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.

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

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

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

But as a creative type who has recently taken on an executive role, I've been fascinated, shocked even, to learn that the folks in the development department have been singing the relationship chorus for so long. "Development works when you are responsive to the donor's needs, not just presenting your own." On the one hand, this is awesome.

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Participatory Practice Fundraising Relationship 39

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

OCTOBER 24, 2012

I like to ask myself this question periodically, challenging myself to find substantive ways for visitors to contribute to our museum. To that end, our exhibitions are full of participatory elements. And when I think back on the past year, some of the most magical things that have happened at the museum have NOT been designed by us.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

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.

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Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

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.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

We've gotten a little more organized at The Museum of Art & History , and we've now released opportunities for summer internships. These are unpaid part-time and full-time opportunities to help design public programs, develop new uses for the museum, perform visitor research, and pursue unusual projects. Sounds good?

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Museum Participatory Arts Attitude 34

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2013

There's a constant dialogue in participatory work about how to make peoples' contributions meaningful. I've written about different structures for participatory processes (especially in museums), and recently, I've been interested in how we can apply these structures to the design of public space.

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Design Participatory Children Museum 49

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.

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Public Research Participatory Report 36

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

Sure, I admire cultural organizations that have a strong mission to change education or diversify access or transform the role of art in everyday life, but I'm an insider. The election season, as well as a recent research study on museum membership, has change my perspective on this.

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Product Build Museum Arts 51

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. By calling ourselves a museum, we respond to those cultural institutions that have separated practice from production, exhibition from process, and work from play.

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Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 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

MAY 9, 2008

There's a tag applied to many Museum 2.0 Posts under that tag tend to examine non-museum things, from malls to games to ad campaigns , and draw some design lessons for museums from their foreignness. What aspects of that socialness are desirable in museums (and how might we mirror buses or trains to promote them)?

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Participatory Design Museum Childhood 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 10, 2018

The museum was in huge financial trouble. My expertise was on inviting strangers to participate in public settings like museums. Creating event-specific rules can level the playing field, make the implicit explicit, and create a specific culture for the event. I remember the first staff meeting I ever ran. First names only.

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Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

Museum 2.0

JUNE 18, 2014

I got into museum work because learning happens in many places and many ways. Who their role models are. When we talk about embracing participatory experiences at non-professional levels, arts professionals often get worried that the best work will get drowned out in mediocrity. School is just a small part of it.

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Arts Build United States Audience 47

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2007

I got my copy of the fall issue of Museums and Social Issues this week. The theme is "Civic Dialogue," and the journal includes articles on the historical, cultural, media, and museum practice of getting people talking to each other (including one by me about such endeavors on the web). A place many museums are not.

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Museum Lecture Denver San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2010

How, he asked, could a large museum that serves hundreds of thousands of people per year foster the same sense of personal connection and community that a small one can achieve? I think small museums are generally better than large ones at fostering local communities of visitors and members.

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Community Museum Participatory Relationship 21

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2010

For each relationship type, I wrote down who fell into the category, what kind of involvement I saw them having, and how that translated to a certain kind of role in the company (owner, manager, governor, contractor, transactor). Who are your buyers, your recipients, and your regulators? readers, who I see as potential co-conspirators).

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Structure Model Social Profit 31

Museum 2.0

MARCH 24, 2010

This is the third in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. When I decided to write a book about visitor participation in cultural institutions, I knew I'd do it in a way that reflected the values behind the book itself--transparency, inclusion, and meaningful community participation.

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Participatory Museum Process Experiment 33

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

Today, the Luce Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is launching what they claim is the first ever alternate reality game (ARG) in a museum. Why would an art museum create an ARG? To tap into maker culture. And the "stuff" of the game is real stuff, artifacts created by players and sent to the museum.

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Game Museum Arts Alternative 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

What happens when a formal art museum invites a group of collaborative, participatory artists to be in residence for a year? Will the artists ruin the museum with their plant vacations and coatroom concerts? But for museum and art wonks, it could be. Will the bureaucracy of the institution drown the artists in red tape?

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Artist Museum Project Public 39

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

OCTOBER 15, 2007

I've been thinking recently about the "why" behind encouraging social interactions among strangers in museums. After all, people visit museums in their own pods for a reason. There are two ways I think we can be using this in museums. First, I think we should support the proliferation of museum-based "I saw you's."

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Museum San Jose Participatory Social 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

JULY 3, 2008

I've written before about techniques for talking to strangers, looking at how buttons , buses , and dogs and can all be tools for participatory design. I used that instruction recently to kick off a meeting at a museum planning a participatory education space. Interestingly, at the City Museum in St.

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Participatory St. Louis Museum Game 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 28, 2007

Welcome to the second in the four-part series on comfort (and its boundaries) in museums, a day late but just as tasty. I came out of it truly amazed by the power of the museum—not just to elicit laughter, but also to induce bizarre and voluntary acts of silliness in front of and with strangers. By giving people roles.

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Program People Museum Lecture 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 14, 2008

What’s in the crystal ball for museums and libraries? The IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) has commissioned a preliminary proposal for an NAS (National Academy of Sciences) report on museums and libraries in the 21st century. What are the essential differences and similarities between libraries and museums?

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Library Museum Reflection Alternative 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2010

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. Nina's research keeps finding that the right kind of constraints work to produce a better participatory museum experience.

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Place Discussion Library Museum 30

Museum 2.0

MARCH 6, 2019

While I originally wrote this post to advocate for more participatory practice (i.e. letting museum visitors contribute and collaborate in museums), I now see this as a crucial issue also for more democratic and inclusive practice (i.e. Other person: "But doesn't that erode museums' authority?" Me: "Sort of."

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Authoring Share Museum YouTube 44