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Is it OK to Smash That? The Complications of Living Art Museums

Museum 2.0

Every day for the past two months, a man has entered the largest gallery in my museum. The man is artist Rocky Lewycky , whose work is part of a group show of visual artists who have won a prestigious regional fellowship. It also complicates the question of what is acceptable in a museum. This is not a crime. Definitely.

Museum 50
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Hack the Museum Camp Part 2: Making Magic, Reality TV, and Risk as a Red Herring

Museum 2.0

Last week, my museum hosted Hack the Museum Camp , a 2.5 day adventure in which teams of adults--75 people, of whom about half are museum professionals, half creative folks of various stripes--developed an experimental exhibition around our permanent collection in our largest gallery.

Museum 49
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Wandering Down the "Don't Touch" Line

Museum 2.0

How do you help visitors know what they can and cannot do in your museum? Most museums have this figured out: they have signs, they have guards, they have cases over the objects. And this works pretty well in science museums, where designers talk about "hardening" exhibits to withstand the more aggressive touchers among us.

Museum 49
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Lead or Follow: Arts Administrators Hash it Out

Museum 2.0

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?

Arts 45
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Thou Shall Not Paint the Concrete: Guest Revelations by Don Hughes

Museum 2.0

I started my museum career as an exhibit designer. But I reserve for Don Hughes that particular blend of admiration and fear that comes when encountering uncompromised brilliance. He is a genius designer out of central casting: an artist, mercurial, funny, emphatic, honest, unflinching, with a disarming weakness for babies.

Museum 20
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Think Like a (Real Estate) Developer: Introducing Abbott Square, Part 9

Museum 2.0

This is the ninth 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. Working with creative people taught me to think like an artist: observe, explore, dive in, look out.

Develop 20
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Getting in on the Act: New Report on Participatory Arts Engagement

Museum 2.0

How did the authors come up with the intriguing blend of curatorial, interpretative, and inventive opportunities shown in the Audience Involvement Spectrum's Venn diagrams? Why is a photography contest an example of "crowd sourcing" wheres a community drawing contest is an example of "audience-as-artist"?