Connection Cafe

JANUARY 28, 2020

C ompanies with three or more digitally savvy directors had 17-percent higher profit margins, 38-percent higher revenue growth, 34-percent higher return on assets and 34-percent higher market cap. I recently discussed what it means to be a “museopreneur” in a feature article published by American Alliance of Museums.

Museum 44

Museum Digital Benefit Massachusetts 44

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 readers, I have some exciting news. commitment to one post per week.

History 55

History Museum Arts Consultant 55

Museum 2.0

MAY 2, 2012

Today is my one-year anniversary as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. A year ago, I put my consultant hat on the shelf and decided to jump into museum management (a sentence I NEVER would have imagined writing five years ago). I'm open to any questions you want to raise in the comments.

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Museum Director Participatory Culture 55

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

We connect with people both professionally and personally, at the museum and on the street. This weekend, I got my answer in Seoul--the 18th biggest city in the world--at Hello Museum. Nestled in a forest of high-rise apartment buildings, this small museum connects children and families with contemporary art.

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Museum San Diego Build Community 46

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 17, 2018

It's time to make your dreams a reality and apply to become the next executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH). Our board, staff, and community are seeking a new director to join the MAH in 2019. As the current executive director, I'm not participating in the selection of the next director.

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Museum Job History Director 35

Forum One

MARCH 16, 2023

Speakers: Christina Crawley , Managing Director, Marketing, Forum One Aaron Miller , Account Manager, Forum One [Sessions] Conducting Inclusive Audience Research Wednesday, April 5, 2023: 2:30 – 3:30 pm Many cultural institutions understand the value of speaking directly to their audiences. Find out more and register here.

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Arlington Charlotte Museum Seattle 73

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2019

The Western Museum Association was kind enough to invite me to speak on a panel about engagement at their annual meeting in Boise. Phillip’s early remark about museums was an invocation for everyone. As an outsider, he immediately saw that museums were operating “under a business model that doesn’t work.” We need to change.

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Museum Audience Conversation Associations 30

Qgiv

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

Parker, a Seneca Indian who worked as the director of the Museum of Arts and Science in Rochester, N.Y. National Native American Heritage Month was created with the intention to provide a platform for American Indians to share and honor their culture, traditions, music, art, dance, beliefs, and ways of life.

Awareness 75

Awareness National Causes United States 75

Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2020

Nina Simon, Lauren Bentua, and many others would host us in the halls of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art. If we map this line of thinking onto an entire organization it becomes even more problematic, there are Board of Directors and employees to contend with. Many of you are probably old museumcampers. What are their names?

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Museum Map Structure System 29

CauseVox

MAY 25, 2021

Now, with vaccines readily available and COVID cases declining in many areas, admission-based organizations like museums, zoos, and science centers are gearing up to reopen their doors or expand their current capacity to invite their communities back in. is Communications Director for Doubleknot and ClearView CRM. Elissa Miller, M.Ed.

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North America Virtual Museum University 98

Connection Cafe

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Though we’re disappointed to not be exploring Seattle with all of our awesome Arts and Cultural friends, we are super excited for our first-ever virtual bbcon 2020 ! Arts and Cultural will have thousands of professionals represented from organizations ranging from zoos to museums, performing arts organizations to libraries, and beyond!

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Arts Culture Guide Organization 28

Museum 2.0

APRIL 30, 2014

This week, I''m celebrating three years on the job as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. This spring marked a big conceptual shift for me and the museum. Our Director of Development will be a close partner to me and a strategic weaver of inclusion, participation, and fundraising.

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Museum History Arts Artist 44

Museum 2.0

MAY 6, 2016

Five years ago, I left the consulting world to take the helm at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) at a time of crisis and change. We have spent the past three years planning and raising money for a project to build a creative town square for our city on the front porch of the museum. It's also really stupid.

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Museum Director Arts History 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2012

A year ago, I wrote a post speculating about whether events (institutionally-produced programs) might be a primary driver for people to attend museums, with exhibitions being secondary. Many museums, big and small, thrive on events. At our museum, about 68% of casual visitors (non-school tours) attended through events this year.

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Museum Arts Dallas History 53

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 22, 2011

Note from Beth: I had pleasure of facilitating a panel discussion in October at the recent Grantmakers in the Arts pre-conference on technology and media with Rory MacPherson where I learned about some of the preliminary study result he discovered. Arts organizations are not alone in this. The question. What we learned: a snapshot.

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Arts Social Media Studies National 110

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 3, 2019

I was thinking I’d do a few alternative histories of museums for the first post of the last month of the decade. As I imagined a world without the many museum tech projects of the decade, I felt inherently sad about the imagining away the successes that friends and colleagues have enjoying. But I couldn’t get there.

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Museum Work Social Media History 21

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 6, 2010

Marc van Bree and I were chatting about some of the collaborative arts marketing strategies that some arts organizations have experimented with on Twitter. Since there have been a few examples, I asked Marc if would write a post looking at some of these. How did you get 340 museums to participate? What was the objective?

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Arts Twitter Examples Los Angeles 101

Tech Soup

DECEMBER 12, 2011

project will focus on apps for arts organizations, with a practical. We'll share some interesting apps developed for arts. Discovering Public Art with Public Art Omaha. engage with public art? engage with public art? The really cool thing is how Public Art Omaha did it: their public art.

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Arts Omaha Organization Artist 63

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. Schools and other arts organizations are rising to the challenge.

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Museum Blogger Cleveland Missouri 52

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 4, 2013

Is your museum running on interns? It is a strong, museum-focused complement to an excellent three-parter on Createquity about the ethics and future of unpaid arts internships. I got my first real job in a museum (at the Guggenheim) after a life-changing internship. It''s probably a path you had to navigate too.

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Museum Share Student New York 55

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

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.

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Museum Story Project Design 43

Connection Cafe

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

The following post was originally published on the Center for the Future of Museums blog. On Wednesday, August 8, over 300 museum professionals joined CFM director Elizabeth Merritt and Seema Rao, principal of Brilliant Idea Studio , to explore self-care in the museum workplace. But effort and efficacy are not the same.

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Museum Culture Professional Training 21

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2012

I feel strongly that there are huge issues with racial and ethnic diversity in museums and arts organizations that deserve a million more posts. One was a conference on pushing our practice in art museums. In library- and museum-land, the participants were 80-90% women. That's why I wrote this.

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Arts Problem Open Museum 54

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 18, 2013

These are the questions that underpin Museum Camp 2014 , a professional development experience in which diverse people from the arts, community activism, and social services will measure the immeasurable together. This is the second year that the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) is hosting Museum Camp.

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Museum Impact Social Evaluation 46

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

Connection Cafe

JULY 28, 2016

Knowing that those three days are so jam-packed with content, I often get asked what bbcon offers for arts administrators, and the answer is…a lot! So I went ahead and picked out some of the top sessions for Arts & Cultural organization to make planning your conference journey just a little bit easier.

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Arts Culture Organization Tucson 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 26, 2014

Last week''s New York Times special section on museums featured a lead article by David Gelles on Wooing a New Generation of Museum Patrons. In the article, David discussed ways that several large art museums are working to attract major donors and board members in their 30s and 40s.

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Museum Generation Interview Donor 54

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 11, 2009

Photo by American Art Museum Note from Beth: This week I'm trying to understand crowdsourcing and nonprofits, hopefully with a crowd of other folks. How do you truly involve the general public and ask them to engage , online with art? In essence, it is visible storage for the museum.

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Museum Campaign Flickr Arts 92

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 29, 2012

Earlier this month, the Detroit Institute of Arts was "saved" by a voter-approved property tax (called a "millage") in its three surrounding counties. Residents in the three counties that pay the millage will receive special benefits : free admission to the museum and expanded educational programming.

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Detroit Arts Public Support 49

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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Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

Connection Cafe

AUGUST 16, 2018

Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh utilized their resources to develop an innovative retention strategy. Participants earn special stamps when they visit one of the museums or attend an event for a chance to win a grand-prize. The creative technology comes from how Carnegie Museums tracks the stamps.

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Museum Retention Conversation Rate 26

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

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

Connection Cafe

JANUARY 22, 2014

As always, I read this article through the lens of our arts and cultural customers. How can these themes make a positive impact on the local museum or symphony? As a result, I put together my perspective on this game changing technology for arts and cultural organizations. Are the same trends applicable? If not, it needs to be.

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Arts Culture Trend Organization 36

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

AUGUST 25, 2016

They wanted to help museums and galleries across the UK make significant, sustained changes in the ways they engage community partners and visitors as participants in their work. The result, Our Museum , is an extraordinary funding program with a focus on community participation. didn't mince words. Here are my three top takeaways.

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Museum Participatory Resource Place 20