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

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

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. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker's content about art history is social and dialogue-based in format. the way the best museums do.

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Learning Free Museum Online 55

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

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 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 History exhibits with hundreds of objects and no coherent story.

Los Angeles 20

Los Angeles Museum History Artist 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

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

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. It's run by Jon Rubin, an artist and professor of social practice at Carnegie Mellon, and his students. PieLab (Greensboro, AL).

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Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2017

This is the ninth in a series of posts on the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History ( MAH )'s development of Abbott Square , a new creative community plaza in downtown Santa Cruz. Working with creative people taught me to think like an artist: observe, explore, dive in, look out. We explore the possible programs.

Develop 20

Develop Artist Participatory Blended 20

Nonprofit Tech for Good

DECEMBER 14, 2022

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. History: Simply being around a long time has some cachet and may mean you have access to historical wisdom, knowledge, and records. You just need to show proof of membership. These exist already!

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Donor Sponsor Accessibility Music 343

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

OCTOBER 23, 2018

We partnered with foster youth, former foster youth, artists, and community advocates to create an exhibition that used art to spark action on issues facing foster youth. We'd love to see this model evolve and grow. Two years ago, our team at the MAH embarked on our most challenging co-creation project ever.

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Issue Childhood Community Create 45

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 12, 2017

A cheerful curly-haired deli owner stands in front of 30 of us and shares a quote he loves: "Artists live in the present and write detailed histories of the future." In the Zingerman's model, visioning is for everyone at all levels of the organization. A vision is a detailed history of the future. WHAT IS A VISION?

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History Pennsylvania Michigan Indiana 26

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.

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Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 8, 2010

A Community-Based Approach to Collecting and Cataloging CUL is a replicable model for community archives that accepts every piece of print media from a certain area without making quality or importance judgments, going back as far in history as possible. Our new catalog and website will be up within the next two months.

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Chicago Library Public Culture 48

Museum 2.0

APRIL 23, 2009

Like many people who've worked in science centers and interactive experience museums, I've always been perplexed by the fact that hands-on workshop audiences top out around age 14. They are more than just workshop spaces--they are member institutions, like museums. Isn't this one of our dreams for museums?

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Museum North Carolina San Francisco Structure 24

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2011

This is the casual attendance data from my first full month as the Executive Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz. This graph is making me change the way I think about what our museum is for and how we should market it. Simply, I'm shifting my perspective from an exhibit-driven model to an event-driven one.

Museum 55

Museum Arts History Artist 55

Museum 2.0

MAY 4, 2007

If anyone out there is considering creating an industry catch-all site for museum-related content, I highly recommend Gamasutra as a model. Can museums afford to indulge in this kind of fantasy? It drives me nuts when I’m in a museum that has made a half-hearted attempt to thematically connected galleries or exhibits.

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Game Storytelling Lesson Museum 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 14, 2011

In 1990, educator and cultural critic Neil Postman described a museum as "an answer to a fundamental question: what does it mean to be a human being?" Without an explicit "I" voice, the museum's perspective on humanity is oblique to say the least. Welcome to Pine Point is not a museum project. It tells layered personal stories.

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History Museum Sound Voice 43

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. Everyone is entitled to art in their life.

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Artist Digital Arts San Francisco 40

ASU Lodestar Center

JANUARY 17, 2015

posted by Maureen O'Brien Development Director Musical Instrument Museum. As the development director at the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM), which celebrates the music of every country in the world, my team has a platform to fundraise internationally. In fact, I enjoyed Ms. Madison, earning a double major in music and French.

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Professional Global Develop France 40

ASU Lodestar Center

JANUARY 7, 2015

posted by Maureen O''Brien Development Director Musical Instrument Museum I recently had the opportunity to travel to Paris, France to attend the 5ème conférence de fundraising pour le secteur culturel (5th conference on fundraising for the cultural sector) put on by the Association Française des Fundraisers (French Association of Fundraisers).

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Professional Global Develop France 40

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Last month, I heard a talk by author Jonathan Salem Baskin about his soon to be published book, “ Histories of Social Media.&# The book looks at social media concepts and ideas, asks is this really new? The technology tools certainly are, but history provides a context for every behavioral quality of new media.

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Measure Fund Impact Minnesota 96

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 23, 2013

I asked how their new Exploring Engagement Fund (of which my museum was an early grant recipient) was going. First, and close to home, it meant the possibility that the Irvine Foundation might become a funder of the work we do at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History around active arts participation and social bridging.

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Arts Activities Active Activism 48

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