Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2015

And so, one of the most successful, accidental, and fraught participatory projects of the past decade comes to an end. The "love locks" are not a project with an institutional or artistic director. So many participatory projects do the opposite, requiring you to take a dozen tricky steps to no meaningful end. it is durational.

Participatory 20

Participatory Project Artist Instruction 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? The first of these reasons is practical.

Teen 24

Teen Participatory Experiment Museum 24

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." We want to cultivate a more diverse audience, especially younger people, and we want to do it authentically." Audience development is not an exercise in concentric circles.

Audience 40

Audience Museum Oakland Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

But not enough people care about it anymore, and the museum is fading into disrepair. Many people would look at the world''s oldest mechanized silk mill and say that the core content of the museum is silk. A strong participatory process is not a loosey-goosey, open the doors and do whatever strategy. Imagine a historic site.

Museum 53

Museum Product Participatory Community 53

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Visitors bond and bridge through participatory experiences at MAH. We continuously and actively respond to requests as well as invite people to be a part of our programs. Bonding social capital refers to networks that bring people together with common interests to strengthen relationships in preexisting groups.

Museum 49

Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 11, 2012

That's how I felt when artist Ze Frank got in touch to talk about a potential museum exhibition to explore a physical site/substantiation for his current online video project, A Show (s ee minute 2:20, above). He is an authoritative artist of the social web with a slew of accolades and a suite of diverse projects under his belt.

Museum 45

Museum Participatory Artist History 45

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

I''ve spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. BROAD QUESTIONS ABOUT AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION 1. Why should institutions engage with people in this way? This post shares some of the most interesting questions I''ve heard throughout these experiences.

Museum 45

Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2013

Negotiated agency" strikes me as a really useful framework in which to talk about visitor/audience participation in the arts. Negotiation" implies a respectful relationship between institution (or artist) and user. Sometimes the negotiation can be exploited for artistic means. Patrons clap between movements.

Game 40

Game Artist Museum Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

We wanted to share with people, in as clear and transparent a format as possible, our approach to developing exhibitions. In particular, we want exhibition collaborators--artists, researchers, historians, collectors--to understand our goals and how we intend to steer the exhibition development process.

Museum 38

Museum Artist Participatory History 38

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. BROAD QUESTIONS ABOUT AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION 1. Why should institutions engage with people in this way? This post shares some of the most interesting questions I've heard throughout these experiences.

Question 49

Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Media Cause

AUGUST 9, 2021

While much of the branding and design inspiration we run across is either from consumer brands or individual artists, it all provides us with the opportunity to discover new principles, practices, and approaches that we can incorporate into our nuanced nonprofit world. This is key to building relevant brands. What would the structure be like?

Design 52

Design Experiment Nonprofit Collaboration 52

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2012

At the museum of art and history where I work, we are grappling with the question of how to help people enjoy themselves while keeping the art and artifacts safe. We've increased attendance among people who are new to museum experiences. Focus on family audiences. Engagement with local artists. all over the place.

Museum 49

Museum Denver Artist Milwaukee 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2012

But we've just compiled all our attendance data for the past year at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (our fiscal year ends on June 30), and several people have written to me asking for the numbers behind our turnaround. People wanted a fire festival, so we did a fire festival. were shamelessly resourceful.

Museum 47

Museum History Arts Artist 47

Museum 2.0

JULY 12, 2011

Fifteen people engage in the prescribed activities. Approximately 100 people walk by while the program is going on. How many people participated? We held a free yoga class in the plaza outside the museum and invited artists to come and draw/paint the yoga-doers in motion. People looked and talked and pointed.

Participatory 41

Participatory Museum Measure Activities 41

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Last week, Douglas McLellan of artsJournal ran a multi-vocal forum on the relationship between arts organizations and audiences, asking: In this age of self expression and information overload, do our artists and arts organizations need to lead more or learn to follow their communities more? Here are three of my favorites.

Arts 45

Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

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? There are many participatory experiences that appeal primarily to adults, and they are designed distinctly for adults.

Interaction 47

Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

For years, I've been fascinated and a bit perplexed by the Elsewhere Collaborative , a thrift store turned artists' studio/living museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. What values change in that not so subtle shift between people, things, and the common space shared between them?

Collaboration 36

Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 31, 2012

In July of 2013, the MAH will host our first You Can't Do That in Museums Camp (or better name to be suggested by you), inviting 80 creative people to collaborate on an experimental exhibition. We will also offer a half-day series of workshops on July 10 for a wider audience for $50. and this one is going to be awesome.

Professional 35

Professional Develop Museum Arts 35

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 23, 2008

The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations. All evaluations are private; all artists are unnamed. They are sensitive to the artists who are being judged. What Should Artists and Arts Organization???s

Arts 74

Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

It was terrific to have a packed room and a long, open conversation (we split the session into half presenting, half audience discussion) about these issues. A couple of weeks ago, I posted on this blog that I was interested in meeting some new people at the conference. Participatory art and co-creation on the rise.

Reflection 43

Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

to experiment with different kinds of events (time of day, audience, size, type) and get a sense of how we can best program the space in the longterm. The ideal candidate has a good grasp of our local artistic assets in Santa Cruz County, a knack for participatory placemaking, and enthusiasm about putting on a show.

Public 20

Public Activities Active Activism 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. They were there for artist talks. Every other year, they convene TUPAC, a group of 35 outside advisors, including teens, college students, Temple University professors, artists, philanthropists, and community leaders.

Process 20

Process Share Philadelphia Arts 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2012

After several months of planning massively collaborative programs (a typical monthly event might involve 50 partners), we've realized that the people who are best at helping us come up with ideas are not necessarily the people who are best to help us execute them. We made people write things down constantly.

Program 49

Program Community Design Museum 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

But the point is that the MAH, like just about every other museum in the known universe, was content to define the museum experience as something removed from the outside world, a rarefied church-like space of refined artistic reflection. Her blog, "Museum 2.0," is one of the leading forces working to remake the museum experience.

Museum 31

Museum History Arts Work 31

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

But when people told us what they loved about the museum, they didn’t use the word “participation.” It is a group of people connected by something shared. We exist for people who live in Santa Cruz County. In some ways, we do a good job engaging people who reflect our whole County. They talked about community building.

Build 20

Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 15, 2010

People often ask me which museums are my favorite. It's not the extent to which they are participatory. They are usually staffed by people who feel incredibly passionate about their particular focus. They are places that people point to with pride and say, "that's our place." I don't like to give a list.

Support 41

Support Museum St. Louis NSF 41

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2011

They designed a participatory project that delivers a compelling end product for onsite and online visitors… and they made some unexpected decisions along the way. We imagined an cart at the farmer’s markets where people could record stories. And we realized of course that the majority audience would be watchers, not storytellers.

Story 53

Story Interview Museum Audio 53

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

It’s not unusual for us to meet with an environmental activist, a balloon artist, a farmer, and the Mayor of Santa Cruz all in one day. When planning programs or events, we involve a combination of these groups to share and bridge audiences, bringing big, diverse crowds to new artists and ideas. Follow up with them later.

Collaboration 55

Collaboration Community Tools Museum 55

Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

Visitor Co-Created Museum Experiences This session was a dream for me, one that brought together instigators of three participatory exhibit projects: MN150 (Kate Roberts), Click! The more you give people clear information about what is needed and positive response when they provide it, the happier and more creative everyone feels.

Slides 20

Slides Participatory Museum Children 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

What happens when a formal art museum invites a group of collaborative, participatory artists to be in residence for a year? Will the artists ruin the museum with their plant vacations and coatroom concerts? Will the bureaucracy of the institution drown the artists in red tape? No, this is not a reality TV show.

Artist 39

Artist Museum Project Public 39

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

If you don’t watch Big Brother , The Apprentice , Dancing with the Stars or X factor you probably dismiss these shows because they revolve around people you don’t know in an environment you find uninteresting and over-hyped. However, by the end of the first week it was clear that the majority of our audience was hooked.

Museum 23

Museum Chart Picture Arts 23

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2008

They felt that replacing the keynotes gave them a real opportunity to bring the whole audience together in focused participation which would hopefully spill out and over into the conference as a whole. The groups can use three different approaches: physical, artistic, or traditional word presentation. Where do our eyes go to in art?

Studies 20

Studies Associations Houston Museum 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

People--especially young folks looking to break into the museum business--often ask me how I got here. I met lovely people in engineering, but I found the work to be too detail-oriented and microscopic in scope to satisfy me. I had a healthy second life as a slam poet, and I loved the world of artists and performance.

Museum 52

Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Audience segmentation and research has become a hot topic in museums, especially when it comes to crafting appealing offerings that are customized to different kinds of visitors. Some experiences completely cut across demographics - some people like parties, some people want a solitary experience with art. Several, but not all.

Interview 46

Interview Director Museum Arts 46

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2008

I am recommending the transcript of Clay Shirky's speech about Gin, Television, and Social Surplus , in which he argues that the next twenty years will be marked by people's slow, incremental, and astoundingly impactful awakening from being passive consumers (of TV) to partly active content creators. The paper is the easy part. But one page!

Museum 20

Museum Library Participatory Wikipedia 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 22, 2007

COLLECTIVE ACTION (How much do people work together?) In Chapter 3, McCloud identifies six different methods by which comic artists transition from one panel to another (for example, scene-to-scene or action-to-action). X-Men) and artists. has introduced people to a new way of interacting with web content.

Taxonomy 20

Taxonomy Museum Social Wikipedia 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 8, 2013

We''re more successful when we target particular communities or audiences and design experiences for them. In the past, I''ve subscribed to the theory that an organization should target many different groups and types of people to serve a constellation of specific audiences across diverse affinities, needs, and interests.

Museum 55

Museum Social Arts History 55