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

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Writing my masters thesis for Gothenburg University’s International Museum Studies program while also working four days a week as the Director of Community Programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History this spring was certainly a challenge but also an incredible opportunity.

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Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

North Carolina Museum of History 1988.39.4 I’m always amazed when my colleagues tell me that the biggest barrier they face to “opening up” the content at their museums is from registrars—the people who care for collection objects. Followers of Museum 2.0 To me, this seems both discouraging and ungenerous to visitors.

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Accessibility Open Museum North Carolina 44

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

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

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

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. It's a little living room in a lobby area that invites people to lounge on comfortable chairs, leaf through magazines and books related to art and Santa Cruz history, and generally hang out.

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Museum Arts History Columbus 51

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

The book of the same title that he edited is rocking my world, both as a museum professional who cares about inclusion and as a new mother. So consider this just the first of many posts related to issues of cultural inclusion, evaluation, and impact. This blog is about shared learning, and I went to engineering school.

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Measure Arts People Museum 47

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

MARCH 21, 2012

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.

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Museum Denver Artist Milwaukee 49

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.

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Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 23, 2013

But here I sit, the director of a museum that almost closed, squirreling away money for an operating reserve. They closed for capricious financial reasons, and they left disappointed artists and participants in their wake. Consider the museum I run. We had a dedicated staff that wanted to make this museum as good as it could be.

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Organization Museum Arts Nonprofit 55

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 26, 2014

And, if you want to join us in Santa Cruz for more professional hijinks, consider an internship at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. I know that is controversial, and believe me--we are well aware of the complexity of the issue. We are also expanding paid opportunities for local artists. so get on it.

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Museum History Arts Professional 31

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2018

The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History keeps growing and experimenting in our quest to build a stronger, more connected community. Dialogue Catalyst : to work with local partners to co-develop an exhibition that sparks social action around issues facing socially-isolated senior citizens.

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Job Community Build Work 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 11, 2015

This summer, we''re offering some amazing museum internships, as well as MuseumCamp : a weekend-long professional development experience that is part retreat, part conference, part summer camp. INTERNSHIPS If you want to join us in Santa Cruz for more professional learning, consider an internship at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.

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Participatory Community Museum History 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 13, 2015

Visitors in front of the African Elephant Diorama at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC photo) This guest post was written by Karen Wise, Vice President, Education and Exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. “I This isn’t an isolated issue. Those words haunt me.

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Los Angeles Museum History Artist 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

I''ve mostly seen museums employ one of two methods for formal community advisors: Create special "spots" on the board of trustees for certain kinds of community representatives. CON: can feel disconnected from the primary governance of the museum or can feel like a second-class board overall. I struggle with both these options.

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Community Story Museum Map 39

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 29, 2016

That's why our museum, the MAH in Santa Cruz, focuses on social bridging. Rather than operating in a bubble of “art people” or “history people,” we strive to connect ALL people in our county. Artists and activists exhibiting their work. Homeless adults and history buffs improving a historic cemetery. More of us.

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Museum History Arts Celebrate 20

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

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

Nonprofit Tech for Good

DECEMBER 14, 2022

You can collaborate with other nonprofits in your region or in your issue area to investigate whether you can all offer benefits for each other. For example, if you join a modern art museum, there is a good chance you won’t have to pay admission to other modern art museums. Get creative. It is seen as wasteful overhead.

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Donor Sponsor Accessibility Music 337

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 23, 2015

If you'll be there, I look forward to discussing these issues with you. All weekend, we've heard uplifting stories about amazing work you all are doing to involve people from all walks of life in museums. But museums do exclude people. Our Story I came to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago.

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Museum Arts New Zealand Indianapolis 20

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

EveryAction

MARCH 16, 2017

Whether quietly spearheading some of the world's most groundbreaking scientific and medical research or not-so-quietly leading revolutions on the battlefield, our history is ripe with stories of ferocious, adventurous, enlightened, and persistent women. Gabriela Mistral. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. Dorothy Arzner.

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Story Angola Sierra Leone History 133

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 8, 2006

Elisa’s focus is interactive arts, media design, and cultural management, and she has been involved in many pertinent projects, such as MUVI (the Virtual Museum of the Collective Memory of Lombardia). Environmentalists, the Museum of Natural History at CU, they all responded very enthusiastically to this.

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Interview Museum Culture Sound 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

I'm thrilled to share this brilliant guest post by Marilyn Russell, Curator of Education at the Carnegie Museum of Art. This is a perfect example of a museum using participation as a design solution. Our colleagues in the Museum of Natural History were eager collaborators. I hope more museums do things like this.

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Museum Arts Problem Design 45

Have Fun - Do Good

JANUARY 16, 2009

I think about how hesitant I was to become an artist, because I didn't see role models, and even to this day how hard it is for me sometimes to find peers who are women of color, because of how systematically they are pushed out. I'm an artist and an institution builder. The kind of art I do is art that gets engaged into the public.

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Artist Digital Arts San Francisco 40

Museum 2.0

JULY 18, 2017

This month, we opened a new exhibition at the MAH, Lost Childhoods: Voices of Santa Cruz County Foster Youth and Foster Youth Museum (brief video clip from opening night here ). it uses art, history, artifacts, and storytelling to illuminate a big human story and an urgent social issue. This big idea excited us all.

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Action Childhood Artist Info 44

Museum 2.0

JUNE 16, 2020

Andrea has been a leader in the museum technology field. For the last three years, I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with the Smithsonian Latino Center as part of the Educators Advisory Council, in preparation for the forthcoming Molina Galleries , which will focus on celebrating the contributions of Latinos in the History of America.

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Museum Detroit Arts Leadership 22

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 2, 2011

We just opened new exhibitions at The Museum of Art & History , including one on woodworking that includes QR codes. I presume that most Museum 2.0 I've been seeing them in museums (and parks ) for a couple of years now, and I've used them in a couple projects, but I never felt a desire to write about them.

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Museum Artist Arts Phone 53

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 16, 2013

When you count attendance to your museum, do you include: people who eat in the cafe? It''s about museum attendance and how the five big, free museums in St. Summertime concerts at the history museum? Outdoor movies at the art museum? If a kid gets dragged to a museum with their parents, do they count?

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St. Louis Impact Museum Denver 55

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 13, 2009

Earlier this year, the New Museum and Creative Time commissioned a traveling piece by artist Jeremy Deller called "It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq." I saw It Is What It Is twice at the Hammer Museum. Why would I want to talk about Iraq on a visit to an art museum? Even for me, the barriers were too high.

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Iraq Challenge Museum Library 28

NTEN

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Facebook is addressing this issue by adding filters, but with all the data crunching power that they use already around analyzing my relationship with my friends, shouldn’t they know who is important to me already? As of Febuary 2011 however, they have added a feature that goes a step beyond: streetview history.

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Storytelling Story Mobile North Korea 87

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 22, 2008

There are lots of things visitors can’t do in museums. But what about the things that museum professionals can’t (or feel they can’t) do? This week at the ASTC conference, Kathy McLean, Tom Rockwell, Eric Siegel and I presented a session called “You Can’t Do That in Museums!” And so my question is, why are we keeping them away?

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Museum Professional Teen Map 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2007

This is the penultimate installment of Museum 2.0's s book club on Elaine Gurian's collection of essays, Civilizing the Museum. As Elaine puts it in the essay, When I was last involved in such an endeavor, it was when the Boston Children's Museum was small, insignificant, and unselfconscious. have portrayed Indians inaccurately."

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Culture Storytelling Challenge Museum 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

It has introduced me to corrupt university fundraisers , the true history of Tom Dooley , and the world's oldest marathon runner. All this delightful non-fiction makes me wonder: why aren't museums great at telling these same kinds of deep, intense stories? This seems strange given that museums are organized around objects.

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Museum Story Captivate Artist 53