Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Adam and I first met in 2008, when we were part of a National Academies think tank-ish thing on the future of museums and libraries. All the participants were asked to write one-page position papers about museums and libraries in the 21st century. Adam argued for museums to become "less visitor-oriented," and I argued the opposite.

Arts 45

Arts Museum Artist Tucson 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. You can explore the projects in full on the class wiki. This post shares my reflections on the projects and five things I learned from their work.

Participatory 51

Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

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!

Museum 22

Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

MAY 26, 2009

On a recent trip to DC, an old friend showed me around a new exhibit at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide. The USHMM pledge wall is notable for its blending of digital and analog technologies. But it wouldn't have been nearly as powerful.

Pledge 23

Pledge Museum Digital Indianapolis 23

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2017

This is the ninth 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. Building the Abbott Square project taught me a whole new mindset: that of the real estate developer. We develop the projects. We develop the ideas.

Develop 20

Develop Artist Participatory Blended 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 6, 2008

It's an interesting discussion, but it's not what makes The 39 Clues and other projects like it worth studying. This problem is analagous to the repeat visit problem for museums. Museum visits, like book reading, can be an intense and wonderful experience. But is one museum visit enough to compel a second visit?

Museum 23

Museum Game Platform New York 23

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 made a giant mobile for the center of the museum out of origami birds folded from visitor comments received in the past year.

Participatory 44

Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

MARCH 7, 2007

Nik inquired as to how I feel about museum blogs. what's your take on museums that keep blogs? In general, yes, I think that museums maintaining blogs is an effective, cheap way to get changing content out to the public frequently. version of the news clippings tackboard on “Current Events” in hallways of some museums.

Voice 36

Voice Difference Museum Aggregator 36

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

Exhibit labels in science centers ask more questions than any other kinds of museums, and yet the questions are often awful--teacherly, overly rhetorical, and totally meaningless. asked by a cop or mother, garners the full attention of asker and askee alike, museum questions like "what is nanotechnology?,"

Reflection 20

Reflection Research Question Museum 20

Have Fun - Do Good

DECEMBER 19, 2006

Barbara worked for my Dad at the Mystic Seaport Museum , and every year she would knit gifts for my parents and I. When I was growing up, every Christmas I would get a bumpy package with a card that said, For: Britt, From: Barbara Gould in criss-crossy handwriting. One year she made each of us a sweater with a story.

Place 43

Place Afghanistan Rwanda Time 43

Association TV

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

Have you ever been to a restaurant, museum or shopping mall and needed to use the bathroom? If you’ve ever worked on a single project long enough, you know that elements start to blend together over time. You begin by looking up and around for any sort of signage. You halt the conversation and break away from your loved ones.

Associations 295

Associations Platform Search Contact 295

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 27, 2007

Heck, sign me up for a ticket to the zombie museum. But when I took off my “entertainment” glasses and put on my museum eyes, my reaction wasn’t amusement. I imagined museum folks reading the article and snapping the paper closed with smug smiles on their faces: "See. It was distaste. This is why we have to avoid Disneyfication."

Model 20

Model Museum Blended New York 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 4, 2007

Many in-museum 2.0-style style projects are major initiatives require a somewhat complicated blend of physical exhibit and digital capabilities. Many museums have created short-term mapping or timeline projects that are post-it based. There are many legitimate criticisms of this kind of project. It's messy.

Generation 20

Generation Tools Museum Wiki 20

Have Fun - Do Good

NOVEMBER 8, 2007

For example, A Green Mountain Coffee Roasters sampler of Organic Breakfast Blend, Organic French Roast and Organic Sumatran Reserve is $26.95. Plan a Volunteer Vacation Getaway Together Give the gift of time together while also living and working with people on a service project. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift.

Gift 67

Gift New Mexico Giving Mexico 67

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 Diane is both visionary and no-nonsense about deconstructing the barriers that many low-income and non-white teenagers and families face when entering a museum. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture. blog posts from the past.

St. Louis 45

St. Louis Museum Audience Teen 45

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

"The words we use in attempting to change museum directions matter. Our museum in Santa Cruz has been slammed by those who believe participatory experiences have gone too far. I am glad this conversation is happening and that both museum professionals and local Santa Cruzans are engaged. But we do have ''and.''

Participatory 53

Participatory Museum Arts History 53

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 8, 2009

While this post is not about museums, it tells the story of how a performance group developed participatory elements as an integral part of their show. Tags: guestpost Unusual Projects and Influences. This post was written by Screamin’ Scott Simon, member of the band Sha Na Na since 1970 and Nina’s father. And then…… on with the show!

Cleveland 20

Cleveland Contest Los Angeles Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 8, 2013

Like a lot of organizations, my museum struggles with two conflicting goals: The museum should be for everyone in our community. At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we''re approaching this challenge through a different lens: social bridging. And rarely the twain shall meet.

Museum 55

Museum Social Arts History 55

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2010

When I was in Taiwan, I heard again and again from museum professionals: "We are very conservative in Taiwanese museums. This post is a photo essay focusing on an area at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts called the Digiark. The look blends funkiness with clean lines, industrial space with natural light.

Taiwan 36

Taiwan Museum Arts National 36

Museum 2.0

JULY 28, 2010

Diane is both visionary and no-nonsense about deconstructing the barriers that many low-income and non-white teenagers and families face when entering a museum. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture. YES student projects last for several years, and teens are given dedicated space for their projects.

St. Louis 53

St. Louis Audience Teen Museum 53

Museum 2.0

APRIL 24, 2012

I'm heading this weekend to the American Association of Museums conference in Minneapolis. Here's what I'd love to explore at AAM this year: Event-driven models for museums. About 85% of visitors to our museum attend through a program/event. (No relation to AAM. How prevalent is this? Participatory history programming.

Conversation 43

Conversation Participatory Museum Minneapolis 43

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2012

Last Friday, I witnessed something beautiful at my museum. At the adjacent table, my colleague Stacey Garcia was meeting with a local artist, Kyle Lane-McKinley, to talk about an upcoming project. I've been documenting lots of small bridging incidents at our museum over the past few months. Kyle had brought his baby with him.

Community 42

Community Teen Build Social 42

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 31, 2007

I’m working on a game design project now that involves an interesting experiment: a blend of real-time and on-demand gaming. What's more important: convenience or realism? And I mean experiment, because I don’t have a bias, or even truly, a hypothesis, as to which component will be better, more popular, more compelling.

Game 20

Game Time Sponsor Blended 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2009

You can explore the project wiki where we coordinated the exhibit, including the project overview , our six-week plan to get it all done, and individual sections for development of concept , content , interaction , graphics , marketing , fabrication , installation , and evaluation. This is a good lesson for museum talk-back design.

Advice 31

Advice Museum Facilitation Student 31

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 6, 2009

Several of the projects I'm working on these days relate to the concept of "extending the museum experience." And so when it comes to designing online extensions to the museum experience, we need to apply a different set of expectations from those we use to design onsite experiences. But most online experiences are not linear.

Exercise 20

Exercise Design Online Museum 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 14, 2008

Many museums have jumped into the middle level—producing their own content—without starting with commenting. Consider the path of the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Jennifer Caleshu, their director of communication, is a museum talker extraordinaire. Both are museum-run forums for visitors to post their own content and opinions.

Museum 20

Museum San Francisco Myspace Comment 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

There are lots of museums (and organizations of all kinds) looking for ways to inspire users and visitors to produce their own content and share it with the institution online. Today, a look at one of the projects I believe does this best--the World Beach Project. The World Beach Project does not exist in the V&A Museum.

Project 38

Project Museum Artist Map 38

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 9, 2008

Museum Projects COSI has done a lovely job aggregating all of their social media efforts into one "Share" tab on their website. The Brooklyn Museum is offering a new "socially networked" membership called 1stfans starting Jan 3. Let me know if you end up using it for a museum event or exhibit! Keep 'em coming, and enjoy!

Project 20

Project Job Tools San Francisco 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2010

We share an abiding interest in exploring the community-enhancing roles of libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs), especially in terms of the practice of hospitality and service within the institution. Nina's research keeps finding that the right kind of constraints work to produce a better participatory museum experience.

Place 30

Place Discussion Library Museum 30