Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2011

In 2009 , students built a participatory exhibit from scratch. Thirteen students produced three projects that layered participatory activities onto an exhibition of artwork from the permanent collection of the Henry Art Gallery. This post shares my reflections on the projects and five things I learned from their work.

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Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

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

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 museum itself was well-integrated into the event. Or that visitors form a spontaneous "laugh circle" on the floor. Online to onsite migration isn't always easy.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2018

The Washington Post covered the MAH's transformation as part of an article about museums engaging new audiences. The whole second half of the article was dedicated to our work: Smaller museums can be especially scrappy in finding ways to connect with the community. It’s something that any museum, of any size, can work toward.

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Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

I'm a huge fan of work and the way she thinks - especially after she road the Scare House ride on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with me and did a brilliant reflection on its design. Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. Wiki users are often collaborators.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

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

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

JANUARY 11, 2012

For years, I'd give talks about community participation in museums and cultural institutions, and I'd always get the inevitable question: "but what value does this really have when it comes to dollars and cents?" I'm incredibly proud of all the staff, trustees, volunteers, collaborators, visitors, and members who have made this happen.

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Audience Museum Participatory History 47

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

Last week I was honored to be a counselor at Museum Camp , an annual professional development event hosted by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH). Nina Simon, the executive director of the museum, is an expert in participatory design and fantastic facilitator. Being Intentional About Your To Do List. .”

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Causes Change Museum Social 50

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2013

There's a constant dialogue in participatory work about how to make peoples' contributions meaningful. I've written about different structures for participatory processes (especially in museums), and recently, I've been interested in how we can apply these structures to the design of public space. Non-Participation 6.

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Design Participatory Children Museum 49

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. The Museum 2.0 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.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 28, 2011

We've been offering a host of participatory and interactive experiences at the Museum of Art & History this season. I loved Jasper Visser's list of 30 "do's" for designing participatory projects earlier this month. The contributions that are the "best" may be a narrow reflection of your own personal preferences.

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Design Participatory Learning Instruction 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2012

But we've just compiled all our attendance data for the past year at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (our fiscal year ends on June 30), and several people have written to me asking for the numbers behind our turnaround. Now Friday nights at the museum have become something people can count on, and they keep growing.

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Museum History Arts Artist 47

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. For one year, a group of twelve schoolchildren age 9-11 were invited to work with staff at the Wallace Collection to develop a family-focused exhibition using the museum's artifacts. it's a Secret! , What made Shh.

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Children Museum Create Project 46

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 19, 2012

We're looking for an Exhibitions Manager to join our team here at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. This is a highly collaborative role, and we are looking for the perfect blend of strong design skills with a generous enthusiasm for amateur and professional co-creation. You Can't Do That in Museums Camp is filling up.

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Participatory Museum Blended History 32

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

Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. It takes leaders like Deborah to claim those seats and launch successful collaborations. creative placemaking design participatory museum public space social bridging' Last week, I got to see Deborah''s vision in action.

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San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

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

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

MARCH 4, 2009

Jane McGonigal and the folks from IFTF have released a new future-casting game/collaborative experience called Signtific Lab. In other words, a new kind of talkback board or participatory educational program. What excites me is that Signtific provides a very deliberate framework that prioritizes collaborative thinking and dialogue.

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Game Experiment Participatory Museum 24

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

JUNE 12, 2012

--Helene Moglen, professor of literature, UCSC After a year of tinkering, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is now showing an exhibition, All You Need is Love , that embodies our new direction as an institution. This post focuses on one aspect of the exhibition: its participatory and interactive elements.

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Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

This month we’ve been thinking about “What is a museum?” (I'm I’ve been visiting museums my whole life. Does that make me the best judge of museums? People are the defining characteristics of museums. I’ve worked with and at plenty of museums that can sometimes feel empty. I'm not alone there.

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Museum Place Life Ohio 36

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

When you want visitors to spend a long time reflecting and sharing their thoughts, you need to design spaces for response that are comfortable and minimize distractions. 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."

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Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2009

In almost all cases, museums assure me that they want to be in conversation, that they want to be responsive, that they want to “really hear” what people think. Sadly, it was the second story that was about a museum. This afternoon, they issued a lengthy collaborative statement. Is this a research project? Is it a conversation?

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Conversation Museum Artist Minneapolis 21

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. No, this is not a reality TV show.

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Artist Museum Project Public 39

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

Today, the Luce Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is launching what they claim is the first ever alternate reality game (ARG) in a museum. Why would an art museum create an ARG? And the "stuff" of the game is real stuff, artifacts created by players and sent to the museum. To expand their audiences.

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Game Museum Arts Alternative 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 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. Some museum pros have been puzzled by this. We inspired a community and got real results.

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Virtual Tech Lesson Develop 21

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 15, 2006

These posts have sparked some thoughtful reflections, from a folks on the Second Life Educator's List and I'm going to quote and summarize a few: The Second Life Doubter's Club. principles that has turned the web from pushed to participatory. There are better and more efficient channels for collaboration, conference calls for one.

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Environment Teach Second Life Learning 50

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2013

But this job is really important to the future of our museum, and I’m hoping that you or someone you know might be a great fit for it. We are hiring for a School Programs Coordinator to wrangle the 3,500+ students and their teachers who come to the museum every year for a tour and hands-on experience in our art and history exhibitions.

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Program Museum Work History 39

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 10, 2009

This can be an incredibly technical topic, as it focuses on the ways that platforms (online, exhibits, museums) can harness the individual activities of many visitors and create meaningful experiential outputs that connect people to each other. But designing an entire museum that functions this way probably isn't your goal. exhibition.

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Social Network Tech Network Museum 22

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 28, 2009

The runner up winner was Maureen Dowd from Open Museum What I propose to do with the library you are offering is read it, try it, share it, and let you know how it works for me, my colleagues and the people we influence. As you know, it takes more than access to create a successful social media network. A Few Whuffie Winners!

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Library Social Media Louisville Media 94

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

s Hawaiian son as applied to museums. While there are some criticisms of its consensus-based model for information-vetting, there's no doubt of its success as a collaborative knowledge-creation project. Consider these two stories of museum-related wikis that struggled. What's a wiki? What makes them succeed? Great idea, right?

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Wiki Wikipedia Museum Doc 23

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 13, 2007

I created this screencast back in September/October of last year, so this release has provided a great opportunity to meta reflect on the whole screencast creation process as well as consider how my views about the use of tagging have evolved. Dutch Nonprofits Collaborate With Del.icio.us. Tagging in Art Museums. The Tips.

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Screencast Instruction Instructional Tag 50

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. A museum can be friendly, or serious, or funny, while maintaining a traditional relationship with visitors as consumers of experiences.

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Voice Los Angeles Denver Museum 42

Museum 2.0

MARCH 6, 2019

While I originally wrote this post to advocate for more participatory practice (i.e. letting museum visitors contribute and collaborate in museums), I now see this as a crucial issue also for more democratic and inclusive practice (i.e. Other person: "But doesn't that erode museums' authority?" Me: "Sort of."

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Authoring Share Museum YouTube 44