Museum 2.0

MAY 2, 2012

Today is my one-year anniversary as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. A year ago, I put my consultant hat on the shelf and decided to jump into museum management (a sentence I NEVER would have imagined writing five years ago). In the meantime, here are some of the. MISTAKES I MADE: Using the F word.

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Museum Director Participatory Culture 55

Museum 2.0

MAY 15, 2012

Last week, I sat down on a toilet in our museum and found myself looking at an interactive station intended to test a “Legends of the Stall” sign concept for the restrooms. Some of my happiest moments as a director come when I encounter awesome things in our museum that I had absolutely nothing to do with. Some experiments fail.

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Culture Build Museum Articulate 53

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2012

A year ago, I wrote a post speculating about whether events (institutionally-produced programs) might be a primary driver for people to attend museums, with exhibitions being secondary. Many museums, big and small, thrive on events. At our museum, about 68% of casual visitors (non-school tours) attended through events this year.

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Museum Arts Dallas History 53

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 14, 2013

One of the greatest gifts of my babymoon is the opportunity to share the Museum 2.0 First up is Beck Tench, a "simplifier, illustrator, story teller, and technologist" working at the Museum of Life & Science in Durham, NC. As a person who works for a science museum, I work in an environment that supports play.

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Museum Roles Game Participatory 51

Connection Cafe

AUGUST 1, 2019

Museums and nonprofits can also reap huge benefits from employing artificial intelligence, particularly in their membership and development departments. Nonprofits and museums depend on dedicated, but oftentimes limited, development staff to sift through countless prospects to determine which ones are priority.

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Museum Game Chicago Indianapolis 29

Museum 2.0

MARCH 9, 2009

I once asked Eric Siegel, the Director of the New York Hall of Science, why museums are rarely innovative shining stars on the cutting edge of culture. He commented that as non-profits, museums are built to survive, not to succeed. At one point, Mark commented that they have a "deliberately unsustainable" business model.

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Model Business Los Angeles Museum 55

Connection Cafe

NOVEMBER 10, 2014

In early October, Laura Beussman blogged about demand-based pricing for arts and culture organizations. Her blog talked about several different ways arts and culture organizations could ease into demand-based pricing, including scaling the house, peak load pricing, targeted discounts, and dynamic pricing. Enter dynamic pricing.

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Indianapolis St. Louis Experiment Arts 41

Bloomerang

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Adventure experience For the thrill seekers in your nonprofit’s audience, consider offering adventure experiences like: White water rafting Camping/glamping Rock climbing Skydiving Caving Partner with local adventure companies to see if they’d be willing to donate local experiences that are unique to your area.

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Artist Classes Arts Local 73

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 23, 2011

An exhibiting artist approached me recently at an evening event at the museum. But it's a question that many museums seem to address inadequately. It's interesting to me that so many museums debate admission fees but don't get comparably riled up about open hours. he said, "I have some feedback for you. He's right. They aren't.

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Museum Open Artist Audience 55

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2011

Many people ( Paul Orselli , Linda Norris , Pete Newcurator ) in the museum field have written about the question of museum "tribes"--based partly on Seth Godin's book , partly on the longstanding fan culture that pervades our lives through sport , celebrity, and shared experience of mass events.

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Museum Share Support Indianapolis 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 26, 2013

Over the past three years, the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) has served as the museum poster child for the debate on the public value of the arts. Last year, the DIA was saved from financial crisis by voters in its three neighboring counties who elected to take on an additional property tax to support the museum.

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Detroit Museum Michigan Arts 52

Museum 2.0

JUNE 28, 2017

I can think of many extraordinary innovators in the nonprofit cultural sector--people and organizations creating brilliant programs, site-based experiences, and products. Why aren’t more cultural organizations franchising, scaling, and replicating like comparable businesses? Precarious business model. Skills mismatch.

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Culture Organization Model Podcast 21

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2013

Last week, my museum hosted Hack the Museum Camp , a 2.5 day adventure in which teams of adults--75 people, of whom about half are museum professionals, half creative folks of various stripes--developed an experimental exhibition around our permanent collection in our largest gallery. Teams were more intense than I anticipated.

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Museum Arts History Professional 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2016

When we say we want our museum to be "audience-centered," what do we mean? However, I have enormous respect for the customer-centered model when it is executed in ways that truly invite visitors in on their own terms and deliver satisfying experiences. They deliver learning experiences at many levels, engaging many senses.

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Museum Audience Music Arts 20

sgEngage

APRIL 28, 2022

They are a wealth of experience and wisdom. – Jana Fross, operations and data coordinator at HaysMed Foundation . . I model the hospitality I expect our volunteers to show to visitors by welcoming them with warmth, fully listening and engaging when they are present, and showing appreciation for their choice to [volunteer] that day.

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South Dakota Volunteer Tips Social 86

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

Each of these women push the boundaries of cultural institutions in different ways, with digital and physical manifestations. Ravon and Amanda are using several social media channels to explore and share museum exhibitions, programs, and projects. She writes about race, history, parks, culture, and politics.

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Culture Work Museum New York City 20

Whole Whale

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

AS works with nonprofits across a wide range of industries, including arts and culture, the environment, foundations, and government. Donorly provides a powerful team of fundraising professionals with experience across sectors to get results. Website: [link]. Alexander Haas. Website: [link]. Focus Fundraising. Website: [link].

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Consultant Fundraising Phoenix Atlanta 52

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

Our county board of supervisors had brought their official meeting to the museum. They spoke powerfully and painfully about their experiences. In it, I argued that museums could give up control of the visitor experience while still maintaining (a new kind of) power. Museums could make the platforms for those experiences.

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Platform Impact Childhood Museum 31

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. MuseumCamp is a professional development experience that is part retreat, part unconference, part adult summer camp. This new, experimental training is a hands-on deep dive into the MAH’s model. Want to support these events?

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2009

I'm working on a section of my book about sharing social objects and am writing about the most common way that visitors share their object experiences in museums: through photographs. Revenue Streams: Museums want to maintain control of sales of "officially sanctioned" images of objects via catalogues and postcards.

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Museum Photo Policy Open 54

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

I've been spending time recently interviewing people who run unusual cultural and learning venues. I'm fascinated by these places because of their ability to attract diverse audiences to idiosyncratic experiences, and I'm curious how they stay afloat. Skill-sharing free schools. Community science workshops.

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Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

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

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?

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Museum History Netherlands Create 36

Connection Cafe

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Last week Ginny Fitzgerald, the Director of Visitor Services and Membership at Chicago History Museum, joined us to host a webinar about how she prepares her team for peak attendance times. Ginny has over 17 years of experience in visitor services. Chicago History Museum defines their summer season as June 1 through August 31.

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Arts Culture Business Chicago 32

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. The book offers some recipes for culture change.

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Campaign Online Chapter Model 97

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2010

You can join the conversation in the blog comments, or on the Museum 2.0 Like many museum and library professionals, I am enamored of the idea of cultural institutions as “third places” – public venues for informal, peaceable, social engagement outside of home or work. This is the only post written by me, Nina Simon.

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Place Discussion Culture Museum 41

Whole Whale

MAY 20, 2021

AS works with nonprofits across a wide range of industries, including arts and culture, the environment, foundations, and government. Donorly provides a powerful team of fundraising professionals with experience across sectors to get results. Website: [link]. Alexander Haas. Website: [link]. Focus Fundraising. Website: [link].

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Consultant Fundraising Phoenix Atlanta 52

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

And then there's the Berkeley Ace hardware store, which has a basement lair devoted to model trains. I had specifically asked about places that feel welcoming, and the responses were about exclusive experiences. Secrecy introduces novelty to the visit experience. What's going on here?

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Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Model 34

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.

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Museum History Arts Work 31

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 22, 2014

Imagine an institution with a commitment to rigor, depth, and delight in the exploration of contemporary culture. The Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona ( CCCB ) has just launched a new biennial Cultural Innovation International Prize. What new models are currently being used in this field? Imagine these two together.

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Audience Ideas Proposal Museum 42

Museum 2.0

JULY 2, 2014

I''ve been reflecting a lot recently on our museum''s work on " social bridging "--bringing people together across cultural, ethnic, geographic, generational, and socio-economic differences--and how to take it outside. Not that bonding with people we already know is bad, nor that we don''t want to support it at the museum.

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Design Community Museum Hype 47

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

I often think museums are like church--passionately loved by staff and devout audiences, irrelevant or off-putting to lapsed or uninterested adults, alien and overwhelming to newcomers. What is the appropriate way to evangelize cultural institution use to the unconverted? Help people understand why you do what you do.

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Museum Culture Technique Badge 25

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 8, 2014

How does this question play out in museums? At the 2013 American Alliance of Museums annual conference, a group of exhibition designers explored authenticity in a session called Is it Real? They explored a huge range of museum objects and grey areas of "realness." They arbitrated replicas, reproductions, models, and props.

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Artist Museum Washington Arts 55

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. We heard again and again that the museum was cold and uncomfortable.

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Museum Learning History Arts 55

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 3, 2011

I'm working on a keynote address for next week's Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums conference in Baltimore. The speech is in memory of Stephen Weil, one of the giants of contemporary American museum thinking--a radical in a bowtie who strove to "make museums matter." What are the most important problems in the cultural sector?

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Problem Museum Baltimore Culture 53

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 17, 2017

Dear Museum 2.0 friends, I want to share two great opportunities to get involved at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History in 2017. Each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History hosts MuseumCamp , a professional development experience that is part retreat, part unconference, part adult summer camp.

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Job Museum Childhood Arts 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 14, 2017

This is the second installation in a series of posts on the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH)'s development of Abbott Square , a new creative community plaza in downtown Santa Cruz. I’ve seen again and again how outdoor programming has impact beyond what can happen inside the museum.

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Public Museum Arts History 27