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. People go to museums for leisure.)

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Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

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

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. This post shares my reflections on the projects and five things I learned from their work. As one participant said, "the museum feels friendly in a way it usually doesn't."

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Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

Have Fun - Do Good

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

After one of the best meals of my life at Casa Lucio I'm back from a 2-week vacation in Spain, and wanted to share some of my reflections before it all fades away into the routine of everyday life. Art and Beauty The highlight of Madrid for me was going to The Prado. Sounds like the basic ingredients for happiness to me.

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Spain Cancer Exercise Arts 61

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 29, 2009

When you find a bar with your favorite song on the jukebox, or a museum room that feels like your grandmother's living room, you suddenly feel a strong affinity and are able to see yourself reflected in the space. Of course, the problem with all of this is that it sounds crazy from a business perspective.

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Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Model 34

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 19, 2006

These moments when the audio stream was dropping in and out, a video and audio lag time between the 2 worlds of 15-45 seconds (adding some confusion), feedback and distorted sound quality, and a chaotic chat stream. Here's a few reflections from people in the room. You're not going to have perfection when it is a experiment!

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Second Life Life Reflection Avatar 50

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.

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Advocacy Public Service Homeless 44

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Last week, Jim Richardson and I hosted MuseumNext , a 24-hour workshop for museum professionals focused on bringing new, wild museum projects into the world. We also ended the entire event with one of my favorite exercises, the Exquisite Corpse game, in which participants co-created comics of their craziest museum dreams.

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Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32

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.

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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.

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Museum Maslow Facilitation Personal 28

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

How do you find your way around a multi-faceted museum? I spent some time playing with this question last week at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a large general museum that is moving toward redesign of the permanent galleries. Do you interrogate the map? Create a plan for yourself? Get deliciously lost?

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Experiment Lesson Learning Museum 44

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

I've long believed that museums have a special opportunity to support the community spirit of Web 2.0 This month brings three examples of museums hosting meetups for online communities: On 8.6.08, the Computer History Museum (Silicon Valley, CA) hosted a Yelp! To some people, these events may sound like losers.

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Audience segmentation and research has become a hot topic in museums, especially when it comes to crafting appealing offerings that are customized to different kinds of visitors. I sat down with Kristen Denner, Director of Membership and Annual Fund, to learn more about the program's development and the museum's goals for its future.

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Interview Director Museum Arts 46

Museum 2.0

MARCH 25, 2015

This is the first in a two-part series about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History’s new theory of change. This week, Ian David Moss and I are each writing blog posts about our collaborative process to develop a theory of change at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We had tripled our attendance.

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Process Change Develop Museum 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Dial-A-Stranger is what it sounds like. They edit the conversations into radio shows, which are then made available as a podcast (you can listen to episode featuring me, #89: Museum Secrets, here ). Mercedes and Zach aren't just interrogators; they also shared their own reflections and stories throughout our conversation.

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Reflection Museum Podcast Participatory 20

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

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

In the spirit of a popular post written earlier this year , I want to share the behind the scenes on our current almost-museumwide exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz Collects. We tried collecting dreams, collecting smells or sounds or stories, but memories was most resonant.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

This month we’ve been thinking about “What is a museum?” (I'm I’ve been visiting museums my whole life. Does that make me the best judge of museums? People are the defining characteristics of museums. I’ve worked with and at plenty of museums that can sometimes feel empty. I'm not alone there.

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Museum Place Life Ohio 36

Museum 2.0

APRIL 16, 2008

I've written before about the inspiring work that the Brooklyn Museum of Art is doing with their community-focused efforts. Click is an exhibition process in three parts: The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations.

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Museum Participatory Artist Arts 24

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

Today, the Luce Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is launching what they claim is the first ever alternate reality game (ARG) in a museum. Why would an art museum create an ARG? And the "stuff" of the game is real stuff, artifacts created by players and sent to the museum. Coincidence?

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Game Museum Arts Alternative 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

When you want visitors to spend a long time reflecting and sharing their thoughts, you need to design spaces for response that are comfortable and minimize distractions. Rabinowitz commented that "as a 40-year veteran of history museum interpretation, I can say that I never learned so much from and about visitors."

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Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite museums are small, funky places run by iconoclasts—but that’s not useful to most professionals who work for organizations in which they have little control over size or leadership matters. What new projects might allow you to better reflect those aspirations? It’s nice to have both.

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Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 7, 2008

Moveable Type, like its predecessor, Listening Post (now touring international art and science museums), is an exercise in harnessing and repackaging data as art. But when it comes to presenting data, most museum folks believe that over-interpretation is necessary. But in Hansen and Rubin's case, it actually gets across.

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Design Data Artist New York 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 8, 2006

Elisa’s focus is interactive arts, media design, and cultural management, and she has been involved in many pertinent projects, such as MUVI (the Virtual Museum of the Collective Memory of Lombardia). She talked about how hard it was to get different social groups to share perspectives on how sound should be managed.

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Interview Museum Culture Sound 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

What happens when a formal art museum invites a group of collaborative, participatory artists to be in residence for a year? Will the artists ruin the museum with their plant vacations and coatroom concerts? But for museum and art wonks, it could be. No, this is not a reality TV show.

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Artist Museum Project Public 39

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2008

On June 4, we opened The Tech Virtual Test Zone , a new 2000 sq ft gallery at The Tech Museum of Innovation featuring exhibits on the theme of art, film, and music that were originally developed in Second Life by a community of creative amateurs. Some museum pros have been puzzled by this.

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Virtual Tech Lesson Develop 21

Connection Cafe

MARCH 28, 2019

At the end of February, I attended the first of (what I hope will be) many Museums Advocacy Days (MAD) on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. There was something magical about the combination of something I love – museums – with something that scares me: US politics. around something I’ve suspected for a long time: everyone loves museums.

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Museum Lesson Advocacy Louisiana 26

DipJar

APRIL 19, 2021

Others are looking at no demand at all, and with it, no revenue, because their mission involved gathering large groups of people in places like theaters, galleries, and museums. Imagine you run a performing arts organization dedicated to saving theater programs in your local public school system. It may not be as hard as it sounds.

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Skills Professional Philadelphia University 98

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

It made me think in ways that I haven't before about the relation of art--as expressive culture--to democracy. Helene Moglen, professor of literature, UCSC After a year of tinkering, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is now showing an exhibition, All You Need is Love , that embodies our new direction as an institution.

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Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

EveryAction

MARCH 16, 2017

We also like to believe she was one of the first proponents of the "shine theory" with her quote, " There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. ". Sheroes in the Arts. Gentileschi is remembered, however, as an accomplished Baroque artist whose trials did not define her art.

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Story Angola Sierra Leone History 133

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2013

Any job with the word “coordinator” in it sounds like you might spend your time sorting socks into pairs. But this job is really important to the future of our museum, and I’m hoping that you or someone you know might be a great fit for it. Museum of Art and History Quick Hits professional development'

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Program Museum Work History 39

Museum 2.0

MAY 14, 2009

I've become convinced that successful paths to participation in museums start with self-identification. The easiest way to do that is to acknowledge their uniqueness and validate their ability to connect with the museum on their own terms. Who is the "me" in the museum experience? Not so at museums.

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Museum Personal Experiment Profile 20

Connection Cafe

JULY 1, 2016

Does telefunding sound like an old-fashioned fundraising approach to you? As I learned from Katie Boehm at KidsQuest Children’s Museum this week, staying fresh in your fundraising approach is more about the approach and strategy then it is about the channel. The calling campaigns, however, were extremely successful. Set expectations.

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Donor Museum Seattle Stats 24

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2009

It also includes reflections from the exhibit team on the project. This might make Advice sound more like an educational program than an exhibit, or like a failure on the unfacilitated front. They reminded me of street vendors or great science museum cart educators, imparting an energy to the space without overwhelming it.

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Advice Museum Facilitation Student 31

Museum 2.0

MAY 14, 2007

Was it a museum professional or an outsider? I'm kneedeep in the final run-up to the opening of Operation Spy at the Spy Museum, but in the fleeting moments between disasters and near-disasters, I'm thinking about AAM. Several were created or conceived by a single person, often an artist/non-museum professional.

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Life Create Change Museum 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 11, 2008

No, these are neither the words of a self-important curator nor a well-spoken museum director. the crowd-curated photo exhibition now open at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It is a substantive research contribution by the museum to the social technology field at large. s about data, and making the data visual.

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Museum Artist Photography Arts 20