Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2015

Last week, the international press lit up with a story from Paris : the city is removing the "love locks" from the Pont des Arts bridge. And so, one of the most successful, accidental, and fraught participatory projects of the past decade comes to an end. Your love is memorialized forever. Payoff here is fast and powerful.

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Participatory Project Artist Instruction 20

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. This exhibition represents a few big shifts for us: We used a more participatory design process. We had some money.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2016

While there was evidence of plenty of community engagement work across museums and galleries, most of it was funded project by project. Most participatory projects were short-term, siloed innovations, not institutional transformations. This made the work more urgent, fragile. and realistic.

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Museum Participatory Resource Place 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. I thought the pinnacle of participatory practice was an exhibit that could inspire collective visitor action without facilitation. A black box with people crowded around, talking and sharing and making and doing. Humans empower each other.

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 18, 2014

And it''s got me thinking about how we build energy and audience for the arts in this country. Barry Hessenius recently wrote a blog post questioning the theory that more art into the school day will increase and bolster future adult audiences for art experiences. Like Barry, I feel that more art in schools is always better.

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Arts Build United States Audience 47

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 23, 2008

I'm prepping for a workshop on Social Media and wanted do a round up of recent compelling examples of arts organizations using social media strategies and tools. I've covered arts organizations and social media here and there over the past three years and last winter co-wrote a cover story article with Rebecca Krause-Hardie for ArtsReach.

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Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2010

As many of you know, I've been working for the past year+ on a book about visitor participation in museums, libraries, science centers, and art galleries. The Participatory Museum is a practical guide to visitor participation. The Participatory Museum is an attempt at providing such a resource.

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Participatory Museum Vietnam Netherlands 30

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 1, 2014

It made me dig up this 2011 interview with Tina Olsen (then at the Portland Art Museum) about their extraordinary Object Stories project. They designed a participatory project that delivers a compelling end product for onsite and online visitors… and they learned some unexpected lessons along the way. Who was there?”

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Museum Story Project Design 43

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 28, 2013

Earlier in 2013, I was amazed to visit one of the new “Studio” spaces at the Denver Art Museum. The Denver Art Museum is no stranger to community collaborations, but we’ve been dipping in our toe a little more deeply when it comes to developing permanent participatory installations. Who are all of these people?

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Denver Museum Arts Collaboration 35

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Source: Share Your Ideas. Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. Imagine sitting around a conference table planning an upcoming project that involves user-generated content. Rick wanted a better way to describe what kinds of projects led to different community outcomes.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

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

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. Come share your projects, challenges, questions, wild successes and epic failures with creative changemakers from around the world. Develop compelling, powerful participatory offers and promises for your prospective partners.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 23, 2018

Two years ago, our team at the MAH embarked on our most challenging co-creation project ever. We partnered with foster youth, former foster youth, artists, and community advocates to create an exhibition that used art to spark action on issues facing foster youth. This project wove together many different participatory threads.

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Issue Childhood Community Create 45

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

This blog is about shared learning, and I went to engineering school. Our theory of change posits that when we develop projects that bridge “unexpected connections” between diverse people and ideas, people build understanding and social capital with community members from different cultures, generations, and backgrounds.

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Measure Arts People Museum 47

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. But next month, Britain Loves Wikipedia will commence--the third instance of a strange and fascinating collaborative project between museums and the Wikipedia community (Wikimedians). I hope you'll share your thoughts in the comments.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. In the fall of 2013, they launched Re:Make , an ambitious project to redevelop the museum, live, on the floor, with a mix of staff, guest artists, and community members. It''s a shared space and process. It''s serious.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

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

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. Deborah''s vision for the arts leading the way to stronger future inspired me. But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. 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

Last week, I participated in three very intense days of project, curriculum, and online community planning for a new project, E-Mediat , a multi-stakeholder capacity building project for NGOS and Social Media in the Middle East. Multi-stakeholder projects with many organizations, people, and roles are complex.

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Network Build Yemen Morocco 95

Museum 2.0

APRIL 20, 2009

I’d never attended before and was impressed by many very smart, international people doing radical projects to make museum collections and experiences accessible and participatory online. Are participatory activities happening on the web because that is the best place for them? Instead, I found a standard art museum.

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Participatory Museum Web Indianapolis 35

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. They were there for project brainstorming. What kind of an art institution is this? It encourages process-driven performances and art projects. They were there for artist talks. There's no money to fix them.

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Process Share Philadelphia Arts 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 25, 2011

Note From Beth: Yesterday, I attended a convening called “ Beyond Dynamic Adaptability ” for arts organizations about cultural participation in the arts. With a project like Granito, the film is only the beginning and serves as an invitation for everyone to share their story.

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Guatemala Movie Artist Award 93

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. This post shares some of the most interesting questions I''ve heard throughout these experiences. A lot of these projects are about getting people to be more social and active in museums.

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

This simple participatory project invites visitors to contribute their own small objects in little alcoves in our bathrooms. We have seven participatory elements in our current exhibitions on three floors, ranging from voting to talkback walls to an in-depth "make a memory jar" craft activity.

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Museum Difference Examples Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. This past weekend, in conjunction with our exhibition about Ze Frank's current participatory project, A Show , we hosted " Ze Frank Weekend "--a quickie summer camp of workshops, activities, presentations, and lots of hugging.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

MARCH 13, 2013

Visitor-contributed photos surround a collection piece in Carnegie Museum of Art's Oh Snap! It can be incredibly difficult to design a participatory project that involves online and onsite visitor engagement. In this guest post, Jeffrey shares the story behind their big hit with a visitor co-created exhibition.

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Authoring Open Experiment Museum 53

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

This post shares some of the most interesting questions I've heard throughout these experiences. 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. Yes and no.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 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

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.

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Public Museum Arts History 27

Museum 2.0

APRIL 4, 2012

Museums have been grappling with this question for years ( here's a 2007 roundup of such projects ), most aggressively in zoos and natural history museums where staff hope to inspire conservation and in history/concept museums that focus on civic engagement and activism. No small task for a museum exhibition. Supporting a thousand.

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Story Participatory Museum History 47

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 11, 2015

INTERNSHIPS If you want to join us in Santa Cruz for more professional learning, consider an internship at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We''re offering internships this summer in: Participatory Exhibition Design. Help take the participatory elements of this permanent gallery to the finish line. Community Programs.

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Participatory Community Museum History 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 23, 2014

They were “preaching the museum gospel” in NYC via alternative tours at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We interacted with the art and with each other through dynamic photo challenges, kinesthetic activities, and conversations. We shared what captivated and spoke to us on a personal level, not just what we were told was “important."

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Museum Interview New York Interaction 55

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

Then, for an hour, former foster youth who helped design the exhibition shared their stories with supervisors. They shared their hopes. The Lost Childhoods exhibition is a platform for 100+ partners to share their stories, artwork, ideas, projects, volunteer opportunities, and events.

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Platform Impact Childhood Museum 31

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

We wanted to share with people, in as clear and transparent a format as possible, our approach to developing exhibitions. It's a working document, and we mean to put it to work planning new projects with our partners. Last month, MAH curator Susan Hillhouse and I sat down and wrote an exhibition philosophy for our museum.

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Museum Artist Participatory History 38

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

At this conference in 2005, the backchannel was projected on the screen behind the speaker. While this advice is more appropriate for the classroom, Vicky Davis shares how she manages the back channel. Kristiansen captured the drama on this video clip of Mena Trott's Keynote calling for more civility in blog commenting.

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Reflection Conference Resource Arts 69

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’s a thrilling challenge to the traditional form of art museum exhibit design, and better yet, visitors like it.

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Denver Museum Arts Remix 21