Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2013

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. The idea of "risk" is often a red herring.

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Museum Arts History Professional 49

Connection Cafe

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

But innovative membership ideas aren’t just about being clever — effective membership programs create lifelong patrons who are actively engaged with your organization. S hortly after I joined the Blanton Museum in Austin, I got an invitation to hear an artist talk. Share in the comments below! .

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Arts Culture Organization Austin 28

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Weekly, I hear from someone who is putting ideas from the book into action. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" Over 150,000 people have accessed the free online version. and "why?"

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Dear Museums on Twitter, Thanks for experimenting in a new and largely uncharted online environment. So here is a list of suggestions that hopefully will improve the way your museum thinks about using Twitter. Or it's rainy so you suggest I visit the museum? I am a museum of Native Cultures and Art!" You could do better.

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Museum Twitter Open San Francisco 46

Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 21, 2011

Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image. Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. We are trying to change the visitors’ experience at the museum as well as ownership of what is in the museum, break down the walls between the public and the museum.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

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.

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2019

Me with a friend As I keep saying, I’ve been to a few museums of late. In reflecting on the sample, I’ve made some broad reflections on museum workers and visitors. Our visitors often see museums as a genre, not unlike hospitals or libraries. But, while adjacent, museums differ from formal classrooms in numerous ways.

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Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 13, 2010

On October 20, a young woman named Kate will move into Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and live there for a month. This post is not about the Month at the Museum concept or implementation. Instead, this post focuses on a fascinating aspect of Month at the Museum: the video applications. That will come later.

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Museum Contest Video Chicago 34

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

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2013

TCG is the industry association for non-profit theaters, the way AAM is for museums. Given TCG''s multi-year Audience (R)evolution initiative, I took the opportunity to write a new talk about what revolution has looked like at our small museum in Santa Cruz. We heard again and again that the museum was cold and uncomfortable.

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Museum Learning History Arts 55

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 4, 2016

Photo by CLoé Zarifian, MAH Photo Intern We're working with a guest curator, Wes Modes , on an upcoming experimental project at our museum. Wes is an artist, and this is his first time running a museum exhibition development process. He asked staff and artist friends for feedback on the concept.

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Participatory Question Work Artist 20

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. All evaluations are private; all artists are unnamed. They are sensitive to the artists who are being judged.

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Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 6, 2014

MuseumCamp is an annual professional development event at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History in which teams of diverse, creative people work on quick and dirty projects on a big theme. We encouraged teams to think like artists, not researchers. You can comment on the projects too and share your own ideas.

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Experiment Impact Social Museum 52

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

Every once in a while, I'll get a boring email inviting me to be part of some kind of blog salon on a particular topic, the idea being that all the bloggers who are contacted will write about that topic during the assigned month. This never seems like a good idea. The posts are meaty and the commenting is robust.

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Arts Question North Carolina Museum 48

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Last month, MAH curator Susan Hillhouse and I sat down and wrote an exhibition philosophy for our museum. In particular, we want exhibition collaborators--artists, researchers, historians, collectors--to understand our goals and how we intend to steer the exhibition development process.

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Museum Artist Participatory History 38

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 12, 2012

This is a picture of the largest temporary exhibition gallery in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. This winter, my museum is trying an experiment called Work in Progress. This winter, my museum is trying an experiment called Work in Progress. Our next exhibition is opening in here in two days. And even scarier?

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Work Museum Artist Arts 40

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 9, 2011

She is a fabulous and thoughtful artist. Two weeks ago, we inaugurated a Creativity Lounge on the third floor of our museum. The same day we opened the Creativity Lounge, we opened new exhibitions throughout the building, including a paper collage show in the 3rd floor lobby by local artist Lisa Hochstein.

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Museum Arts History Columbus 51

Museum 2.0

MAY 27, 2015

I have an unusual education for the director of an art & history museum: a degree in electrical engineering. You'll burrow down rabbit holes of gorgeous videos, cerebral reading lists, and provocative artist talks. I've filled some gaps in my cultural education through a career in museums: reading, looking, exploring, listening.

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Course Artist Museum Learning 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

The conventional wisdom on museum memberships is that they are "one size fits many" programs whose primary benefits are free entrance to the museum and insider access to exhibition openings. But what about all the other people who love your museum? Want to know how the Brooklyn Museum is answering this question?

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Museum Audience Program Artist 24

Museum 2.0

JUNE 8, 2010

This guest post was written by Rebecca Lawrence, Museum Educator, Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center in Pennsylvania. You can join the conversation in the blog comments, or on the Museum 2.0 The Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center (SLHC) is a small museum located in Pennsburg, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

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Place Museum Discussion Pennsylvania 27

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2009

Seb Chan has a lovely, long interview up at Fresh+New with Helen Whitty about the Powerhouse Museum's new mini-exhibition, the Odditoreum. The Odditoreum is another wrinkle in the study of visitors' understanding and interpretation of authenticity in museums. I enjoyed listening to it (virtually, not at the museum).

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Museum Alternative Portland Artist 22

Museum 2.0

JUNE 19, 2013

He casts the whole idea of a great jazz jam in the context of the tragedy of the commons--like a poetry open mic, the jazz club is a community whose experience is fabulous or awful depending on the extent to the culture cultivates and enforces a healthy participatory process. Even more rarely, you will receive panel comments directly.

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Participatory Process Open Proposal 51

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 3, 2012

She's brilliant and funny and pushes people to get excited about higher math and the big ideas behind it. But Vi doesn't work in a science museum. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, who are well known in museums for their excellent Smarthistory website and podcasts. the way the best museums do.

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Learning Free Museum Online 55

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. For years, I’ve been associated with the idea of “visitor participation.” At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, our community starts with geography.

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Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

This guest post, written by Philippa Tinsley, Collections Manager for the Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum (UK), describes the innovative Top 40 exhibition they mounted in the summer of 2009. In my experience, museum professionals aren’t big reality TV viewers.

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Museum Chart Picture Arts 23

Museum 2.0

MARCH 8, 2011

Last month, artist and game designer Nikki Pugh led an utterly charming, often hilarious community residency at the City Gallery in Leicester, UK. I wanted, if possible, to really confront the ideas wrapped up in the exhibition's introductory text. The Inspectors could contribute ideas about what that might happen as a result.

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Interview Museum Badge Game 37

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. This list is by no means exhaustive: please add your favorites (especially non-American ones) in the comments. Machine Project (Los Angeles, CA).

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Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Last week, as part of my museum's year-long Loyalty Lab project , we hosted a workshop for Bay Area museum professionals with special guests Ian Kizu-Blair and Sam Lavigne of the game design firm Situate. Our goal was to help people see the museum as a Friday night habit. When you mastered arcane rules to achieve your goal.

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Game Challenge Design Museum 44

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009

Between high-altitude hijinks, run-ins with wildlife, and very long days of hiking, I finished John Falk's new book, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. In other words, if you are a curious person, you will go to museums to learn new things.

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Museum Maslow Facilitation Personal 28

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? In children's museums and science centers, this relationship is at its most extreme. And yet in the museum world, we still see interactives as being mostly for kids.

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Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 14, 2007

Let’s say you wanted to find a model museum using Web 2.0 A place that does all this in the context of a fairly traditional collections-based museum. A place that does all this in the context of a fairly traditional collections-based museum. It’s the Brooklyn Museum. to support programs and exhibits.

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Museum Interview Flickr YouTube 27

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 26, 2007

The "Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art manages to both celebrate and betray fair use at the same time. These are canonical fair uses -- an artist who takes from another artist and uses his work to make new work. It's really out of our hands.

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Los Angeles Remix Museum Artist 50

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2011

Lots of museums these days have video comment booths to invite visitors to tell their stories, but how many of those booths really deliver high-impact content? Last week, I talked with Tina Olsen, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum, about their extraordinary Object Stories project.

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Story Interview Museum Audio 53

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 1, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0. I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. What if I assigned you to make a video of your ideas about justice?

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

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). Guard staff who are willing to let an artist step between two panes of glass to perform. One key idea that Paul Light talks about is the notion of slack. It's inherent in what we do.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Connection Cafe

AUGUST 3, 2015

The team at Thinkery has done an excellent job in getting the word out in all the right publications (Austin’s Culture Map, Austin’s Social Planner, among others) since they launched this innovative idea in December 2013. How can you explore doing something similar at your museum? Develop strong relationships with community partners.

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Audience Austin Test Portland 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2008

Dear Museum 2.0-ers, ers, Next week, I'll be going to DC for a meeting convened by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Museum and Library Services on "Museums and Libraries in the 21st Century." the comments on this one, including a response manifesto by educational technologist Ira Socol.

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Museum Library Participatory Wikipedia 20