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. What do you do?

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 4, 2016

Photo by CLoé Zarifian, MAH Photo Intern We're working with a guest curator, Wes Modes , on an upcoming experimental project at our museum. Wes is an artist, and this is his first time running a museum exhibition development process. This is the question I ask myself anytime I'm working on something with a participatory intent.

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Participatory Question Work Artist 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 1, 2014

Recently, we''ve been talking at our museum about techniques for capturing compelling audio/video content with visitors. It made me dig up this 2011 interview with Tina Olsen (then at the Portland Art Museum) about their extraordinary Object Stories project. We ended up with a gallery in the museum instead. That is more curated.

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Museum Story Project Design 43

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

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

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

Last month, the Irvine Foundation put out a new report, Getting In On the Act , about participatory arts practice and new frameworks for audience engagement. I've often been asked about examples of participatory practice in theater, dance, and classical music, and this report is a great starting point.

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Participatory Arts Report Case Study 50

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 28, 2013

Earlier in 2013, I was amazed to visit one of the new “Studio” spaces at the Denver Art Museum. The Denver Art Museum is no stranger to community collaborations, but we’ve been dipping in our toe a little more deeply when it comes to developing permanent participatory installations.

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Denver Museum Arts Collaboration 35

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 1, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0. I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. When I talk about designing participatory experiences, I often show the above graphic from Forrester Research. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. This is a problem for two reasons.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

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

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

JANUARY 25, 2012

Stacey has been collaborating with local artists to produce a series of content-rich events that invite visitors to participate in a range of hands-on activities. The event involved over fifty artists throughout the building helping visitors make their own paper, write poems, stitch books, etc. you tell me.

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Activities Active Activism Participatory 50

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.

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History Museum Arts Consultant 55

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

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. When I talk about designing participatory experiences, I often show the above graphic from Forrester Research. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

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

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

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. Today, I wanted to think about participatory elements, something so essential to this blog. People go to museums for leisure.)

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Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

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. Tags: design participatory museum.

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Participatory Project Library Netherlands 40

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2010

This question is a byproduct of the reality that most participatory projects have poorly articulated value. When a participatory activity is designed without a goal in mind, you end up with a bunch of undervalued stuff and nowhere to put it. Are you making that shift in your thinking about participatory project design?

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Participatory Music Project Video 48

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Let's look at the statistics from three big participatory projects that wrapped up recently. This citywide festival showcased work by 1,517 artists competing for a $200,000 top cash prize awarded by public vote. The Brooklyn Museum just finished the public stage of GO , a "community-curated open studio project."

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Arts Artist Museum Award 47

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? Teens are a known (and somewhat controllable) entity.

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Teen Participatory Experiment Museum 24

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

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

JUNE 10, 2015

And so, one of the most successful, accidental, and fraught participatory projects of the past decade comes to an end. The "love locks" are not a project with an institutional or artistic director. So many participatory projects do the opposite, requiring you to take a dozen tricky steps to no meaningful end.

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Participatory Project Artist Instruction 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 20, 2013

This week, the Santa Cruz Weekly's cover story is about my museum (the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History ) and the work we have done to make it a more participatory, community-centered place over the past two years. Perry describes me as the "conductor" of a community-programmed orchestra.

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Story Georgia Participatory Museum 31

Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2013

Negotiation" implies a respectful relationship between institution (or artist) and user. Sometimes the negotiation can be exploited for artistic means. The theater is dark and the artist breaks the fourth wall and asks for conversation. The museum invites art-making in the elevator. Visitors talk over the tour guide.

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Game Artist Museum Participatory 40

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. These are unpaid, part-time internships in which you will make a significant contribution to our work, and at the same time, learn a heck of a lot about participatory design and community engagement.

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San Francisco Participatory Artist Museum 23

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

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

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

DECEMBER 28, 2011

We've been offering a host of participatory and interactive experiences at the Museum of Art & History this season. I loved Jasper Visser's list of 30 "do's" for designing participatory projects earlier this month. Artists work incredibly hard to produce their work. This isn't even participatory. It's just fun.

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Design Participatory Learning Instruction 45

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The Art of Participation provides a retrospective on participatory art as well as presenting opportunities for visitors to engage in contemporary (“now”) works. As the museum's website puts it, "this exhibition examines how artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process."

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Participatory Arts Design Museum 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

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

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