Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2012

Imagine you've just been tasked with developing an innovative, future-thinking national museum for your country's history. Blueprint is the story of a group of people who tried to create a Dutch Museum of National History (INNL). The Museum directors released Blueprint as a showcase for these plans. Where would you start?

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Museum History Netherlands Create 36

Museum 2.0

JULY 7, 2010

Most of my work contracts involve a conversation that goes something like this: "We want to find ways to make our institution more participatory and lively." We want to cultivate a more diverse audience, especially younger people, and we want to do it authentically." Audience development is not an exercise in concentric circles.

Audience 40

Audience Museum Oakland Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2015

And so, one of the most successful, accidental, and fraught participatory projects of the past decade comes to an end. The "love locks" are not a project with an institutional or artistic director. So many participatory projects do the opposite, requiring you to take a dozen tricky steps to no meaningful end.

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Participatory Project Artist Instruction 20

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

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

OCTOBER 31, 2012

Three of them are being hosted at my museum , and one at a mystery location. You Can't Do That in Museums Camp - July 10-12, 2013. In July of 2013, the MAH will host our first You Can't Do That in Museums Camp (or better name to be suggested by you), inviting 80 creative people to collaborate on an experimental exhibition.

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Professional Develop Museum Arts 35

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

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

DECEMBER 28, 2010

Every once in a while I come across a project I wish I could have included in The Participatory Museum. an exhibition produced with schoolchildren at the Wallace Collection in London, is a lovely example of co-creation that demonstrates the multiple benefits of inviting audience members to act as partners in arts organizations.

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Children Museum Create Project 46

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

Last week, I was in Minneapolis for the American Association of Museums annual meeting. Kathleen McLean led a terrific session called "Dangerous Ridiculous" about risk-taking in museums. Interestingly, at my museum, our team is naturally better at ridiculous than we are at dangerous. I found this idea really powerful.

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Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 5, 2008

I was fascinated by our discussion, and Bob came to mind last month, when I was asked to write an article for the Association of Children's Museums quarterly journal, Hand to Hand , about children's museums and Web 2.0. To understand more, I turned to Elaine Gurian's article The Molting of Children's Museums? Why the uniformity?

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Classroom Children Museum Model 22

Tech Soup

JANUARY 31, 2012

This is a participatory live video show - come ready with your questions for our experts! She is an experienced Director, Producer, Researcher, Screenwriter and Social Media Marketing Strategist with field and studio experience on large- and small-scale productions in the United States, England, Ghana, Thailand and Laos.

Storytelling 67

Storytelling Collaboration Video Thailand 67

Tech Soup

JANUARY 20, 2012

This is a participatory live video show - come ready with your questions for our experts! She is an experienced Director, Producer, Researcher, Screenwriter and Social Media Marketing Strategist with field and studio experience on large- and small-scale productions in the United States, England, Ghana, Thailand and Laos.

Collaboration 44

Collaboration Storytelling Video Thailand 44

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2011

Lots of museums these days have video comment booths to invite visitors to tell their stories, but how many of those booths really deliver high-impact content? Last week, I talked with Tina Olsen, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum, about their extraordinary Object Stories project.

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Story Interview Museum Audio 53

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

It started as a handout for a session that Stacey and I are doing at the California Association of Museums, and then I realized it was so darn useful that it was worth sharing with all of you. The majority of our public programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History are created and produced through community collaborations.

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Collaboration Community Tools Museum 55

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

Museum 2.0

MAY 29, 2009

Two weeks ago, I conducted a participatory exhibit design workshop with staff at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Between the giant squid brainstorming and experimentation, I gave a talk to the larger Smithsonian Institution about multi-platform museum experiences. The slides are also available for download.

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Slides Process Video Open 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 15, 2008

The presumed answer is "yes" your museum needs a blog, a pony, or a set of comfy couches. Does your museum need a custom online social network? Many museums have been experimenting in these spaces by creating institutional profiles, museum affinity groups, and connecting with visitors and other museum professionals individually.

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Museum Social Network Case Study Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

These are the slides and notes for the talk I gave at the American Alliance of Museums conference on Monday, April 27 about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. When I became the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago, I took this work with me. They talked about community building.

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Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 2, 2008

Today, Museum 2.0 I started the Museum 2.0 blog in 2006 as a personal learning exercise about "the ways that museums do and can evolve from 1.0 I started the Museum 2.0 blog in 2006 as a personal learning exercise about "the ways that museums do and can evolve from 1.0 and watched the Museum 2.0

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Museum Voice Minnesota Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2008

They felt that replacing the keynotes gave them a real opportunity to bring the whole audience together in focused participation which would hopefully spill out and over into the conference as a whole. I spoke with Jane Weiner, the director/choreographer of Hope Stone , the dance company creating the piece.

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Studies Associations Houston Museum 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. Will the bureaucracy of the institution drown the artists in red tape?

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Artist Museum Project Public 39

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

That's what I found myself wondering again and again in the too-short hour I spent with the director of Temple Contemporary, Rob Blackson. Leave the process to the collaborators and give the product to the audience. You promise your audience quality and you hone your process to deliver it. They were there for chair races.

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Process Share Philadelphia Arts 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

I'm thrilled to share this brilliant guest post by Marilyn Russell, Curator of Education at the Carnegie Museum of Art. In a straightforward way, Marilyn explains how her team developed a participatory project to improve engagement in a gallery with an awkward entry. It is great to feel more of a part of the museum!" "All

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Museum Arts Problem Design 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 24, 2015

I’ve always been inspired by the creative ways the Brooklyn Museum uses technology to connect visitors to museum content. To learn more, I interviewed Brooklyn Museum project partners Shelley Bernstein, Vice Director of Digital Engagement & Technology, and Sara Devine, Manager of Audience Engagement & Interpretive Materials.

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Museum Arts Interview Test 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 30, 2014

Our work to transform the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History into a participatory and community-centered place has been heavily supported by the James Irvine Foundation. The report is a slim 12 pages on the common characteristics of arts organizations that successfully and continuously engage diverse audiences.

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Report Malaysia Memphis Museum 52

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 7, 2009

Every time a colleague tells me her museum has just hired a "community person," a part of me cringes. While subsequent museum staff have kept the project going, the community had connected with me as the focal point, and there has not been a new person who has been able to comparably rally the community to high levels of activity.

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Community Management Museum Aggregator 40

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

s Hawaiian son as applied to museums. Consider these two stories of museum-related wikis that struggled. In May of 2007, Woody Sobey released a wiki for science museum educators to share their demos. Woody had seeded the site with about 12 demos from his own museum, but the wiki never took off. What's a wiki?

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Wiki Wikipedia Museum Doc 23

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

As many of you know, I’m writing a book about participatory design for museums. Over the last week, there’s been a lively discussion on the wiki about the key audiences and goal of the book, and I wanted to open that up to you (and you are, of course, welcome to join the wiki and help). And there’s a third reason.

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Participatory Design Museum Wiki 26

Museum 2.0

MAY 28, 2014

I sat down with Eric Siegel, NYSCI’s Director and Chief Content Officer, to learn more about False Conviction. If there was a way to engage these deep emotions in the context of science museums, then there is an opportunity to expand our impact. Is there a target audience for the project? This project had that feel. If so, whom?

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Help Museum eBook Project 45

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

I've written before about the difference between participatory processes and products , but this question of frameworks and sensibility is more broadly applicable to community engagement strategies. And other times, when I'm focused on opening up access and opportunities for audience members to partner with staff, I'm talking about framework.

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Voice Los Angeles Denver Museum 42

Museum 2.0

JULY 14, 2008

What’s in the crystal ball for museums and libraries? The IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) has commissioned a preliminary proposal for an NAS (National Academy of Sciences) report on museums and libraries in the 21st century. Of course, that audience is a long way from seeing such a report.

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Library Museum Reflection Alternative 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 19, 2010

"How often do we hear colleagues from museums and galleries stating as their fundamental reason for working co-creatively with audiences that they want to make a great piece of museum work, rather than primarily for reasons of social inclusion or democracy?" was the most overwhelming answer.

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Arts Participatory Museum Artist 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2008

Traditional exhibition design, in which the museum has a specific story or message to tell, doesn't easily accommodate visitor co-creation. This realization--that a single museum voice was not the best way to tell a particular story--formed the basis for MN150 , the exhibition explored in this post. None of that made sense.

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Interview Minnesota Museum History 21