Museum 2.0

MARCH 6, 2013

I write this piece in good faith about the organizations I know best: museums. The vast majority of American museums are institutions of white privilege. They tell histories of white male conquest. They present masterpieces by white male artists and innovations by white male scientists.

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Museum St. Louis Arts Artist 55

Museum 2.0

JULY 11, 2012

I get excited about a lot of things in my work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. That's how I felt when artist Ze Frank got in touch to talk about a potential museum exhibition to explore a physical site/substantiation for his current online video project, A Show (s ee minute 2:20, above).

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Museum Participatory Artist History 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

But not enough people care about it anymore, and the museum is fading into disrepair. The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. Many people would look at the world''s oldest mechanized silk mill and say that the core content of the museum is silk.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

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

DECEMBER 15, 2014

Gretchen Jennings convened a group of bloggers and colleagues online to develop a statement about museums'' responsibilities and opportunities in response to the events in Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island. Museums are a part of this educational and cultural network. Where do museums fit in? Here is our statement.

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Museum Blogger Cleveland Missouri 52

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

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

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.

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Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 17, 2012

When I started this blog in 2006, I made a multi-media introduction to the concept of "museum 2.0" Venue as content platform instead of content provider: the museum becomes a stage on which professionals and amateurs can curate, interpret, and remix artifacts and information. The museum gets better the more people use it.

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Museum Artist Remix Professional 47

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

JULY 11, 2017

The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History keeps growing and experimenting in our quest to build a stronger, more connected community. The Exhibitions Catalyst will lead the way in bringing together artists and diverse partners in the development of powerful exhibitions. We are dreaming big, reaching out, and going deep.

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Work Artist Museum Press 37

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 23, 2017

Dear friends, We're about a month from the deadline to apply for MuseumCamp 2017 at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH). Dive into co-creative project design. This project is experimental, complicated work. Artists are striving to follow their direction to beautiful ends. Check out past projects here.)

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Childhood Museum Artist History 26

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. Syed Salahuddin – Babycastles.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

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.

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Experiment Impact Social Museum 52

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 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. Reducing intergroup bias isn''t a primary goal in all of our work, but in some projects, it''s of particular interest. Implicit Associations test.

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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

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

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

MAY 10, 2011

It's my second week as the Executive Director at The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, CA, and boy is my everything tired. I'm also making the 2011-2012 budget, getting to know our terrific staff and volunteers, and starting up a few small participatory projects to launch us into being a more community-driven institution.

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Museum History Participatory Arts 53

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

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

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 don't want to wear them out on standing meetings or ongoing projects that may not draw on their talents. Moving from community needs out to possible projects/collaborators.

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Program Community Design Museum 49

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

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

APRIL 10, 2013

The weather is hopefully the least of the reasons you should want to come work with us here at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Participatory Performing Artist-in-Residence program. So start dreaming about the sun and exciting museum experiences. Museum of Art and History Quick Hits'

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San Francisco Participatory Artist Museum 23

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

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

Tech Soup

DECEMBER 12, 2011

project will focus on apps for arts organizations, with a practical. 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. The Dallas Museum. museum, expanding access to the mobile tours even further.

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Arts Omaha Organization Artist 63

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. Everything old is new again.

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Participatory Arts Music Learning 52

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

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. We offer unpaid internships for three reasons: We prefer to focus on developing paid opportunities for people who are in our community and can be a part of the museum for a long time.

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Museum History Arts Professional 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. 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

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

While informal involvement or input for a specific project is always useful, there''s also value to more sustained participation--and the relationships and accountability that comes with it. CON: can feel disconnected from the primary governance of the museum or can feel like a second-class board overall.

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Community Story Museum Map 39

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 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