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. And so, in this post, a few findings, and more questions. Many museums, big and small, thrive on events. This isn't true for every museum.

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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

Museum 2.0

MARCH 24, 2020

It’s the person who answers your question about zoom or the person who passes on their work at home policy. The last ten years saw our work move toward the service sector as rentals become a very real part of our business model. Maybe that’s not the question for today though. And that’s a form of guidance. Let the tough days be.

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Museum Work Time Doc 20

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

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. But it's a question that many museums seem to address inadequately. Evening events provide rare opportunities to experience the museum after work. He's right.

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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

One of the biggest questions on my mind as I listen is: why isn’t my industry scaling up the way these businesses do? I can think of many extraordinary innovators in the nonprofit cultural sector--people and organizations creating brilliant programs, site-based experiences, and products. Precarious business model.

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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.

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Museum Arts History Professional 49

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

Museum 2.0

APRIL 13, 2009

I spend a lot of time talking to people about social media--how it can be a model for real-life content venue interactions and how it can connect museums and cultural institutions to users in new ways. This is an honest and valid question. But my organization is functioning just fine without it. Here's why.

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Museum Social Media Culture Media 43

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. This new, experimental training is a hands-on deep dive into the MAH’s model. Come share your projects, challenges, questions, wild successes and epic failures with creative changemakers from around the world.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

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

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

JANUARY 8, 2018

You run a regional museum. This is the plan that plunged the Berkshire Museum into hot water. In July, the Berkshire Museum released its $60,000,000 New Vision , along with a funding mechanism: selling 40 of its most valuable artworks. It states that museums can only sell objects to purchase or care for other objects.

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Public Build Museum Detroit 40

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2018

That's the question we've been grappling with as we start the OF/BY/FOR ALL initiative. Our goal is to help civic and cultural institutions become more representative OF, co-created BY, and welcoming FOR their diverse communities. We've see this model succeed at the MAH and at other community-centered organizations around the world.

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Los Angeles Network Oakland Change 31

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Trying to do everything, a scarcity model, is such an exhausting way to work. In a follow up post, Marnie answers her own question or rather begins to noodle on it. Marnie has shared a lot here and it raises lots more questions than answers … Is there a hybrid version where nonprofits do a combination of curating and doing?

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Artist Structure Museum Nonprofit 96

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

And then there's the Berkeley Ace hardware store, which has a basement lair devoted to model trains. When you find a bar with your favorite song on the jukebox, or a museum room that feels like your grandmother's living room, you suddenly feel a strong affinity and are able to see yourself reflected in the space. What's going on here?

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Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Model 34

Museum 2.0

JULY 2, 2014

These are the questions on my mind as I start working more intently on an outdoor plaza project. 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.

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Design Community Museum Hype 47

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 6, 2014

I will start with an overview of the ” Crawl, Walk, Run, and Fly: Maturity of Practice Model ” for networked nonprofits. In the book, we share a couple of case studies and examples of engagement models. Networked Nonprofit and Social Media Maturity of Practice. In the for-profit world, it is called the sales funnel.

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Social Media Network Media Free 108

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 8, 2014

This question launches Howard Mansfield''s fascinating book about historic restoration, The Same Ax, Twice. 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? Does he have the same ax?

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Artist Museum Washington Arts 55

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Holly started with a great question, "What's in the DNA of each of these orgs that allows them to embrace this change and experiment?" My answer to Holly's question was that organization's that are innovative have leadership that is open to public learning and models that in the organization.

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NTEN NPO Indiana Org 88

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2010

Like many people in the arts, I'm interested in new models that help people combine mission-driven work with an entrepreneurial spirit. The idea is that you specify your values, relationships, and assets, and then match those up with potentially fruitful legal structures, financing models, and growth potential.

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Structure Model Social Profit 31

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

We’ve been doing a little experiment at our museum with labels. The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum recently loaned us some fabulous surfboards that tell the co-mingled history of surfing and redwood trees in Santa Cruz. Visitors have gone to town, writing both basic questions (“who made them?” “who how did they ride the plank?” "how

Participatory 48

Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 9, 2013

Model the Model. This isn’t about becoming a billboard or spokesperson for the organization on social media channels, it is about modeling that using social is an accepted way of working. Leadership Organizational Culture' Don’t say you have notimetotweet. Lean on Your Staff.

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Social Media Adopt Time Media 124

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?" We're hearing on a daily basis that the museum has a new role in peoples' lives and in the identity of the county.

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Audience Museum Participatory History 47

Museum 2.0

JUNE 25, 2007

I spent Saturday in beautiful Monterey, ocean pounding outside the window of a conference room, where about 40 museum folks were pondering a question more elusive than the origin of the waves: can museums change the world? Their website includes a clear, concise "What Can I Do?" But I'm highly suspicious of most of these.

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Model Action Congo Museum 26

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

This isn't just a rhetorical question. In this report, the authors describe three specific models for public participation: contribution, collaboration, and co-creation. I would add a fourth model, tentatively called co-option. What does the word "participatory" mean to you?

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Public Research Participatory Report 36

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2009

On Monday, I gave the keynote at the Museums in Conversation conference in Tarrytown, NY. Greed, because creative greediness motivates us to hunt down and steal the best design techniques the world has to offer, and generosity, because giving those great ideas and applications away is the only way to change the larger cultural landscape.

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Museum Conversation Columbus Local 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 4, 2015

In pop culture-land, relevance is all about now. If people on the street are talking about X, the museum should be talking about X too. Now" is not an easy business model to chase--especially for institutions rooted in permanence. I used to work at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. What's trending.

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Content San Jose Museum Miami 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 4, 2012

Museums have been grappling with this question for years ( here's a 2007 roundup of such projects ), most aggressively in zoos and natural history museums where staff hope to inspire conservation and in history/concept museums that focus on civic engagement and activism. No small task for a museum exhibition.

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Story Participatory Museum History 47

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

Last week, I was in Minneapolis for the American Association of Museums annual meeting. Kathleen McLean led a terrific session called "Dangerous Ridiculous" about risk-taking in museums. Interestingly, at my museum, our team is naturally better at ridiculous than we are at dangerous. I found this idea really powerful.

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Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

APRIL 11, 2017

This is the sixth 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. John would run Abbott Square Market , a multi-vendor food and drink business, adjacent to the plaza, adjacent to the museum. Money is on the table.

Technique 29

Technique Museum Exercise Structure 29

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

Designing Questions Kathy Gustafon-Hilton coordinated a massive Pecha Kucha session, featuring 19 design professionals sharing 20 slides, 20 seconds apiece. I spoke about the importance of designing intentional frameworks for asking visitors questions, based on this blog post. While questions like: "Where were you last night?,"

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Reflection Research Question Museum 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

Museum 2.0

APRIL 2, 2014

In his thoughtful preface to this project, I reconnected with five lessons I''ve learned from participatory projects in museums and cultural sites. The fact that there is no original recording by Beck of the Song Reader songs, no model upon which "covers" would be based, frees the reader to imagine the songs in any number of ways.

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Participatory Arts Music Learning 52