Museum 2.0

JULY 11, 2012

I get excited about a lot of things in my work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. That's how I felt when artist Ze Frank got in touch to talk about a potential museum exhibition to explore a physical site/substantiation for his current online video project, A Show (s ee minute 2:20, above).

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Museum Participatory Artist History 45

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" HUMANS ARE THE BEST AGENTS OF PARTICIPATION When I wrote the book, I was coming from the perspective of an exhibit designer. and "why?" to "how?".

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Twenty Hats

AUGUST 18, 2020

Lasting six months or longer, these groups are safe spaces to grow professionally, surrounded by colleagues who share similar experiences. For eight months, 30 museum-based volunteer managers gathered to explore challenges specific to their brand of volunteer engagement. Designate one group member as the Lead for the upcoming session.

Professional 61

Professional Facilitation Leadership Skills 61

Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 21, 2011

Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image. Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. We are trying to change the visitors’ experience at the museum as well as ownership of what is in the museum, break down the walls between the public and the museum.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 15, 2012

In 2008, I wrote a post arguing that museums should focus on the pre-visit, not the post-visit, if they want to capture and retain visitors. I said: In many ways, the ability to successfully set a powerful and useful expectation for museum experiences is MORE valuable than the ability to extend said experience.

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Experiment Museum Library Aggregator 46

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Last week, Jim Richardson and I hosted MuseumNext , a 24-hour workshop for museum professionals focused on bringing new, wild museum projects into the world. We also ended the entire event with one of my favorite exercises, the Exquisite Corpse game, in which participants co-created comics of their craziest museum dreams.

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Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32

Museum 2.0

MARCH 12, 2014

I recently read the BERI report on bilingual labels in museums and was blown away by its findings. in Applied Social Psychology and has evaluated and researched informal learning experiences in museums and other visitor institutions for over 20 years. is a controversial topic, and the same is true in museums.

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Intergenerational Museum NSF Facilitation 53

Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. The result was a true experiment in designing the future--right here, right now--with artists and planners and civic leaders at the helm together. Deborah''s vision for the arts leading the way to stronger future inspired me.

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Arts San Francisco Design Marketing 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 12, 2009

On Sunday April 5, I’ll be conducting a collaborative experiment with 15 intrepid University of Washington graduate students, and I’d like to invite you to join in from your own hometown. The experiment requires you to go to a public space and do three things: Talk to a stranger. Get two strangers talking to each other.

Design 20

Design Experiment Seattle Social 20

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

Achieve

JUNE 21, 2015

Museum of Contemporary Art. in Chicago to experience MCON in person and over 20,000 people will stream the event online. National Geographic CEO Gary Knell will bring decades of media experience to the stage where he’ll discuss the future of National Geographic and how similar publications can shape education.

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Chicago Museum Arts Influence 52

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 14, 2010

One of the big themes in our book, The Networked Nonprofit , is the importance of experiments and not to frame them as success or failure but as learning. He also did not find the successful inventions with his first experiment. You have to be like Thomas Edison in approaching social media and experiment.

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Social Media Media San Jose Social 99

Achieve

AUGUST 25, 2023

Try using this language on your Ways to Give page or planned giving microsite—here’s an example from the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Beneficiary designations. By understanding the variety of options available, you’ll be able to provide donors with better experiences and suggest types of gifts that align with their priorities.

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Gift Team Fund Donor 52

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 4, 2010

He is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum , and an expert in using social media in a museum setting. One thing led to another and I designed a social media lab for arts organizations. The last face-to-face session, in fact, is participants sharing the results of their experiments. I said yes.

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Social Media Reflection Learning Social 94

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2011

To that end, they designed and executed three projects: Xavier , an opportunity for visitors to "talk" with a sculpture in the exhibition via magnetic quotation boards and alphabet fridge magnets. All of these were designed intentionally to support the exhibition goals around multi-vocality, surprise, and relationships among artworks.

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Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

Forum One

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

This Black History Month, we reflect on the strategy work that our team does through our partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture —much of which centers around expanding access. And for those who have, they quickly understand that the Museum has much more to offer than can be absorbed in a day.

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History Accessibility Museum Award 74

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 12, 2012

This is a picture of the largest temporary exhibition gallery in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. This winter, my museum is trying an experiment called Work in Progress. This winter, my museum is trying an experiment called Work in Progress. How do we facilitate visitor experiences in these spaces?

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Work Museum Artist Arts 40

Museum 2.0

MAY 28, 2020

Megan Smith incisively covered the sad state of staffing in the museum industry pre-coronavirus, as well as her fears for staffers post-coronavirus, in a previous post for Museum 2.0 , so I won’t belabor this one. It’s been informative to see the range of museum responses to a world in which people cannot physically visit our campuses.

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Museum Digital Internet Professional 29

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

I''ve mostly seen museums employ one of two methods for formal community advisors: Create special "spots" on the board of trustees for certain kinds of community representatives. CON: can feel disconnected from the primary governance of the museum or can feel like a second-class board overall. I struggle with both these options.

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Story Community Museum Map 39

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 design elements make buses more social than trains? The driver provides live facilitation. People talk.

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Participatory Design Museum Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

In the spirit of a popular post written earlier this year , I want to share the behind the scenes on our current almost-museumwide exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz Collects. This exhibition represents a few big shifts for us: We used a more participatory design process. We focused more on design.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

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 Environment Museum Problem 52

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2011

This expresses itself most powerfully in museums when we talk about building relationships with visitors over time. But museums are one-night stand amnesiacs in the relationship department. But museums are one-night stand amnesiacs in the relationship department. This is terrible, both for the visitor and for the museum.

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Relationship Museum Game Personal 46

Museum 2.0

MAY 13, 2015

Visitors in front of the African Elephant Diorama at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC photo) This guest post was written by Karen Wise, Vice President, Education and Exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. “I Familiarity may breed contempt in some contexts, but apparently not in museums.

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Los Angeles Museum History Artist 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 2, 2014

It is what it sounds like: a book of original sheet music, beautifully designed and complemented with artwork and text. In his thoughtful preface to this project, I reconnected with five lessons I''ve learned from participatory projects in museums and cultural sites. There are twenty songs in Song Reader. Everything old is new again.

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Participatory Arts Music Learning 52

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2008

This week marks one month of live activity for the Tech Virtual Museum Workshop , a collaborative, online platform for exhibit development. For me, it means spending a lot more time facilitating idea generation and communicating with others than being an independent creative agent. A month ago, I invited you to join this project.

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Museum Virtual Tech Second Life 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 14, 2011

Last month, the radio show This American Life ran a fascinating episode called " Kid Politics ," which starts with a long segment about the Air Force One Discovery Center immersive experience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. There's also a shorter, more expository (and positive) CBS video about the experience here.

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Grenada Student History Library 48

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 1, 2013

Colleagues Allyson Kapin who founded a web agency called Rad Campaign (they designed my blog) and Amy Sample Ward, who the NTEN Membership Director (and I’ve known since 2007 ) have published a new how to book called “ Social Change Any Time Every Where.” Click to see larger version.

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Campaign Online Chapter Synchronous 97

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 11, 2007

This is not an analytical post (primarily); it's an announcement and invitation to join the new project I've been working on with The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. But this is not just for The Tech; our grant mandates that this project be a service to the museum community at large. A contractor, Involve Inc.,

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Museum Virtual Tech Second Life 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 29, 2007

Thanks to Kyle Evans, who forwarded me the fascinating, lengthy master’s dissertation.art: Situating Internet Art in the Modern Museum by Karen Verschooren at the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. In it, Karen provides a survey of the evolving relationship of Internet art to art museums. Citizen science programs. On the website?

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Museum Web Arts Internet 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 8, 2011

Last week, I facilitated an interactive keynote in Seattle at 2011 Tech for Good Leadership Summit sponsored by Microsoft Community Affairs , in partnership with NPower Seattle. By all accounts , the event held the space for peer learning. As the facilitator, you have design questions so they illicit stories.

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Knowledge Seattle Social Media Measure 97

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 7, 2015

I''m entrenched in a project to build a creative town square in Santa Cruz connected to my museum. It challenged my pre-conceptions and made me think twice about "good" design for social bridging. When we lose the public space that facilitates it--active sidewalks and thoroughfares--we lose the simplicity of anonymous collisions.

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Museum Learning Public Contact 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 26, 2010

Last week, I had the pleasure of facilitating a Networked Nonprofit and Social Media workshop at the Independent Sector Annual Conference “ Forging A Stronger Future Together &# in Atlanta. Tags: Networked Nonprofit Training Design isconf.

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Blackbaud Conference Reflection Atlanta 93

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

As the museum's website puts it, "this exhibition examines how artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process." Staff play a major role in setting expectations about what visitors can and can not do-especially in art museums. DO delineate the space, but design easy ways to disengage.

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Participatory Arts Design Museum 20

NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

NTEN's Amy Sample Ward shares from her experiences at the Games for Change Festival. Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History For years we have been producing digital media to fulfill our mission of educating the public about science and history. I'm at the 2011 Games for Change conference today and live-blogging a few sessions!

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Game Culture Change Museum 52

Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2016

Designing a new program. 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. You should have a credible and understandable offer, alongside your ask of their time, experience, and expertise.

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Community Build Museum Participatory 35

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2012

This post is the third and final in a series of reactions to Blueprint , a book chronicling the rise and fall of the Dutch Museum of National History (INNL) in 2008-2011. How is the exhibit living on at the museum and what is it like to take over someone else’s project? We’d like to share some thoughts and ideas in this guest post.

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National Netherlands Museum History 27