Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2013

TCG is the industry association for non-profit theaters, the way AAM is for museums. Given TCG''s multi-year Audience (R)evolution initiative, I took the opportunity to write a new talk about what revolution has looked like at our small museum in Santa Cruz. At the same time, our community relevance was limited.

Museum 55

Museum Learning History Arts 55

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? Community First Program Design At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we've gravitated towards a "community first" program planning model.

Teen 20

Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 26, 2008

This week, I'm launching a new site: the Voicemail Museum. It's an experiment that merges two of my greatest interests: finding novel, easy ways for visitors to contribute content to museums finding questions that draw such compelling responses that random peoples' answers would be worth browsing To participate, all you need is a phone.

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Museum Audio Participatory Phone 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 31, 2011

Last week, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums in Houston, I was honored to chair a fabulous panel on empowering museum staff to take creative risks ( slides here ). Beck beautifully described her entry into museum work. What kind of support do you need to be confident about taking a risk in your work?

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Denver Museum Oakland PowerPoint 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. Participants who felt more confident modeled generous behavior and engaged others. The museum itself was well-integrated into the event.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 13, 2007

This week, a look at the third section of Visitor Voices , the excellent book coedited by Kathy McLean and Wendy Pollock. Who controls the content in the museum? Who controls the museum experience? First, museum content. Several of the projects profiled allowed visitors a hand in creating museum content.

Voice 20

Voice Create Museum Arts 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 19, 2007

I was talking recently to David Klevan, Education Manager for Technology and Distance Learning Initiatives at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (say that three times fast), about some of their awesome experiments with online discussion groups, blogs, and 2.0 In a six month period ending last month, 655 comments were submitted to this boa rd.

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Comment Discussion Generation Difference 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

For years, I've been fascinated and a bit perplexed by the Elsewhere Collaborative , a thrift store turned artists' studio/living museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. George will respond to comments on this post and is also reachable here. In 2003, my collaborator Stephanie and I began an excavation, declaring nothing for sale.

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Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

And that got me thinking about how bad museums are at doing the same thing--using passion to promote visitor engagement in new content. Museums shy away from presenting passionate views. Museums don't have a cheering section. Museums do a decent job addressing the first two questions, but we rarely tackle the third.

Museum 20

Museum Storytelling Teach New York 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2008

What if witty cultural commentators reviewed museums the way they do music and restaurants? If Anthony Lane turned his cutting tongue from movies to museums? If Stephen Colbert "reported" on museums at times other than during the TV writer's strike? It's painful. And instructive. And revelatory. And painful.

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Museum Story America Culture 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 12, 2009

Photo by Bradlauster Note from Beth: One of the things I love about blogging is the conversation in the comments because it always leads to understanding, insights, and learning. I've been keeping a careful eye out for thoughtful comments that could turn into guest posts. That's where this post about crowdsourcing came out of it!

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Aggregator Model Leadership Method 82

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

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

MARCH 25, 2015

This is the first in a two-part series about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History’s new theory of change. This week, Ian David Moss and I are each writing blog posts about our collaborative process to develop a theory of change at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. For three years, we hit the gas at my museum—hard.

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Process Change Develop Museum 20

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

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

DECEMBER 5, 2008

Cultural Connections is a group of museum professionals who meet up a few times a year and host excellent programs on a variety of topics. This week, they hosted "Let Them Be Heard: Visitor Participation in the Museum Experience," featuring four presentations on incorporating visitors' content into museums. Here's what they did.

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Case Study Participatory Studies Museum 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2008

Last year, I wrote a post explaining what Twitter is and how it might be applied in museums. Now, a year later, I’m using Twitter on a daily basis, and it’s brought up some new observations about participation on websites and in interactive venues like museums. I’d love Museum 2.0 and post an average of five comments.

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Twitter Participatory Broadcast Museum 24

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 21, 2008

In this post, an exploration of ways that museums can support promoters, convert detractors, and generally energize visitors to share their experience with others. Supporting Promoters Somewhere out there, there are people who love your museum. Ratings and Reviews Imagine a visitor who leaves your museum enthused about her experience.

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Museum Review Rate Voice 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 7, 2007

There are some obvious ties to the role of "community" in museums. Recently, some museums have launched initiatives to rebrand as community spaces, acknowledging and attempting to harness the positive social energy around visitation. Read the comments. Could museums do this? around gameplay. It's a three step process.

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Game Influence Support Community 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2007

Recently, I’ve become a little disheartened by the extent to which the web has dominated my—and others’—thinking about ways that museums can integrate 2.0 But today I had an experience that reinvigorated my love for and belief in tangible projects that can fill museums with content that is user-generated, shared, and explored.

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Generation Content Lesson Museum 30

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 21, 2007

No one would contest the idea that most museum exhibitions, art shows, films, books, in short, most content experiences, have value both for the new and return user. We’ll spend the least time here, since these are the people who are presumably being served well by the co-creation models at hand. First, the newcomer.

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Experiment Create Museum Amazon 20

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. I think there are three reasons for this.

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Virtual Tech Lesson Develop 21

Museum 2.0

MARCH 14, 2011

In 1990, educator and cultural critic Neil Postman described a museum as "an answer to a fundamental question: what does it mean to be a human being?" Without an explicit "I" voice, the museum's perspective on humanity is oblique to say the least. Welcome to Pine Point is not a museum project.

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History Museum Sound Voice 43

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2007

Last week, we looked at the first section of Visitor Voices , on Talk-backs, and came to the conclusion that comment boards and the like are functionally conversations, and that their design, therefore, should focus on encouraging positive, lively, thoughtful, engaged discussion. First, the music. The accompaniment is a strange one.

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Voice Museum Vietnam Music 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 30, 2007

James Yasko is writing an article for an upcoming issue of Museum News on museums and Web 2.0. Here's the question: What advice do you have, as one who keeps up with technology as it relates to museums, to a group looking to incorporate Web 2.0 Has your tagging system increased overall google hits for the museum?

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Museum Advice Interview Web 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 2, 2010

This year, the American Association of Museums annual conference was in Los Angeles (my hometown). I hosted two sessions, one on design for participation and the other on mission-driven museum technology development. He started with museums as a "place to go"--to see things, consume experiences. In this case, a heck of a lot.

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Slides Museum Los Angeles San Jose 22

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

JANUARY 15, 2007

They modeled the competition after the British NPG’s well-established competition. They received over 4,000 submissions from all 50 states, which were judged by a panel of seven—including museum staff and outside artists. I spoke last week with Brandon Fortune, curator of the exhibition. 14,000 people voted.

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Artist Museum Childhood Arts 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 6, 2019

Dear friends, This is my last post as the author of Museum 2.0. I'm thrilled that Seema Rao is taking this blog and museum community into its next chapter. You can find all my archived Museum 2.0 Today, I want to share a bit about what Museum 2.0 When I think of Museum 2.0, I started the Museum 2.0

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Museum Reflection Participatory Attitude 27

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

I was talking this week with Mark Allen, the founder of Machine Project (an alternative arts space in LA), about different models for community engagement in cultural institutions. At one point, he commented that there's a difference between the "framework" and the "sensibility" for engagement.

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Voice Los Angeles Denver Museum 42

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2010

You can join the conversation in the blog comments and add your own voice to the debate. 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. In the 1930s, W.E. Alternatives?

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Place Discussion Library Museum 30

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?"

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Arts Participatory Museum Artist 22