Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 12, 2011

This week, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy released a new paper by Holly Sidford called Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change. The majority of foundation funding for the arts goes to large, established organizations that present work that is based in the European canon for a primarily white, upper-income audience.

Arts 52

Arts Fund Artist Houston 52

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. Trying to engaged the teen-to-twenty-something who normally may not use the research library.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

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). It's easier to secure grants for community-based programming or exhibitions, but it's not easy to get funding for some of the core work that museums do.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" Over the past four years, I''ve been running a small regional art and history museum in Santa Cruz, CA. and "why?" to "how?".

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

One of the best personal brands that I’ve seen on Instagram from a nonprofit leader is Thomas P Campbell the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum. This shot is a painting at a museum visited during a professional conference for museums. He gives you the inside story about the work of art. Visibility.

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Personal Create Photography Museum 50

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?" In Your Face ).

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Museum Difference Participatory History 29

Museum 2.0

JULY 6, 2016

For the last time this summer, I'm sharing a chapter from my new book The Art of Relevance to celebrate its release. FoodWhat's staff and teens have taught me a lot about what it really means to be relevant to people who are often overlooked or ignored. FoodWhat empowers teens to change their lives through farming and food justice.

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Teen Arts Classroom Student 25

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2009

This week, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience , featuring rock posters from San Francisco in the heyday of Bill Graham and electric kool-aid. It is an incredible museum experience. The visitor is given a copy of her poster and the museum keeps a copy as well.

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Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2007

But I’d been scribbling notes for an art museum label post for awhile, and then yesterday, the NY Times had a review of a new show at MOMA, Comic Abstraction. And it ended with this: No wonder it [MOMA] ends up showing shallow, label-dependent art rather than work that offers deeper, more contradictory encounters.

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Arts Museum Artist Audio 30

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2010

Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. During the ensuing discussion, one woman asked, "Which audiences are least interested in social participation in museums?" Many teens love to perform for each other. First, teens often have incredibly tight social spheres.

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Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Connection Cafe

OCTOBER 19, 2015

After jumping in, you swam across the short length of the hole (about 10 yards), and emerge, wet and freezing, only to get to race through temps in the teens to try to warm up in a lukewarm hot tub. Museums, zoos, and aquariums are finding that crowdfundraising can be a strategic tool to add to their fundraising playbook. Denver Zoo.

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Arts Wisconsin Los Angeles Denver 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 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. I love art and performances and family festivals. What amenities does it need? Community stakeholders made this a community project.

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Community Build Arts History 34

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

Art spaces masquerading as laundromats and letterpresses. From a museum perspective, I think there's a lot to learn from these venues' business models, approach to collecting and exhibiting work, and connection with their audiences. Want some waffles with your art? Skill-sharing free schools. Community science workshops.

Culture 49

Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? Community First Program Design At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we've gravitated towards a "community first" program planning model. My answer: neither.

Teen 20

Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. So I felt lucky last week to learn not only about an innovative arts exhibition employing geocaching, but to discover that its exhibit developer, Seth! to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

It's not every day that a visitor buys pizza for everyone in the museum. Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. The group was mostly young (teens to thirties) and nerd-diverse: a little bit punk, a little bit hacker, a little bit craft grrl. It was pretty freaking amazing.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 3, 2005

Some of the entries of what you can read on the Walker Blog, may appear at first glance to be mundane details of cube life , but then you remember that it is a museum blog and it makes the institution seem more human. This Walker Blog let's us peer into the inner workings of the art institution. I saw your posts on Art Mobs.

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Artist Arts Process Remix 50

Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2013

I spent the weekend queuing up posts for my forthcoming blog-cation--nine weeks of guest posts and reruns from the Museum 2.0 You''re in for a treat, with upcoming posts on creativity, collections management, elitism, science play, permanent participatory galleries, partnering with underserved teens, magic vests, and more.

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Museum Participatory Reflection Conference 35

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2008

Thanks to Bryan Kennedy from the Science Museum of Minnesota for providing this overview/reflection on the Museums and the Web conference that recently concluded in Montreal. Museums and the Web 2008 guest blogger Bryan Kennedy here. The Walker Art Center is turning its teen website over to the teens.

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Museum Web Teen Flickr 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Last Friday night, my museum hosted a fabulous (in my biased opinion) event called Race Through Time. When Friday night rolled around, we did see a crowd that skewed decidedly younger and hipper than our standard museum audience. Performances just for teens. Late night mixers at museums for young adults.

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Audience Develop Museum History 52

Tech Soup

JUNE 21, 2012

Teen Outreach Pregnancy Services. Most often, private operating foundations are organizations that operate museums, theaters, or arts centers, although any other charitable activity conducted directly by the foundation can qualify. " —Laura Pedersen. Executive Director.

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Foundation San Francisco Donation Los Angeles 63

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! Me: Have you ever been to this museum? meetup for Elite Yelp!

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Very, very few museum visitors are in the "dog and baby" category. I will always remember when Robin Dowden of the Walker Art Center told me that she knew their teen website was working because she thought it was ugly and impossible to navigate. She needs to nap when she gets cranky, even though she keeps flailing her limbs.

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People Articulate Culture Teen 54

Museum 2.0

APRIL 8, 2015

I''m getting ready for the American Alliance of Museums conference later this month. How can you tell if you want to go to "Museums and Communities" or "Museums and Social Issues" or "Museums and Very Cute Lizards"? If the best part of the conference isn''t on the agenda, how the heck are you supposed to access it?

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Museum Mentoring Linkedin Hints 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

Last week marked four years for the Museum 2.0 People--especially young folks looking to break into the museum business--often ask me how I got here. Ed Rodley recently wrote a blog post about museum jobs entitled "Getting Hired: It's Who You Know and Who Knows You." hour at the Museum. I made $26/hour at NASA and $7.25/hour

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Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton - Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History Elaine Charnov - The NY Public Library Jason Eppink - Museum of the Moving Image Syed Salahuddin - Babycastles Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library 100 Years of the flagship library in New York.

Game 52

Game Culture Change Museum 52

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. Pocket Museums in bathrooms. We're going to need more jars. They might not match. Digital Collections comment wall.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

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. I worked on one project in which the client institution thought they wanted unfettered teen expression.

Project 22

Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

The chairs were cast-off art, reclaimed as art, available for people to take off the hooks and use. What kind of an art institution is this? It encourages process-driven performances and art projects. It takes the kind of risks that a university art gallery should take. They were there for artist talks.

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Process Share Philadelphia Arts 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2009

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission.

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Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

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." This is the opposite situation of the previous design goal, one typical in science and children's museums.

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Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 13, 2007

The essays in this section, on “Expressing and Co-Creating,” present projects in which visitors create exhibition content, contribute to its creation, or get a heavy done of meaning-making in their experience of museum content. Who controls the content in the museum? Who controls the museum experience? First, museum content.

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Voice Create Museum Arts 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 4, 2007

On Tuesday, I reviewed Elaine Gurian’s essay, Choosing Among the Options , on museum archetypes and self-definition. Today, discussion with Elaine about ways museums choose their direction, how change is possible, and new museum types to be added to the list. What if you don’t want to be identified as one type of museum?

Museum 20

Museum Puerto Rico Change Boston 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2007

This week, thoughts on Chapter 12 of Elaine Gurian’s book Civilizing the Museum , "Threshold Fear: Architecture program planning." In this essay, Elaine discusses the various barriers to entry for non-traditional visitors to museums, that is, the threshold fear that keeps such potential visitors from walking in our doors.

People 20

People Museum San Jose Chapter 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 This post is even more relevant today to the broader conversation about audience diversity in the arts than when it was published three years ago. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture. blog posts from the past. YES students defy expectations.

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St. Louis Museum Audience Teen 45

Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

I just returned from the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia. I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. what is the value of the exhibition experience to non-participants, that is, regular museum visitors?

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Slides Participatory Museum Children 20