Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2011

In 2009 , students built a participatory exhibit from scratch. Thirteen students produced three projects that layered participatory activities onto an exhibition of artwork from the permanent collection of the Henry Art Gallery. When activities were not facilitated, people were often too timid to interact.

Participatory 51

Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

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.

Museum 45

Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 3, 2019

I was thinking I’d do a few alternative histories of museums for the first post of the last month of the decade. As I imagined a world without the many museum tech projects of the decade, I felt inherently sad about the imagining away the successes that friends and colleagues have enjoying. But I couldn’t get there.

Museum 21

Museum Work Social Media History 21

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 15, 2014

Gretchen Jennings convened a group of bloggers and colleagues online to develop a statement about museums'' responsibilities and opportunities in response to the events in Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island. Museums are a part of this educational and cultural network. Where do museums fit in? Here is our statement.

Museum 52

Museum Blogger Cleveland Missouri 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2016

When we say we want our museum to be "audience-centered," what do we mean? My career first got moving at a brilliant example of the customer-centered museum: the International Spy Museum. Many of my favorite museums, libraries, and zoos are customer-centered places. They care about visitor comfort.

Museum 20

Museum Audience Music Arts 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2009

Over the past year, I've noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects? Teens are a known (and somewhat controllable) entity.

Teen 24

Teen Participatory Experiment Museum 24

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. But the difference between the two examples teases out a problem in differentiating "participatory design" from "design for participation."

Participatory 27

Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

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.

Question 49

Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 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. Ze was really hands-on with everyone, giving hugs, taking photos, jumping in to do activities with participants. The activities had a really low barrier to entry.

Reflection 43

Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 9, 2017

Hosted by a sound art collective, Ultra-red, the 2015 event promised "to investigate listening as a political activity and to interrogate the stakes of participation in neoliberalism." When should you turn down the invitation to share your voice? There are many ways for voices to get chopped and twisted.

Participatory 20

Participatory Museum Voice Press 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2009

I'm working on a section of my book about sharing social objects and am writing about the most common way that visitors share their object experiences in museums: through photographs. Revenue Streams: Museums want to maintain control of sales of "officially sanctioned" images of objects via catalogues and postcards.

Museum 54

Museum Photo Policy Open 54

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2011

Now that I'm on staff at a museum, I've (re)discovered a more pedestrian value of visitor participation: it's delightful. As a researcher and activist for participation, I've sometimes downplayed the value of this charm because it seems like arsenal for professionals who claim participatory projects are frivolous. "Be

Museum 47

Museum Participatory Comment Sound 47

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 23, 2010

Digital Activism was one of several books I gave to my friends at iHub in Nairobi. Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change , Mary Joyce, Editor. Digital activism is defined by the Meta-Activism Project as “the practice of using digital technology for political and social change.&# 6. ShareThis!

Amazon 116

Amazon Nonprofit Social Media Oregon 116

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2013

There's a constant dialogue in participatory work about how to make peoples' contributions meaningful. I've written about different structures for participatory processes (especially in museums), and recently, I've been interested in how we can apply these structures to the design of public space. Non-Participation 6.

Design 49

Design Participatory Children Museum 49

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

What does the word "participatory" mean to you? The various definitions of participatory projects can lead to confusion and misunderstandings. In the collaborative model, visitors are invited to serve as active partners in the creation of an institutional project which is originated and ultimately controlled by the institution.

Public 36

Public Research Participatory Report 36

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

The Leading Change Summit was more intimate (several hundred people), participatory and interactive, intense, and stimulating. When you have four facilitators, you want to make sure that you choreograph each activity. Defining Roles. I like to use a rock band metaphor. For example, here is a storify of the tweets from our track.

Reflection 124

Reflection NTEN Change Facilitation 124

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 26, 2008

This week, I'm launching a new site: the Voicemail Museum. It's an experiment that merges two of my greatest interests: finding novel, easy ways for visitors to contribute content to museums finding questions that draw such compelling responses that random peoples' answers would be worth browsing To participate, all you need is a phone.

Museum 20

Museum Audio Participatory Phone 20

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 primary interactive activity is one in which visitors can make their own rock posters.

Denver 21

Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 5, 2008

Cultural Connections is a group of museum professionals who meet up a few times a year and host excellent programs on a variety of topics. This week, they hosted "Let Them Be Heard: Visitor Participation in the Museum Experience," featuring four presentations on incorporating visitors' content into museums. Here's what they did.

Case Study 20

Case Study Participatory Studies Museum 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2008

There's a tag applied to many Museum 2.0 Posts under that tag tend to examine non-museum things, from malls to games to ad campaigns , and draw some design lessons for museums from their foreignness. The voices are recorded, the doors perpetually closing. Stopping is a human-powered activity. People talk.

Participatory 20

Participatory Design Museum Childhood 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 7, 2010

Most of my work contracts involve a conversation that goes something like this: "We want to find ways to make our institution more participatory and lively." Most museums that offer interactive exhibits, media elements, or participatory activities offer them alongside traditional labels and interpretative tools.

Audience 40

Audience Museum Oakland Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

These are the slides and notes for the talk I gave at the American Alliance of Museums conference on Monday, April 27 about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. When I became the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago, I took this work with me. They talked about community building.

Build 20

Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2007

I got my copy of the fall issue of Museums and Social Issues this week. The theme is "Civic Dialogue," and the journal includes articles on the historical, cultural, media, and museum practice of getting people talking to each other (including one by me about such endeavors on the web). A place many museums are not.

Museum 22

Museum Lecture Denver San Francisco 22

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

Museum 52

Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

--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. This post focuses on one aspect of the exhibition: its participatory and interactive elements.

Participatory 51

Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

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. o is Transparency - and the best example of that is what the Indianapolis Art Museum has done with its pubic metrics on its web site.

Arts 74

Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 2, 2008

Today, Museum 2.0 I started the Museum 2.0 blog in 2006 as a personal learning exercise about "the ways that museums do and can evolve from 1.0 I started the Museum 2.0 blog in 2006 as a personal learning exercise about "the ways that museums do and can evolve from 1.0 and watched the Museum 2.0

Museum 20

Museum Voice Minnesota Participatory 20

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?

Slides 20

Slides Participatory Museum Children 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2008

Last year, I wrote a post explaining what Twitter is and how it might be applied in museums. Now, a year later, I’m using Twitter on a daily basis, and it’s brought up some new observations about participation on websites and in interactive venues like museums. I’d love Museum 2.0 On Twitter, I'm one voice among many.

Twitter 24

Twitter Participatory Broadcast Museum 24

Museum 2.0

MARCH 17, 2010

This is the second in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. Several hundred people contributed their opinions, stories, suggestions, and edits to The Participatory Museum as it was written. Check out the other parts here. What did they do? Why did they do it? What did they get out of it?

Participatory 32

Participatory Museum Process Experiment 32

Museum 2.0

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve long admired Improv Everywhere , the NYC-based participatory public art group. For about half an hour, hundreds of people play together, silently, as directed by disembodied voices inside their headphones. The voice tells you what to do –stand up, shake hands, play Twister, make silly shapes—and you do it.

Instruction 21

Instruction Instructional Nicaragua Experiment 21

Museum 2.0

MARCH 24, 2010

This is the third in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. This post covers my personal process of encouraging--and harnessing--participation in the creation of The Participatory Museum. As the participatory content review progressed well, I started looking for other ways for people to help.

Participatory 33

Participatory Museum Process Experiment 33

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.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Second Life Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

"The words we use in attempting to change museum directions matter. Our museum in Santa Cruz has been slammed by those who believe participatory experiences have gone too far. I am glad this conversation is happening and that both museum professionals and local Santa Cruzans are engaged. But we do have ''and.''

Participatory 53

Participatory Museum Arts History 53

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 2, 2008

They demonstrate that the blog is a more participatory vehicle than other kinds of media. I have to feel like the post is open enough to my experience, that the blogger and the community of that blog would find my voice worthwhile, that I have some strong reaction I want to share, that I won't sound stupid. Museum 2.0's

Comment 20

Comment Museum Blogger Reflection 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 10, 2010

This is the first of a four-part series on the behind-the-scenes experience of writing The Participatory Museum. Overview: Stages of Development and Participation Types The Participatory Museum was written over a 15 month period that began in December of 2008. Many of the book sections started as blog posts on Museum 2.0.

Participatory 21

Participatory Museum Statistics Process 21

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2008

On June 4, we opened The Tech Virtual Test Zone , a new 2000 sq ft gallery at The Tech Museum of Innovation featuring exhibits on the theme of art, film, and music that were originally developed in Second Life by a community of creative amateurs. Some museum pros have been puzzled by this. or to start their own.

Virtual 21

Virtual Tech Lesson Develop 21