Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

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 ). Because of the increased workload I expect in the months to come, as well as the likely possibility that we will start a Museum of Art & History blog, I'm lowering my Museum 2.0

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History Museum Arts Consultant 55

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 26, 2015

Designing A Participatory Hook for a Virtual Meeting. One thing I noticed during the meeting is that I was sitting more than I normally would because of the video and the cultural norm having the video on the whole time. How have you changed your organization’s meeting culture to be better? Flickr Image by Derek Gavey.

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Facilitation Virtual Arts Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

But as a creative type who has recently taken on an executive role, I've been fascinated, shocked even, to learn that the folks in the development department have been singing the relationship chorus for so long. Anyone who has worked in fundraising has likely heard these missives again and again. On the one hand, this is awesome.

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Participatory Practice Fundraising Relationship 39

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

Scene: a regional workshop on arts engagement. A funder is speaking with conviction about the fact that her foundation is focusing their arts grantmaking strategy on engagement. Engaging people actively in the arts. Here, in no particular order, are ten different kinds of quality in arts experiences: AESTHETIC: is it beautiful?

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Participatory Museum Arts Culture 55

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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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? Here are three of my favorites.

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Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. You will learn the theory and practice of how to open your organization to robust community participation. Learn more and register here. This retreat is all about learning from each other. Learn more here.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

I learn a ton from her every day and wanted to share her thinking--and her graduate thesis--with you. Visitors bond and bridge through participatory experiences at MAH. There were times when coordinating a fire art festival while researching social capital theory made me want to burn my computer.

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Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. A third argues that the project won’t be truly participatory unless users get to define what content is sought in the first place. I’ve been using these participatory categories to talk about how we’d like users to participate in different projects.

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

"The arts are future-making." I wrote this down when Deborah Cullinan said it at a meeting of arts leaders about a year ago. We were discussing the potential for cultural organizations to have significant impact across communities: on planning, health, education, and quality of life. A fitness trail for urban life.

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San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 18, 2011

I’ll be sharing insights on my blog as the project unfolds — it is going to be a rich opportunity for learning because it is a capacity building project that leverages a networked approach. This allowed each of us to share what we’d like others to know – what we bring to the project and what we’d like to learn.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

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. 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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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. Her goal is nothing less than to remake the MAH as the primary cultural touchstone of the Santa Cruz community, the place that best embodies the unique cultural vibe of Santa Cruz. "We

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

Granted, I live in an increasingly narrow world of people who are exploring these topics and want me to work with them, but I still learn a lot from the questions and struggles I hear from colleagues and people who comment on the blog. Are there certain kinds of institutions that are more well-suited for participatory techniques than others?

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

Last week I was honored to be a counselor at Museum Camp , an annual professional development event hosted by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH). Each year they bring together diverse, passionate people for a sleep-away camp for adults where they learn together through active, creative workshops and activities.

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Causes Change Museum Social 50

Museum 2.0

MAY 2, 2012

Today is my one-year anniversary as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We went through a dramatic financial turnaround and redefined our relationship with our community through a series of experimental participatory projects and new programmatic approaches. It is incredibly rewarding work.

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Museum Director Participatory Culture 55

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 31, 2012

The Arts Dinner-vention Project - date TBD. This one was cooked up by Barry Hessenius, former director of the California Arts Council and public art blogger extraordinaire. Barry is asking the universe to send him names of "unheralded arts sector leaders" to be considered for an all-star dinner party in 2013.

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Professional Develop Museum Arts 35

Museum 2.0

MARCH 14, 2017

This is the second installation 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. The MAH fundamentally has two jobs: we bring art and history out into our community, and we invite our community in. We want to break out.

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Public Museum Arts History 27

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 29, 2006

I met Janet Salmons many years ago while I working on various arts and technology projects in New York State for the New York Foundation for the Arts. I started in the Cornell University Center for Theatre Arts , where I founded and directed two programs: Cornell Theatre Outreach and the Community-Based Arts Project.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

This argument became one of the foundations of The Participatory Museum. Traditionally, museums and cultural organizations offer programs. This is the participatory platform model. They've created powerful learning experiences, diverse audiences, and new program formats. Nine years later, I still believe this.

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Platform Impact Childhood Museum 31

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 9, 2011

You can learn more about her work here. 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. The area that houses the Creativity Lounge also shows art. She is a fabulous and thoughtful artist.

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Museum Arts History Columbus 51

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 11, 2006

The above powerpoint is from 1999 and excerpted from day-long workshops I used to lead when I worked at NYFA and design and ran a program called "KIT: Knowledge in Technology - Technology Planning for Arts Organizations." He defines participatory culture as a culture: 1.

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Social Network Network Guide Participatory 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 3, 2009

On Friday, I offered a participatory design workshop for Seattle-area museum professionals ( slides here ). We concluded by sharing the tough questions each of us struggl es with in applying participatory design techniques to museum practice. open to anyone (minimize cultural bias). questions that induce grappling.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 21, 2014

I''ve now been the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History for three years. We work hard to name and build our culture in many ways. Institutional culture is something I never really understood before and I am now completely fascinated by how it can shape work. Naming our goals and our culture.

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Museum Director History Teen 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

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

Do you consider yourself an "activist" for your organization, avocation, or art form? Sure, I admire cultural organizations that have a strong mission to change education or diversify access or transform the role of art in everyday life, but I'm an insider. A national election is the ultimate participatory project.

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Product Build Museum Arts 51

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 31, 2007

I met her like ten years ago when I leading training workshops for arts educators, artists, and arts organizations throughout New York State on how to use the Internet. These projects were done nearly ten years ago, but they presage what the social web, participatory media. Meet Susan Silverman. I was teaching Web1.0

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Flickr Professional Participatory New York 50

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

Our curator writes labels about licking the art. And I talked about some of the challenges of finding the right income and expense models for a museum that operates more like a community center than a traditional cultural institution. Here are our slides and Ellen's handouts if you want to learn more. I host dating games.

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Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2012

Major research studies by the NEA and others demonstrate that adults well into their 60s are highly motivated to participate actively with cultural experiences. There are many participatory experiences that appeal primarily to adults, and they are designed distinctly for adults. But I don't think that theory holds up.

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Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

What does the word "participatory" mean to you? The various definitions of participatory projects can lead to confusion and misunderstandings. Participation in science research is a good basis on which to develop a framework for participatory models because it is based on a consistent scientific process with many steps.

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Public Research Participatory Report 36

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

We are hiring a temporary contract curator to activate the plaza this summer with 25+ cultural events. The ideal candidate has a good grasp of our local artistic assets in Santa Cruz County, a knack for participatory placemaking, and enthusiasm about putting on a show. It''s an exciting, intense, educational time.

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Public Activities Active Activism 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2010

Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. I immediately flashed to my work with art museums and staff members' concerns that older, traditional audiences will shy away from social engagement in the galleries.

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Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 14, 2013

I met many new people and learned a lot about technology and community, but the learning wasn''t the point, enjoying the resolutions was. I wholeheartedly believe it has the power to advance science (and art and cultural heritage) through the power of play.

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Museum Roles Game Participatory 51

Museum 2.0

APRIL 8, 2010

Many of the talks are related to The Participatory Museum and I will have books for sale on all of these forays. Oh, and learning something--hopefully from you. I'm giving a free talk about visitor participation in the evening at JFKU in association with the museum studies program and Cultural Connections. May 17 - NYC.

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Los Angeles Museum Participatory Minneapolis 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2016

They deliver learning experiences at many levels, engaging many senses. One hundred years ago, John Cotton Dana, founder of the Newark Museum and godfather of modern museums, famously said: “A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established."

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Museum Audience Music Arts 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2009

While the majority of experience-based museums like children's and science museums have unrestricted noncommercial photography policies, many collections-based art and history museums continue to maintain highly restrictive photo policies. There are thriving groups of Flickr users who share photos of themselves imitating art.

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Museum Photo Policy Open 54

Museum 2.0

APRIL 28, 2009

On Friday, I offered a participatory design workshop for Seattle-area museum professionals ( slides here ). We concluded by sharing the tough questions each of us struggles with in applying participatory design techniques to museum practice. The most reliable question I'm using works in art museums. instead of what is?)

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Technique Question Design Develop 52