Museum 2.0

AUGUST 28, 2013

Earlier in 2013, I was amazed to visit one of the new “Studio” spaces at the Denver Art Museum. The Denver Art Museum is no stranger to community collaborations, but we’ve been dipping in our toe a little more deeply when it comes to developing permanent participatory installations.

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Denver Museum Arts Collaboration 35

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

Detail on distribution of artworks in the Tate collection by birthdate of artists, visualized by Florian Krautli. What does "big data" look like for museums? Last month, the Tate joined the party when they opened up their collection database to the world on GitHub, a website where programmers collaborate on projects.

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Open Data Artist Museum 55

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.

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Museum Arts History Professional 49

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 30, 2008

Last week I taught a social media workshop for artists and arts nonprofits and did some research on different arts organizations using social media effectively. The Brooklyn Museum kept coming up as a stellar example, particularly its Click Exhibition (Nina Simon wrote an analysis of the project here ). did Shelley have a dog.

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Museum Indianapolis Jordan Artist 50

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 27, 2011

His foundation supports a private museum that is rarely open to the public. While there are many ways for museums to reach new audiences, when it comes to specialized knowledge, it's often a question of reaching the niche who care deeply about German watches from 1822 or the evolutionary shift in raccoon striping over time.

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Wikipedia Content Museum Artist 54

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 check out all twenty research projects here. To be playful.

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Experiment Impact Social Museum 52

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

Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 21, 2011

Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image. Goal of the centennial project was to shine the light on the library’s resources and get new audiences engaged in the collections and connected to the curators and staff. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

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

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

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. How can people--staff, volunteers, community members--help make this project better?

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Participatory Question Work Artist 20

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

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

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 23, 2011

My colleague, Devon Smith, a self-described data nerd who loves benchmarking pointed out this glorious example from the museum world from Sean Redmond , a Web developer at the Guggenheim. Have you conducted a benchmarking study of best practices? Let me know in the comments!

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Benchmark Network Learning API 95

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2010

This question is a byproduct of the reality that most participatory projects have poorly articulated value. What's the "use" of visitors' comments? But the best participatory projects don't suffer from this problem, because they solicit visitors' contributions toward a very specific outcome. The project is designed to scale.

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Participatory Music Project Video 48

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 2, 2015

The book is a deep account of repatriation of spiritual objects from museums to native people, written by museum people and Blackfoot people together. This story starts in 1960s, though of course, the story of the Blackfoot people and their dealings with museums started way before that. The museums were not.

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Museum National Story Difference 20

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?

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Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 29, 2009

It's my "artistic rendering" of one of the most inspirational participatory projects I know of--the Bibliotheek Haarlem Oost book drops. Read the original post on this project for more info. Too often, cultural institutions design participatory projects that require visitors to learn new tools or make sacrifices to contribute.

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Participatory Project Library Netherlands 40

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.

Museum 55

Museum Learning History Arts 55

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 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 19, 2013

Here are just three participatory processes I think are in serious need of improvement: Public comment at city council meetings. Even more rarely, you will receive panel comments directly. The whole process of grant applications would be improved if providing panel comments was a matter of course. Exhibition proposals.

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Participatory Process Open Proposal 51

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 3, 2012

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. Does this mean Khan Academy is competitive with museums? She would be the best science center educator ever.

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Learning Free Museum Online 55

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. George will respond to comments on this post and is also reachable here.

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Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

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

OCTOBER 24, 2012

I like to ask myself this question periodically, challenging myself to find substantive ways for visitors to contribute to our museum. Visitors can comment on how we can improve or what they would like to see. Instead, they've been driven by community members who see the museum as a platform for their own creative pursuits.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

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

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. We've actually been experimenting quite a lot with this here at the MAH with a simple project called the Five Friday card.

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Game Challenge Design Museum 44

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. How did this project come about? What were the City Gallery goals for the project? I really wanted visitors to make this their own project and their own space; not mine.

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Interview Museum Badge Game 37

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

When you find a bar with your favorite song on the jukebox, or a museum room that feels like your grandmother's living room, you suddenly feel a strong affinity and are able to see yourself reflected in the space. It may be great for a natural refuge to remain hidden, but that sounds like a disaster for a restaurant or museum.

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Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Model 34

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

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

Museum 2.0

MAY 29, 2013

Sarah and some of her colleagues in visitor services feel disconnected from the work that happens "upstairs" in the office and in our creative project development. At our museum, we''ve gotten better at communication up from the front desk to the office. But on Facebook, it becomes a funny thing to comment on and connect with.

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Facebook Museum Participatory Adopt 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. 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.

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Build Community Museum Artist 20