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. Few publishers was open to Creative Commons licensing and to giving away the content for free online. Check out the other parts here. Why Self-Publish?

Participatory 33

Participatory Museum Process Adobe 33

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. I suspect these big ideas were opaque to most visitors. This year, we took a different approach.

Participatory 51

Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 1, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0. I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. When I talk about designing participatory experiences, I often show the above graphic from Forrester Research. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. This is a problem for two reasons.

Participatory 50

Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 Originally posted in April of 2011, just before I hung up my consulting hat for my current job at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. I''ve spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums.

Museum 45

Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. When I talk about designing participatory experiences, I often show the above graphic from Forrester Research. There are so many more people who join social networks, who collect and aggregate favored content, and critique and rate books and movies.

Participatory 44

Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

Dear Museum 2.0 As of May 2, I will be the executive director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA (here's the press release ). I am closing down my consulting business at the end of April, but the Museum 2.0 Here are a few things that make the MAH an exciting museum to me: It's small.

History 55

History Museum Arts Consultant 55

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2019

Me with a friend As I keep saying, I’ve been to a few museums of late. In reflecting on the sample, I’ve made some broad reflections on museum workers and visitors. Today, I wanted to think about participatory elements, something so essential to this blog. People go to museums for leisure.)

Museum 35

Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2012

A few weeks ago, the MAH Director of Community Programs, Stacey Garcia, came to me with an idea. 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. Maybe this is good fodder for a future Museum 2.0 you tell me.

Activities 50

Activities Active Activism Participatory 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Source: Share Your Ideas. Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. Imagine sitting around a conference table planning an upcoming project that involves user-generated content. Note from Beth: I first encountered Nina Simon through her awesome blog back four or five years ago.

Model 98

Model Activities Active Activism 98

Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2012

Imagine you've just been tasked with developing an innovative, future-thinking national museum for your country's history. Blueprint is the story of a group of people who tried to create a Dutch Museum of National History (INNL). The Museum directors released Blueprint as a showcase for these plans. Where would you start?

Museum 36

Museum History Netherlands Create 36

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.

Museum 29

Museum Difference Participatory History 29

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Pop-Up Museum [n]: a short-term institution existing in a temporary space. Over the past few years, there have been several fabulous examples of pop-up museums focusing on visitor-generated content. Maria Mortati runs the wonderful SF Mobile Museum , which roams the Bay Area showing mini-exhibits on evocative themes.

Museum 55

Museum Denver Netherlands Classroom 55

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2018

You can also post comments on any chapter, adding your reactions and questions to the published content. Take five minutes and learn how the Science Museum in London created better experiences for deaf visitors. I do it for three reasons: It makes it easier for people to share and spread the ideas in the book. Or how Food What?!

Arts 40

Arts Free Chapter Cleveland 40

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2009

Over the past year, I've noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects? Teens are a known (and somewhat controllable) entity. The first of these reasons is practical.

Teen 24

Teen Participatory Experiment Museum 24

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.

Artist 49

Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 6, 2009

This post was written by Jaime Kopke , the founder/director of the Denver Community Museum , a pop-up community-generated institution that ran from Oct 2008-April 2009. The Denver Community Museum (DCM) was a grassroots operation in almost every sense. The contents for each month-long exhibition were entirely community generated.

Denver 29

Denver Museum Community Participatory 29

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.

Question 49

Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 13, 2010

On October 20, a young woman named Kate will move into Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and live there for a month. This post is not about the Month at the Museum concept or implementation. Instead, this post focuses on a fascinating aspect of Month at the Museum: the video applications. That will come later.

Museum 34

Museum Contest Video Chicago 34

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. Ze had issued an invite to tens of thousands of people online, and we had no idea how many people would attend, and who they are.

Reflection 43

Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 22, 2010

In the most extreme cases, I've talked to folks from museums that are government-mandated to provide all content in multiple languages who say they are unable to invite visitors to make comments because they'd have to translate all of them and simply can't dedicate the resources to do so.

Museum 38

Museum Work North America Language 38

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. But the point is that the MAH, like just about every other museum in the known universe, was content to define the museum experience as something removed from the outside world, a rarefied church-like space of refined artistic reflection.

Museum 31

Museum History Arts Work 31

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Last month, MAH curator Susan Hillhouse and I sat down and wrote an exhibition philosophy for our museum. Here's the short version (read the whole thing here ): The Museum of Art & History is committed to creating exhibitions that inspire our diverse audiences to engage deeply with contemporary art and Santa Cruz County history.

Museum 38

Museum Artist Participatory History 38

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 It feels like a real gift to myself (and hopefully, to you) to schedule all this content now and not have to worry about it when my baby is born. As the readership for Museum 2.0

Museum 35

Museum Participatory Reflection Conference 35

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2009

Seb Chan has a lovely, long interview up at Fresh+New with Helen Whitty about the Powerhouse Museum's new mini-exhibition, the Odditoreum. The Odditoreum is another wrinkle in the study of visitors' understanding and interpretation of authenticity in museums. I enjoyed listening to it (virtually, not at the museum).

Museum 22

Museum Alternative Portland Artist 22

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 29, 2014

I would guess that most people have no idea that this work is happening at zoos. In museums (and zoos), we frequently stop the conversation with visitors when it comes to action--especially political action. We give people content and then we say, "you decide." I certainly didn''t. We want our donors to be advocates.

Action 46

Action People Conservancy Africa 46

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

What does the word "participatory" mean to you? The various definitions of participatory projects can lead to confusion and misunderstandings. Participation in science research is a good basis on which to develop a framework for participatory models because it is based on a consistent scientific process with many steps.

Public 36

Public Research Participatory Report 36

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

Last week, I was in Minneapolis for the American Association of Museums annual meeting. Here, in no particular order, are the things that energized me most: "No idea is too ridiculous." Kathleen McLean led a terrific session called "Dangerous Ridiculous" about risk-taking in museums. I found this idea really powerful.

Reflection 43

Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2010

Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. During the ensuing discussion, one woman asked, "Which audiences are least interested in social participation in museums?" So what's a museum to do--especially one that is funded to encourage youth and teen participation?

Teen 49

Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

The book of the same title that he edited is rocking my world, both as a museum professional who cares about inclusion and as a new mother. In the case of the Stanford study, I was fascinated to learn that the content of the music video was significant in terms of signaling change in prejudice.

Measure 47

Measure Arts People Museum 47

Museum 2.0

JULY 15, 2010

Dear Museum 2.0 My book, The Participatory Museum , has done incredibly well so far, but there's a problem: the interactive components aren't working. My book, The Participatory Museum , has done incredibly well so far, but there's a problem: the interactive components aren't working. Thanks in advance.

Participatory 32

Participatory Chapter Museum Case Study 32

Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2016

Please add your own ideas in the comments too. 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. If you are building something new and want people's ideas, go for bridging.

Build 35

Build Community Museum Participatory 35

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 1, 2006

Ready to turn your institution into a site of participatory engagement? Have an audacious idea but don't know where to start? specializes in designing museum experiences and exhibitions that are community informed, socially stimulating, technologically ambitious, and intriguingly experimental.

Museum 21

Museum Professional Service Participatory 21

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 23, 2010

This small book is filled with big ideas and practical tips for managing an online community in the context of social networks. See my interview with the authors and buy your copy here. 9 The Participatory Museum by Nina Simon. Open Community by Lindy Dreyer and Maddie Grant. You can pick up a copy here.

Amazon 116

Amazon Nonprofit Social Media Oregon 116

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

The event also included plenary speakers, including a provocative talk about data methods from Alexandra Samuels and cross-track sessions from traditional panels to unconference. The culmination of these two and half very intense days was an Idea Accelerator Lab. Scribe: The role of the scribe is to capture ideas and build group memory.

Reflection 124

Reflection NTEN Change Facilitation 124

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 26, 2012

Way better than that video at Museum X where the director drones on about the new initiatives of the year. I know I have a lot to learn from the content AND the format of this report. We're working at my museum on a strategic approach to our educational outreach with K12 classes and students. How should (and do) we treat them?

Denver 33

Denver Museum Arts Participatory 33

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

Dear Museum 2.0 readers, I'm almost done with the first draft of The Participatory Museum: A Practical Guide , a book that explores the theory, practice, and design techniques for involving visitors and community members in the creation and sharing of cultural content. Have great illustration or layout skills to share?

Help 28

Help Participatory Museum Wiki 28

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

Museum 52

Museum Boston Participatory Job 52