Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2018

The Washington Post covered the MAH's transformation as part of an article about museums engaging new audiences. The whole second half of the article was dedicated to our work: Smaller museums can be especially scrappy in finding ways to connect with the community. It’s something that any museum, of any size, can work toward.

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Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 8, 2014

How does this question play out in museums? At the 2013 American Alliance of Museums annual conference, a group of exhibition designers explored authenticity in a session called Is it Real? They explored a huge range of museum objects and grey areas of "realness." Many artists work with assistants and reproducing processes.

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Artist Museum Washington Arts 55

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 14, 2013

One of the greatest gifts of my babymoon is the opportunity to share the Museum 2.0 First up is Beck Tench, a "simplifier, illustrator, story teller, and technologist" working at the Museum of Life & Science in Durham, NC. As a person who works for a science museum, I work in an environment that supports play.

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Museum Roles Game Participatory 51

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

I've been spending time recently interviewing people who run unusual cultural and learning venues. 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. Skill-sharing free schools. Community science workshops.

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Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2014

At the Inclusive Museum conference this summer, Dr. Rick West introduced this question through a tale of two museums. He described the National Museum of the American Indian--where he was founding director--as a multicultural institution, celebrating the diversity of Native peoples throughout the Americas.

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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

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Is that a Zen graffiti artist? She also admits that shift from artist to curator is not an easy one for many nonprofits because of the way they are structured. What needs to change in the way that nonprofits are structured and their culture to make this happen? Flickr Photo by TheeErin. Or are we talking about all curation?

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NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton - Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History Elaine Charnov - The NY Public Library Jason Eppink - Museum of the Moving Image Syed Salahuddin - Babycastles Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library 100 Years of the flagship library in New York.

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Game Culture Change Museum 52

Museum 2.0

APRIL 23, 2014

Museums, Politics, and Power is a new blog that lives up to its name. Elsewhere in podcast-land, Radiolab did a fascinating piece about cultural appropriation and gate-keeping in hip hop music. Some serious parallels to curating exhibitions and performances, especially with living artists. Petersburg. Sound familiar?

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Belarus Boston Sweden Ukraine 29

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

Earlier this fall, I read this headline: "Stanford study: Participation in a cultural activity may reduce prejudice." When the music video was focused on Mexican culture, the researchers found that the white and Asian participants demonstrated a decrease in prejudice against Latinos, both immediately after the activity and six months later.

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Measure Arts People Museum 47

CauseVox

JUNE 9, 2021

Summit Dogs is a great example of how powerful livestreaming can be when you share on a variety of platforms, include personal stories, and include both asynchronous and live videos. This is also a perfect example of how long a program should be. Have your lead artist jump on and run the class on Zoom. Recurring Giving Blitz.

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Ideas Online Fundraising Charity 98

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

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

Tech Soup

DECEMBER 12, 2011

artist's influences and the exhibit, in the artist's own words. For example, YBCA's audiences loved having access to artists' own unfiltered words. For example, YBCA's audiences loved having access to artists' own unfiltered words. The Dallas Museum. Educate app users.

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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 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

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

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. And when I think back on the past year, some of the most magical things that have happened at the museum have NOT been designed by us. We don't have to convince them that it's their museum.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2012

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), we've started experimenting with a "community first" approach to program development. We had about thirty participants ranging from MAH trustees to artists, educators to architects, moms to grandfathers. For example, one of our groups was focused on commuters.

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Program Community Design Museum 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 14, 2010

The whole idea got started a year ago when James Leventhal who is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum asked me if I would design some trainings for the local arts community. Contemporary Jewish Museum. The Joe Goode Dance Company spoke about the challenges of getting an artistic director to Tweet.

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Social Media Media San Jose Social 99

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

NOVEMBER 29, 2016

We spend most of our days with people who look like us, who share our culture, background, and class. That's why our museum, the MAH in Santa Cruz, focuses on social bridging. Artists and activists exhibiting their work. Business leaders and street performers designing a new community plaza on the museum's front porch.

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Museum History Arts Celebrate 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 2, 2014

There are many artistic projects that offer a template for participation, whether a printed play, an orchestral score, or a visual artwork that involves an instructional set (from community murals to Sol LeWitt). Beck talks about this in the context of learning to play music as a young artist. There are twenty songs in Song Reader.

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Participatory Arts Music Learning 52

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

JULY 12, 2010

When I first started exploring the site, I assumed it was mostly a place for charismatic hipsters and a few star artists with enough social media savvy and clever video production capabilities to produce enticing pitches. Why should cultural and arts organizations care about Kickstarter? The museum's page is much simpler.

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Fund Museum Pledge Game 49

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.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 9, 2009

I once asked Eric Siegel, the Director of the New York Hall of Science, why museums are rarely innovative shining stars on the cutting edge of culture. He commented that as non-profits, museums are built to survive, not to succeed. This is the model that governs most businesses and artistic endeavors. Then they die.

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Model Business Los Angeles Museum 55

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

Neon CRM

AUGUST 25, 2023

Although fundraising for arts organizations has unique challenges—like justifying the need to ask for support from donors for your arts and culture versus donating to the efforts of front-line workers—art in all forms is something that every community needs. This includes summer art camps, museums, theaters, art galleries, and more.

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Arts Ideas Organization Artist 98

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." Over the last 50 years, public-facing museums and libraries in the U.S.

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Museum Library Participatory Wikipedia 20

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. Can you give me an example? A crew that has the capacity to build a sign at the last minute.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

NTEN

JUNE 27, 2012

If you think about what a museum curator does, it is very similar. The museum curator does research, is an expert in the particular artistic style, selects the best examples, puts them together in an exhibit, provides important context with annotation on the labels, and so on. What is content curation exactly?

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Content Benefit Build Museum 62

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? Community First Program Design At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we've gravitated towards a "community first" program planning model. My answer: neither.

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Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 17, 2010

This morning, I gave the keynote address for the Washington Museums Association annual conference. It features lots of museum-based examples. But in this post, I wanted to highlight a goofy little (non-museum) project that inspires me in its simplicity and openness to mass collaboration. It's called One Million Giraffes.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 23, 2015

All weekend, we've heard uplifting stories about amazing work you all are doing to involve people from all walks of life in museums. There is no other museum conference going on somewhere else in the world today where professionals are sharing proud case studies and helpful tips on how to exclude people. But museums do exclude people.

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Museum Arts New Zealand Indianapolis 20

Forum One

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Forum One partnered with the Museum to launch their new brand to the world. This work not only included launching a new website but also revitalizing the American Jazz Museum brand as a whole. It also won the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture a Silver Vega Award!

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Celebrate Award Colorado Museum 67