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.

Museum 21

Museum Work Social Media History 21

Whole Whale

MARCH 10, 2021

If you can’t wait and just want to jump to ideas for how nonprofits can leverage NFTs, skip to the bottom. There are many exchanges to find NFTs and each one tends to specialize in different types of art or styles. What’s more, artists will continue to get a percentage of the future sales of that NFT art into the future.

Artist 105

Artist Fundraising Digital Arts 105

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

Every once in a while, I'll get a boring email inviting me to be part of some kind of blog salon on a particular topic, the idea being that all the bloggers who are contacted will write about that topic during the assigned month. This never seems like a good idea. You should go and tell us all about it.

Arts 48

Arts Question North Carolina Museum 48

Connection Cafe

JANUARY 7, 2020

To help, here are some thought-starters from the Blackbaud Arts & Cultural team – along with a sneak-peek at what we have planned for 2020 so far. . . This might sound obvious, but it’s easy to take for granted : y our surrounding community likely consists of your main base of volunteers, visitors, members and donors.

Culture 27

Culture Arts Organization Pledge 27

sgEngage

JULY 18, 2023

Sound familiar? A few ideas on how to use Threads include: GivingTuesday or Peer-to-Peer campaigns: Set your goal, create a hashtag, and give regular updates to build hype around your campaign. Are you an art museum that posts behind-the-scenes looks at your collection on Instagram?

Hype 74

Hype Fundraising Social Media Platform 74

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 10, 2012

What happens when you let visitors vote on art? Each of these invited members of the public to vote on art in a way that had substantive consequences--big cash prizes awarded, prestige granted, exhibitions offered. The Brooklyn Museum just finished the public stage of GO , a "community-curated open studio project."

Arts 47

Arts Artist Museum Award 47

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.

Museum 21

Museum Culture Professional Training 21

Museum 2.0

JUNE 14, 2011

Should museums play music - in public spaces and or in galleries? So I thought I'd open it up to the Museum 2.0 Pros for music: Music helps designers frame the atmosphere for the intended experience at the museum. Most museums are trying to please everyone. If so, how should they determine what to play?

Music 47

Music Museum Open Sound 47

Museum 2.0

APRIL 2, 2014

It is what it sounds like: a book of original sheet music, beautifully designed and complemented with artwork and text. In his thoughtful preface to this project, I reconnected with five lessons I''ve learned from participatory projects in museums and cultural sites. There are twenty songs in Song Reader.

Participatory 52

Participatory Arts Music Learning 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 10, 2018

The museum was in huge financial trouble. But I also had a more immediate problem: I had no idea how to lead a staff meeting. I had no idea what to do. My expertise was on inviting strangers to participate in public settings like museums. Sounds like great participation to me. I didn't know how to open a meeting.

Hosting 31

Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

Connection Cafe

AUGUST 17, 2015

It’s no secret that arts pricing is one of my favorite topics (See here. I do recognize, however, that arts pricing may not be at the top of everyone’s happy hour conversation starters. When you love pricing, it can be easy to slip into pricing jargon…which might sound like a foreign language to some. And here ).

Arts 20

Arts Museum Map Austin 20

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. I realize that I may sound like a college freshman who just discovered Psych 101, but heck. This blog is about shared learning, and I went to engineering school. Implicit Associations test.

Measure 47

Measure Arts People Museum 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. The idea of "risk" is often a red herring.

Museum 49

Museum Arts History Professional 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2011

Thirteen students produced three projects that layered participatory activities onto an exhibition of artwork from the permanent collection of the Henry Art Gallery. The guiding principle is uncovering relationships between the works of art themselves rather than explicating information or theoretical concepts.

Participatory 51

Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

Museum 2.0

JUNE 28, 2016

This month, I'm sharing a few chapters from my new book The Art of Relevance to celebrate its release. One of my biggest aha moments while writing The Art of Relevance was moving away from the idea that there are "traditional" audiences and "new" audiences and instead thinking about people in terms of "insiders" and "outsiders".

Arts 34

Arts Chapter Sound Story 34

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 16, 2010

I spent last week in the glorious country of Taiwan, hiking, eating, and working with museum professionals and graduate students at a conference hosted at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts. It's not topic-specific; I've done these exercises with art, history, science, and children's museums to useful effect.

Museum 41

Museum Technique Taiwan Social 41

Connection Cafe

MAY 29, 2014

Last week I had the opportunity to attend and present at the Association of Children’s Museums annual conference, #interactivity2014, with Julia Kennard, CFO from EdVenture, Carole Charnow, President and CEO from Boston Children’s Museum and Katie Boehm, Annual Fund & Events Manager from KidsQuest. Sounds good, right?

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Museum Interaction Associations Donor 33

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. What field are we in?

Museum 20

Museum Director Arts History 20

Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton – Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab. Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image. Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 22, 2010

While there are some kinds of participation that are not language-based like making art or voting, most participation is lingual. Many fabulous participatory projects--like the Johnny Cash Project or the Art Gallery of Ontario's " In Your Face "--don't require language. designate the difference between languages using design.

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Museum Work North America Language 38

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

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

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

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Dear Museums on Twitter, Thanks for experimenting in a new and largely uncharted online environment. So here is a list of suggestions that hopefully will improve the way your museum thinks about using Twitter. Or it's rainy so you suggest I visit the museum? I am a museum of Native Cultures and Art!"

Museum 46

Museum Twitter Open San Francisco 46

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 5, 2012

I've always been a bit confused when people talk about the impact of a museum or arts institution as being about "more than numbers." I understand that some museum offer extraordinary, intimate programs. I was visiting with Adam Lerner, Director and Chief Animator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

Denver 45

Denver Impact Museum Arts 45

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 18, 2015

Every few months, a major news outlet does an "expose" about data collection on museum visitors. These articles tend to portray museums as Big Brother, aggressively tracking visitors'' actions and interests across their visit. I thought this sounded great: better data, useful research. We''re trying to personalize.

Museum 20

Museum Experiment People Data 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 26, 2019

I was a small fry at a big museum, volunteering for a project I had no business taking on. In others, like the Community Issue Exhibition process, I was there as a fundraiser, networker, and sounding board for our brilliant team as they went deeper and further with community than I knew how to go.

Reflection 44

Reflection Change Museum Mentoring 44

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. There's just too much involved in the first few months of taking over a struggling museum to realistically imagine that I can also make enough fun stuff happen to keep me satisfied. Let me be frank.

Museum 53

Museum History Participatory Arts 53

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. Sounds good?

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Museum Participatory Arts Attitude 34

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 24, 2011

This post features an interview with Sarah Schultz, a museum staffer at one of the institutions Light profiled in the book (the Walker Art Center). One key idea that Paul Light talks about is the notion of slack. We created a teen arts council, invested in staff, and invested in programming. That's how we build trust.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2011

Now that I'm on staff at a museum, I've (re)discovered a more pedestrian value of visitor participation: it's delightful. Be charming and delightful" isn't one of the bottom-line goals of most museums. And yes, they've served our organization in all kinds of tangible ways--introducing us to new interns, volunteers, and program ideas.

Museum 47

Museum Participatory Comment Sound 47

Museum 2.0

JULY 27, 2011

I'm trying to reposition our museum as a cultural hub supporting creative and intellectual community growth. Our conversation made me reflect on the museums that most inspire me from a public service perspective--institutions with missions that stretch far beyond their walls. These museums work differently.

Advocacy 44

Advocacy Public Service Homeless 44

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 22, 2007

Louis City Museum's amateur video contest. And therein lies an essential problem with this and other similar museum forays into Web 2.0: It sounded like a great project from an innovative, creative place. It sounded like a great project from an innovative, creative place. follow-through. What happened? if I'm lucky.

Contest 22

Contest Museum St. Louis Video 22

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

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

I''ve mostly seen museums employ one of two methods for formal community advisors: Create special "spots" on the board of trustees for certain kinds of community representatives. CON: can feel disconnected from the primary governance of the museum or can feel like a second-class board overall. I struggle with both these options.

Community 39

Community Story Museum Map 39

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009

Between high-altitude hijinks, run-ins with wildlife, and very long days of hiking, I finished John Falk's new book, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. In other words, if you are a curious person, you will go to museums to learn new things.

Museum 28

Museum Maslow Facilitation Personal 28

Connection Cafe

NOVEMBER 21, 2013

There’s no reason that arts and cultural organizations can’t do the same thing. It sounds creepy, but this is info you can (and should) use. With zip codes gathered from credit card transactions or post-sale surveys, you can get an idea of where your supporters are coming from. The same is true for your museum.

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System Data Arts Amazon 35