people use the museum, navigate exhibits, and understand content--may be an equally important arena in which to adopt groundswell listening techniques. I spent an hour this morning "brand listening" to what the online world says about one of my favorite museums, the Exploratorium.

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Museum Teen Second Life Discussion 20

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.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2007

Last week, Elaine Gurian and I talked about radical change in museums. Former museum start-up queen, Jen is taking a small organization whose goal is to promote girls’ involvement in math and science through research and programming to new, innovative, exciting places. Braincake isn’t some fakey attempt to pander to teens.

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Interview Museum Teen Myspace 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 The Taylor Center is run by Diane Miller , who launched its award-winning Youth Exploring Science program in 1997. Diane is both visionary and no-nonsense about deconstructing the barriers that many low-income and non-white teenagers and families face when entering a museum.

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St. Louis Museum Audience Teen 45

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

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

Yesterday, I did a workshop with some local teenage girls in an after school program. For me, the experience changed my perspective on what teens want from social environments and encounters. It's easy to forget that teens are most comfortable being social with those they already know, not people who are unknown to them.

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Life Teen Culture Attitude 21

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. While Reggie was empowered by the director of his department, the idea of blogging came from new media.

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Artist Arts Process Remix 50

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

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2019

I tell the story of the one-man band because I think many museum professionals feel like him. But, most importantly, few museum professionals have a free hand or moment. Museums rarely have the funding to replicate positions. If you have a teen program running, there are no second teen programs person out drumming up business.

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Museum Accessibility Articulate Teen 29

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.

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People Museum San Jose Chapter 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

They live their mission, working in questions and projects rather than exhibitions and programs. Every other year, they convene TUPAC, a group of 35 outside advisors, including teens, college students, Temple University professors, artists, philanthropists, and community leaders. You don't have time to convene the community.

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Process Share Philadelphia Arts 20