Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

George Scheer is the director and co-founder of Elsewhere Collective, a fascinating "living museum" in a former thrift store in Greensboro, NC. In this post, George grapples with the challenges of balancing the care for a museum collection with that of contemporary artists-in-residence who are constantly reinterpreting it.

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Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2010

This is the final segment in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. This posts explains why and how I self-published The Participatory Museum. COST: Museum books tend to be expensive - because they are printed in small runs, the price for a 400-page paperback can be as high as $40. Why Self-Publish?

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Participatory Museum Process Adobe 33

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. After a broad survey, Rick’s team defined three broad categories of public participation in scientific research: contribution, collaboration, and co-creation. Wiki users are often collaborators. I’ve added one more category to the mix called hosted.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2012

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), we've started experimenting with a "community first" approach to program development. Each small group spent fifteen minutes brainstorming the needs for that community, and then another fifteen discussing potential projects and collaborators that could help meet those needs.

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Program Community Design Museum 49

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

JANUARY 25, 2012

Stacey has been collaborating with local artists to produce a series of content-rich events that invite visitors to participate in a range of hands-on activities. Instead, Stacey thought, why not make the feedback experience an activity unto itself? Instead, Stacey thought, why not make the feedback experience an activity unto itself?

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Activities Active Activism Participatory 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 1, 2013

It takes you through the technologies and tools for each channel for different goals and offers up lots of case studies from organizations such as National Wildlife Federation, Red Cross, AARP, Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, American Museum of Natural History, SEIU and others. Click to see larger version. Sometimes easier said than done!).

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Campaign Online Chapter Model 97

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 24, 2017

In the first rectangle, I sketched out one version of how our organization could be structured. After an hour, I had 12 different versions of our staff structure, each in its own little box. But among them lay the seeds of our museum’s future. But among them lay the seeds of our museum’s future. But I resisted structure.

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Org Learning Structure Museum 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

We've gotten a little more organized at The Museum of Art & History , and we've now released opportunities for summer internships. These are unpaid part-time and full-time opportunities to help design public programs, develop new uses for the museum, perform visitor research, and pursue unusual projects.

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Museum Participatory Arts Attitude 34

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

And while anything you do the first time will not be perfect and in many cases stressful, in the end it was a good experience. As someone who has been in the nonprofit field 35 years, I can sum up my experience as: ”Remember, it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” Then we opened up for discussion.

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Reflection NTEN Change Facilitation 124

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

And while we're advertising positions, we've also learned to advertise something else: the experience of what it's like to be an intern at the MAH. I had a bit of a wakeup call about internships last month at an "emerging leaders" lunch event at the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums conference. We might never get there.

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Museum Student Participatory Structure 35

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2009

Jane McGonigal and the folks from IFTF have released a new future-casting game/collaborative experience called Signtific Lab. And while it's fun as an online experience, I see the potential for Signtific to be repurposed in physical space as a dynamic platform for capturing diverse visitor opinions on a variety of "what if?"

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Game Experiment Participatory Museum 24

Museum 2.0

JULY 10, 2018

The museum was in huge financial trouble. My expertise was on inviting strangers to participate in public settings like museums. I had lots of creative formats for drawing people out, sharing stories, and working collaboratively. I remember the first staff meeting I ever ran. I felt like a new teacher on the first day of school.

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Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

Forum One

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

This Black History Month, we reflect on the strategy work that our team does through our partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture —much of which centers around expanding access. And for those who have, they quickly understand that the Museum has much more to offer than can be absorbed in a day.

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History Accessibility Museum Award 74

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

MAY 19, 2016

For example, when we held community meetings about the development of a new creative town square next to our museum, a group of middle/upper-class moms talked about not feeling safe downtown. Bridged groups are useful if you want people to collaborate on a more inclusive vision of the future. Child care. Networking opportunities.

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Build Community Museum Participatory 35

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2007

In January, I interviewed Sibley about the potential use of virtual worlds and Second Life by museums, but in the four months since then, the virtual world platform--and the hype around it--has exploded. It seems that Second Life is both the closest and farthest thing from many museum professionals' minds. Collaborative Experience.

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Second Life Museum Life Virtual 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2009

On Monday, I gave the keynote at the Museums in Conversation conference in Tarrytown, NY. I learned to cultivate creative greed while working on Operation Spy at the International Spy Museum, where I was lucky to be working on a project that was so new to us that we didn't have any pre-established models or structures for doing it.

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Museum Conversation Columbus Local 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

In this report, the authors describe three specific models for public participation: contribution, collaboration, and co-creation. In the collaborative model, visitors are invited to serve as active partners in the creation of an institutional project which is originated and ultimately controlled by the institution.

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Public Research Participatory Report 36

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). Some of these challenges were about mission fit.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

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

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

The conventional wisdom on museum memberships is that they are "one size fits many" programs whose primary benefits are free entrance to the museum and insider access to exhibition openings. But what about all the other people who love your museum? Want to know how the Brooklyn Museum is answering this question?

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Museum Audience Program Artist 24

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. This post shares some of the most interesting questions I've heard throughout these experiences. The Museum 2.0 A lot of these projects are about getting people to be more social and active in museums.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 8, 2011

Nikki created "The Ministry of Rules" --a shadow organization that existed for one week during half-term break, staffed by visitors who served as "Inspectors" investigating, exploring, and poking fun at the rules that make museums and galleries go. How did the museum staff respond to this experience?

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Interview Museum Badge Game 37

Museum 2.0

APRIL 23, 2009

Like many people who've worked in science centers and interactive experience museums, I've always been perplexed by the fact that hands-on workshop audiences top out around age 14. They are more than just workshop spaces--they are member institutions, like museums. Isn't this one of our dreams for museums?

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Museum North Carolina San Francisco Structure 24

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

Here are a few design rules I use to think about what kinds of designed dialogue environments are right for different experience goals. If your goal is to encourage visitors to perceive themselves as partners in the content co-creation experience, make room for their thoughts sooner rather than later. A lone "What do you think?"

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Design Goal Difference Platform 31

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). In my experience, innovation is about flexibility, capacity, and collaborative relationships. A crew that has the capacity to build a sign at the last minute.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Nonprofit Tech for Good

DECEMBER 14, 2022

You can collaborate with other nonprofits in your region or in your issue area to investigate whether you can all offer benefits for each other. For example, if you join a modern art museum, there is a good chance you won’t have to pay admission to other modern art museums. This can include museums, archives, galleries, etc.

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Donor Sponsor Accessibility Music 345

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2008

The VSA has replaced their keynotes with structured group dialogue. But the VSA has taken an intentional approach to these structured conversations with the goal of putting the (arguably) best part of conferences—the side conversations and hallway discussions—front and center. But will the conversations improve the overall experience?

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Studies Associations Houston Museum 20

Forum One

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Forum One partnered with the Museum to launch their new brand to the world. This work not only included launching a new website but also revitalizing the American Jazz Museum brand as a whole. This beautifully designed branding and website won five awards this year! This work won a silver Davey Award for Education!

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Celebrate Award Colorado Museum 68

Museum 2.0

JUNE 5, 2009

I've been designing game-like experiences with museums for a long time. What stuck out about this experience was putting the focus on the interpersonal gameplay and interactions rather than the content experience. We rarely talk about this when we design museum exhibits. It had a very simple structure.

Game 21

Game Design Museum Interaction 21

Forum One

DECEMBER 13, 2023

We partnered with the Museum to launch their new brand to the world. This work not only included launching a new website but also revitalizing the American Jazz Museum brand as a whole. This beautifully designed branding and website won five awards this year! This work won a silver Davey Award for Education!

Celebrate 46

Celebrate Award Colorado Museum 46

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. On many levels, The Tech Virtual experiment was a success.

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Virtual Tech Lesson Develop 21

Museum 2.0

JUNE 20, 2008

Most museum conferences are focused on professional learning and networking. In most sessions, I didn't learn new things to apply to my own museum practice; instead, I learned new things about what that practice looks like in different countries. It was also a frustrating experience. How are we addressing this woman?

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Reflection South Africa Guinea Museum 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 7, 2007

If we were scientists, we'd have documentation of each experiment, each publishable result, each improved-upon discovery. Last week, I spoke with Jim Spadaccini ( Ideum ) and Wendy Pollock ( ASTC ) about their experiences creating this site. The whole process of developing an exhibition tends to get stuck behind a museum's doors.

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NSF Interview Case Study Museum 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 16, 2020

Andrea has been a leader in the museum technology field. Among other highlights, it was an honor to lead the ambitious AR project Lumin , which helped us, and the field at large, to confirm that it is possible to create meaningful AR experiences , even when technology has some catching up to do.

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Museum Detroit Arts Leadership 22