Museum 2.0

MAY 21, 2014

I''ve now been the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History for three years. Over the past three years, we''ve tripled our attendance, doubled our budget, and, most importantly, established deep and diverse relationships with community members, artists, and organizations across Santa Cruz County.

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Museum Director History Teen 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

George Scheer is the director and co-founder of Elsewhere Collective, a fascinating "living museum" in a former thrift store in Greensboro, NC. In this post, George grapples with the challenges of balancing the care for a museum collection with that of contemporary artists-in-residence who are constantly reinterpreting it.

Artist 49

Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

Dear Museum 2.0 As of May 2, I will be the executive director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA (here's the press release ). I am closing down my consulting business at the end of April, but the Museum 2.0 Here are a few things that make the MAH an exciting museum to me: It's small.

History 55

History Museum Arts Consultant 55

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

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

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. Too often, cultural institutions design participatory projects that require visitors to learn new tools or make sacrifices to contribute. Or, so I thought.

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Participatory Project Library Netherlands 40

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

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 other three are cultural, and I'm not sure how accurate they are.

Teen 24

Teen Participatory Experiment Museum 24

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. 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.

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Museum History Arts Work 31

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. To that end, our exhibitions are full of participatory elements. 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.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

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

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

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

We've gotten a little more organized at The Museum of Art & History , and we've now released opportunities for summer internships. These are unpaid part-time and full-time opportunities to help design public programs, develop new uses for the museum, perform visitor research, and pursue unusual projects.

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Museum Participatory Arts Attitude 34

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

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

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

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. Over the past seven years, this exploration has been undertaken by a staff of artists and more than 35 creators each year participating in our residency program.

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Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

Museum 2.0

MAY 29, 2013

At our museum, we''ve gotten better at communication up from the front desk to the office. People use it to share surprises in the archives, inspiring meetings with artists, dead birds in the lobby, and free food in the fridge. Connectedness builds staff culture. participatory museum professional development'

Facebook 55

Facebook Museum Participatory Adopt 55

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 31, 2012

Three of them are being hosted at my museum , and one at a mystery location. You Can't Do That in Museums Camp - July 10-12, 2013. 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.

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Professional Develop Museum Arts 35

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. Now Friday nights at the museum have become something people can count on, and they keep growing.

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Museum History Arts Artist 47

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

Last week, I was in Minneapolis for the American Association of Museums annual meeting. Kathleen McLean led a terrific session called "Dangerous Ridiculous" about risk-taking in museums. Interestingly, at my museum, our team is naturally better at ridiculous than we are at dangerous. I found this idea really powerful.

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Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

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

APRIL 15, 2015

We were discussing the potential for cultural organizations to have significant impact across communities: on planning, health, education, and quality of life. But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. Where it didn''t happen, visitors, artists, and organizers missed an opportunity to learn and grow.

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San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

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. It was an evening meeting with beer and chips. Then, we went honeycomb-crazy.

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Program Community Design Museum 49

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

For the past two years, I''ve been working on a project to activate the concrete space adjacent to our museum as a vibrant, community plaza. We are hiring a temporary contract curator to activate the plaza this summer with 25+ cultural events. creative placemaking design Museum of Art and History programs public space'

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Public Activities Active Activism 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." 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

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?

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Artist Museum Project Public 39

Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2010

How, he asked, could a large museum that serves hundreds of thousands of people per year foster the same sense of personal connection and community that a small one can achieve? I think small museums are generally better than large ones at fostering local communities of visitors and members.

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Community Museum Participatory Relationship 21

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

It made me think in ways that I haven't before about the relation of art--as expressive culture--to democracy. It is multi-disciplinary, incorporates diverse voices from our community, and provides interactive and participatory opportunities for visitor involvement. Note: you can view these photos of the exhibition on Flickr here.)

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Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2009

In almost all cases, museums assure me that they want to be in conversation, that they want to be responsive, that they want to “really hear” what people think. Sadly, it was the second story that was about a museum. When those spaces are factored in, there are more than 250 works by female artists on view now.

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Conversation Museum Artist Minneapolis 21

Museum 2.0

JULY 22, 2008

A platform for museum staff to serve as facilitators of safe spaces for difficult conversations? They are often one-offs for events but are increasingly included in the regular slate of programming at major libraries and cultural facilities (but at my count, only one museum). Could this be applied to museums? I think so.

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Library Model Museum Europe 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

Looking closer, I saw that each seat had its own handwritten label, telling the story of the Philadelphia cultural institution from which it originated. They were there for artist talks. The chairs were cast-off art, reclaimed as art, available for people to take off the hooks and use. They were there for project brainstorming.

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Process Share Philadelphia Arts 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2010

I spent last week working with staff at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) on ways to make this encyclopedic art museum more open to visitor participation across programs, exhibitions, and events. While there, I was lucky to get to experience a highly participatory exhibition that the MIA mounts once a decade: Foot in the Door.

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Participatory Museum Arts Artist 46

Museum 2.0

APRIL 6, 2011

Let's say you spend a year working with a group of teens to co-create an exhibition, or you invite members and local artists to help redesign the lobby. In many cases, once the final project is launched, it's hard to detect the participatory touch. Not every participatory process has to scream "look at me!"

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Participatory Process Museum Children 48

Museum 2.0

MAY 8, 2013

Like a lot of organizations, my museum struggles with two conflicting goals: The museum should be for everyone in our community. At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we''re approaching this challenge through a different lens: social bridging. Museum of Art and History programs social bridging'

Museum 55

Museum Social Arts History 55

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2012

When we talk about making museums or performing arts organizations more participatory and dynamic, those changes are often seen as threatening to the traditional arts experience. What if historic arts experiences were actually a lot more participatory? But what if the "traditional" arts experiences is a myth?

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Greece Arts Industry Participatory 51