Museum 2.0

MARCH 26, 2014

Last week''s New York Times special section on museums featured a lead article by David Gelles on Wooing a New Generation of Museum Patrons. In the article, David discussed ways that several large art museums are working to attract major donors and board members in their 30s and 40s. David describes himself as a "museum brat."

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Museum Generation Interview Donor 54

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2011

I asked Wendy Pollock and Kathleen McLean, authors of the new book The Convivial Museum , to share a guest post about the book. At first glance, our new book, The Convivial Museum , is about the most simple ideas. And to reflect in this collage of images and quotations the gritty realities of daily practice. Nothing new here!"

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Museum Photo Minneapolis California 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 26, 2010

As an early adopter, I remember switching, despite how strange it felt. Yet, at the time, people were questioning “How could serious work ever be done using a pull down menus?&#. In many cases, the slow to change eventually adopt or they no longer remain relevant to their constituents, donors, or loose their edge.

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Blackbaud Conference Reflection Atlanta 93

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. This post shares some of the most interesting questions I've heard throughout these experiences. Feel free to add your own questions and answers in the comments! BROAD QUESTIONS ABOUT AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION 1.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 15, 2015

I decided to give myself a gift this year: permission to change the Museum 2.0 But I also know there is huge potential to improve Museum 2.0. My decision crystallized last week, when I read Diane Ragsdale's thought-provoking post about the Irvine Foundation's recent report on the cultural lives of Californians. Frequently.

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Museum Proposal Analysis Lesson 20

Saleforce Nonprofit

AUGUST 20, 2021

The same historical and cultural structures that have held back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in so many aspects of our lives are also mirrored in much of the nonprofit sector. Workstream priorities should reflect this knowledge. Change Organizational Culture. By: Yolanda F. Authenticity in Diverse Donor Relations.

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Strategy Fundraising Philanthropy Nonprofit 82

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

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

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. Change may be necessary. Skills mismatch.

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Culture Organization Model Podcast 21

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MARCH 4, 2011

In early January, the American Museum of Natural History announced that it would hold a Brain Tweetup for 75 of its Twitter followers. The event promised an after-hours look at their special exhibition Brain: The Inside Story , a chat with its curators, a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum, and an opportunity to meet other fans of AMNH.

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Brain Museum Culture Interaction 94

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

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

This person is writing about a participatory element (the "pastport") that we included in the exhibition Crossing Cultures. Crossing Cultures features paintings by Belle Yang that relate to her family''s immigration experiences. We created a simple wheel with open-ended questions about identity and place, setting it in a lounge area.

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Participatory Museum History Arts 45

Museum 2.0

MAY 10, 2017

This is the tenth 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. When we started working on the food side of the Abbott Square project, it raised some basic questions about community inclusion. All those people eat.

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Arts San Jose Museum History 24

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2017

I first read about Story House Belvédère on Jasper Visser’s excellent blog, The Museum of the Future. This small, startup cultural project in Rotterdam works directly and intimately with community members to share their stories. It is a platform for social bridging and cultural exchange. The place surpassed them.

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Storytelling Story Photography Museum 39

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

I'm a huge fan of work and the way she thinks - especially after she road the Scare House ride on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with me and did a brilliant reflection on its design. Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. I've purchase a two copies, one for me and one to give away.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

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. It may be great for a natural refuge to remain hidden, but that sounds like a disaster for a restaurant or museum.

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Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Model 34

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

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

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Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

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. How do you build a movement for institutional change?

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Los Angeles Network Oakland Change 31

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

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

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Sixteen arts administrators, journalists, and researchers weighed in on the question over a series of posts. Several decried the oversimplification of the question, arguing that it's not an issue of "lead vs. follow" but a spectrum of forms of participant engagement. Turns out we're a lot more alike than I thought at the time.

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Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 17, 2015

Last week, I sat on the jury for the first Cultural Innovation International Prize given by the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona , and this week, I'm offering a workshop for museum professionals across Poland participating together in a "Museum Lab" in Warsaw. The second post , in which Museum 2.0

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Difference Poland Museum Minnesota 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

We were discussing the potential for cultural organizations to have significant impact across communities: on planning, health, education, and quality of life. But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. creative placemaking design participatory museum public space social bridging'

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San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 14, 2010

In his question to create the storage battery, he conducted 10,000 experiments before arriving at a method that worked. The whole idea got started a year ago when James Leventhal who is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum asked me if I would design some trainings for the local arts community. Contemporary Jewish Museum.

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Social Media Media San Jose Social 99

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 12, 2010

There were so many fabulous recommendations for the next Museum 2.0 This book, suggested by Susan Wageman, looks like a fabulous, off-beat, and highly pertinent read for librarians, museum folk, and cultural professionals of all sorts. It's time to figure out some answers to these questions so we can keep moving forward.

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Government Organization Museum Blended 42

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2012

But we've just compiled all our attendance data for the past year at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (our fiscal year ends on June 30), and several people have written to me asking for the numbers behind our turnaround. Now Friday nights at the museum have become something people can count on, and they keep growing.

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Museum History Arts Artist 47

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

This week''s guest post is written by Julie Bowen, VP of Experience and Engagement at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Years ago, I was running a workshop at a conference introducing a creativity technique to museum professionals. But it would never work in my museum because my boss would never go for it.”

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Place Museum Environment Problem 52

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

These are the slides and notes for the talk I gave at the American Alliance of Museums conference on Monday, April 27 about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. When I became the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago, I took this work with me. They talked about community building.

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Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2010

When it comes to user participation in cultural institutions and the arts, it's popular to launch projects that pit visitors against experts. at the Brooklyn Museum, where you could track how people of various levels of art expertise rated crowd-contributed photographs. Tags: Museums Engaging in 2.0 There was Click!

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Audience Music Artist Museum 38

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 29, 2012

Residents in the three counties that pay the millage will receive special benefits : free admission to the museum and expanded educational programming. I'm focusing on the community response to the prospect of the millage and the way the public debate reflects broader conversations about the public value of the arts. Rebuttal: none.

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Detroit Arts Public Support 49

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 28, 2009

What role does “promoting human happiness” play in the mission statements and actions of museums? That’s the question I’m pondering thanks to Jane McGonigal and the Center for the Future of Museums (CFM). Earlier today, the CFM offered a free webcast of Jane McGonigal’s talk on gaming, happiness, and museums.

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Museum Game Structure South America 21

Museum 2.0

MARCH 11, 2015

I''m not sure how well this is working for us in museum-land. As our culture explodes in embracing creativity across the professional/amateur spectrum, museums have two choices: we can sharpen the line. If done poorly (uncritically), it turns the museum into yet another place to watch cat videos. 1 is the weaker choice.

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Professional Artist Museum Arts 20

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 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. But next month, Britain Loves Wikipedia will commence--the third instance of a strange and fascinating collaborative project between museums and the Wikipedia community (Wikimedians). Some of these challenges were about mission fit.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2011

Recently, I've been doing a lot of workshops with cultural professionals around the question of developing authentic relationships between institutions and visitors. This expresses itself most powerfully in museums when we talk about building relationships with visitors over time.

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Relationship Museum Game Personal 46