Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" If participation was my mantra from 2007-2011, community has been my mantra since then. Build community. and "why?" to "how?".

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

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

AUGUST 18, 2008

I've long believed that museums have a special opportunity to support the community spirit of Web 2.0 as physical analogs to virtual community platforms. People who engage deeply in any online community, whether a bulletin board or social networking site, want to meet in person. Me: Have you ever been to this museum?

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

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? Whoever your community is, they decide. Can you define the community to whom you want to be relevant? The community decides what is relevant to them.

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Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Get Fully Funded

AUGUST 24, 2021

For example: “Many teen girls struggle with their self-esteem thanks to Instagram and Snapchat. Please help us open the door for a teen to attend our personal development conference, benefit from having a mentor, and get on a path to college and a career.” . We are so excited for them! . This is very powerful. Sincerely, . Mary Davis.

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Results email Fundraising Story 122

Museum 2.0

APRIL 22, 2015

Close your eyes and imagine your organization's "community." Communities are made of people, not rhetoric. You can define a community by the shared attributes of the people in it, and/or by the strength of the connections among them. The second is a quality of the community (strong vs. weak) as defined.

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Community Minnesota Teen Movie 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 18, 2015

Imagine the most community-based science center possible. Imagine it in a poor, immigrant farmworker community. In a Community Science Workshop. A couple months ago, I visited a Community Science Workshop for the first time in Watsonville, CA. Can you give me the overview of Community Science Workshops? It thrives.

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Green Interview Share Community 20

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

OCTOBER 12, 2011

But a lot of the questions and issues described in Sidford's paper are as applicable on the level of individual programs or institutional priorities as they are for funders and foundations. There's the barrier of the concern that this work is "social work" and not art--and therefore doesn't belong in a museum or a theater.

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Arts Fund Artist Houston 52

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more. Sounds like there might be some overlap with your museum audience? Both geocaching and museums are fundamentally about exploration and discovery.

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Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 8, 2015

I''m getting ready for the American Alliance of Museums conference later this month. Post the question or issue that you want to discuss. How can you tell if you want to go to "Museums and Communities" or "Museums and Social Issues" or "Museums and Very Cute Lizards"? Follow people, not topics.

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Museum Mentoring Linkedin Hints 20

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). Sarah has worked at the Walker since 1992 and is currently the Director of Education and Community Programs. In the 1990s, we decided we wanted to engage a teen audience.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

This summer, I worked with the Chabot Space & Science Center on a design institute in which eleven teens from their Galaxy Explorers program designed media pieces for an upcoming Smithsonian exhibition on black holes. There was no initial design, no graphics, and no idea of where the teen' work would fit into an overall structure.

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Teen Volunteer Create Design 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 6, 2016

FoodWhat's staff and teens have taught me a lot about what it really means to be relevant to people who are often overlooked or ignored. I firmly believe that all people have something meaningful to contribute to our communities, cultural work, and society at large--including youth. Doron doesn’t work with A students or B students.

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Teen Arts Classroom Student 25

NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton - Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History Elaine Charnov - The NY Public Library Jason Eppink - Museum of the Moving Image Syed Salahuddin - Babycastles Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library 100 Years of the flagship library in New York.

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Game Culture Change Museum 52

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. The content focuses on the question of WHY we collect and how our collections reflect our individual and community identities.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

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. My burning question is whether these should remain exclusive from each other. The exhibit opens. It looks like a traditional exhibit. But it's never done.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

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

AUGUST 7, 2008

For many museums, visitor research--how people use the museum, navigate exhibits, and understand content--may be an equally important arena in which to adopt groundswell listening techniques. I spent an hour this morning "brand listening" to what the online world says about one of my favorite museums, the Exploratorium.

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Museum Teen Second Life Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

It opens up new conversations about the work of art in our communities. Temple Contemporary’s mission is to creatively re-imagine the social function of art through questions of local relevance and international significance. They live their mission, working in questions and projects rather than exhibitions and programs.

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Process Share Philadelphia Arts 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

I just returned from the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia. I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. what is the value of the exhibition experience to non-participants, that is, regular museum visitors?

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Slides Participatory Museum Children 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2008

Museums (and libraries) are trusted sources of information. In February 2001, AAM commissioned a study about the trustworthiness of museums and found that "Almost 9 out of 10 Americans (87%) find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices.

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Participatory Museum Teen Voice 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 Last week, I had the honor and pleasure of giving a talk at an institution I''ve long admired: the Taylor Community Science Resource Center at the St. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture. blog posts from the past. Louis Science Center.

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St. Louis Museum Audience Teen 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2007

Last week, Elaine Gurian and I talked about radical change in museums. Former museum start-up queen, Jen is taking a small organization whose goal is to promote girls’ involvement in math and science through research and programming to new, innovative, exciting places. Braincake isn’t some fakey attempt to pander to teens.

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Interview Museum Teen Myspace 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2007

This week, thoughts on Chapter 12 of Elaine Gurian’s book Civilizing the Museum , "Threshold Fear: Architecture program planning." In this essay, Elaine discusses the various barriers to entry for non-traditional visitors to museums, that is, the threshold fear that keeps such potential visitors from walking in our doors.

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People Museum San Jose Chapter 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 4, 2007

On Tuesday, I reviewed Elaine Gurian’s essay, Choosing Among the Options , on museum archetypes and self-definition. Today, discussion with Elaine about ways museums choose their direction, how change is possible, and new museum types to be added to the list. What if you don’t want to be identified as one type of museum?

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Museum Puerto Rico Change Boston 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 13, 2007

The essays in this section, on “Expressing and Co-Creating,” present projects in which visitors create exhibition content, contribute to its creation, or get a heavy done of meaning-making in their experience of museum content. Who controls the content in the museum? Who controls the museum experience? First, museum content.

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Voice Create Museum Arts 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 28, 2010

Last week, I had the honor and pleasure of giving a talk at an institution I've long admired: the Taylor Community Science Resource Center at the St. 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. Louis Science Center.

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St. Louis Audience Teen Museum 53

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. We''re more successful when we target particular communities or audiences and design experiences for them. It''s impossible for any organization or business to do a great job being for everyone.

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Museum Social Arts History 55

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. So many museum exhibitions relegate the participatory bits in at the end. The Love Lounge I LOVE. with sharpies.

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Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

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

JUNE 3, 2015

Last month at the AAM conference, a speaker said, "we should all be using measures of quality of life to measure success at our museums." We should identify a few key community health indicators to focus on." Many museums (mine included) are fairly new to collecting visitor data. Someone is collecting baseline community data.

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Local Data Learning Childhood 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. He got in touch with me last week to discuss some ideas for the article and asked me to respond to a few questions. One of these was a general question that I thought might be of interest to you. into their repertoire?

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Museum Advice Interview Web 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 22, 2008

There are lots of things visitors can’t do in museums. But what about the things that museum professionals can’t (or feel they can’t) do? This week at the ASTC conference, Kathy McLean, Tom Rockwell, Eric Siegel and I presented a session called “You Can’t Do That in Museums!” And so my question is, why are we keeping them away?

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Museum Professional Teen Map 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

In many museums, comment cards are currently the most "participatory" part of the visitor experience. These services could be a powerful, cheap alternative to comment cards--especially those that are focused towards making suggestions about the museum. Positives of Ideascale: Easy to customize the look and feel to brand to your site.

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Comment Tools Museum Conversation 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 19, 2008

Every museum has a number for its operating cost per visitor. Most museums don't strategically set this number--too many operating costs are fixed by building needs--but they can use it to assess how expensive each visitor interaction is and evaluate the efficacy of programs. So where do online initiatives fit in?

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Virtual Museum North Carolina Evaluation 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 30, 2016

Our entire strategy at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is rooted in community participation. We invite diverse locals to share their creative and cultural talents with our greater community at the museum. Teens advocating for all-gender bathrooms. It's a good question. HOW DO YOU DEFINE COMMUNITY?

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Community Museum Local Participatory 20