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 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.

Facilitation 32

Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32

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. Instead, they've been driven by community members who see the museum as a platform for their own creative pursuits.

Platform 41

Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 23, 2018

This project wove together many different participatory threads. The facilitation was as chaotic and fragile as a spiderweb. Please let us know what questions come up, and most of all, how you can imagine using this toolkit in your work. Short story: we learned a lot. We wrote a toolkit about our process. What did we learn?

Issue 45

Issue Childhood Community Create 45

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The Art of Participation provides a retrospective on participatory art as well as presenting opportunities for visitors to engage in contemporary (“now”) works. 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."

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Participatory Arts Design Museum 20

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.

Arts 45

Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

Museum 2.0

MARCH 10, 2008

Thank you to Susan Spero and all the folks at JFKU and Left Coast Press for starting a highly stimulating conversation this weekend at the colloquium on Museums and Civic Discourse. There were, as we say in the museum business, some good aha moments. There were also plenty of unresolved questions.

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Museum Site Facilitation Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. While "final" versions of these prototypes would need to stand alone on the sidewalk, the best prototypes are facilitated. Facilitation has a dual function: the artists learn what worked and didn''t, and visitors learn what the projects are all about.

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San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2016

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. The best book I've read on the topic is Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner.

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Build Community Museum Participatory 35

Museum 2.0

MARCH 18, 2015

There are lots of great science museum resources, but not where these kids can walk after school. Part of this is practical: you can''t facilitate making and tinkering for 30 kids if you have to hand them everything they need. Any big museum has barriers and limitations to full community ownership. Really interesting.

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Green Interview Share Community 20

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. How often do we remember to put out that second stool?

Relationship 46

Relationship Museum Game Personal 46

Museum 2.0

MAY 29, 2009

Two weeks ago, I conducted a participatory exhibit design workshop with staff at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Between the giant squid brainstorming and experimentation, I gave a talk to the larger Smithsonian Institution about multi-platform museum experiences. The slides are also available for download.

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Slides Process Video Open 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

--Helene Moglen, professor of literature, UCSC After a year of tinkering, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is now showing an exhibition, All You Need is Love , that embodies our new direction as an institution. This post focuses on one aspect of the exhibition: its participatory and interactive elements.

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Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

This month we’ve been thinking about “What is a museum?” (I'm I’ve been visiting museums my whole life. Does that make me the best judge of museums? People are the defining characteristics of museums. I’ve worked with and at plenty of museums that can sometimes feel empty. I'm not alone there.

Museum 36

Museum Place Life Ohio 36

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Other people submit questions they'd like to have answered by strangers. Mercedes and Zachary pick people randomly out of the database, call them, and ask a contributed question. They edit the conversations into radio shows, which are then made available as a podcast (you can listen to episode featuring me, #89: Museum Secrets, here ).

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Reflection Museum Podcast Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2008

Joe explains some of the planned intentional dialogue events: First, for the opening night dinner, we hired a local dance company that is putting together pieces about visiting museums, punctuated by an actor/dancer asking provocative questions to the group. At each table there will be an envelope with questions inside.

Studies 20

Studies Associations Houston Museum 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2010

I learned new vocabulary and questions to ask myself and others, but the exercise itself felt a bit frustrating and haphazard. This relationship bit helped me think about how different kinds of folks will be involved with a highly participatory, community-co-created project in the long-term. Finally, we looked at assets.

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Structure Model Social Profit 31

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2008

When I talk about the hierarchy, I use the theoretical construct of an issue-based museum exhibit. At level one, the museum preaches to visitors about the issue. Last week, I visited a museum with an exhibition that powerfully illustrated the barriers that prevent people from jumping from level three to level five.

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Poll Interaction Museum Social 22

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Two weeks ago, my museum was featured in a Wall Street Journal article by Ellen Gamerman, Everybody''s a Curator. I''m thrilled that our small community museum is on the map with many big institutions around the country. I''m glad to see coverage about art museums involving visitors in exhibitions. Community is not a commodity.

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Journal Participatory Museum Community 54

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

I'm thrilled to share this brilliant guest post by Marilyn Russell, Curator of Education at the Carnegie Museum of Art. In a straightforward way, Marilyn explains how her team developed a participatory project to improve engagement in a gallery with an awkward entry. It is great to feel more of a part of the museum!" "All

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Museum Arts Problem Design 45

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 21, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 I''ve been thinking recently about how I originally got interested in talking to strangers in museums. Working in museums as floor staff cracked open the social stranger door for me. blog posts from the past. This post was requested by a long-time reader. It was blue.

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Museum Tools Participatory Massachusetts 35

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 20, 2010

On a recent trip to the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, I noted a discussion board in the "Nursery" gallery. The design is nothing special: a question printed on construction paper with a bunch of post-its and pens for visitors to respond. People take the questions seriously and write interesting, descriptive, diverse responses.

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Museum Children Discussion Childhood 41

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

Now, after attending with museum friends from around the country, I'm hooked. Unlike most museum experiences, where people quietly absorb the work in a room, people were very comfortable pulling each other to specific pieces and extolling their merits or less inspiring qualities. Very few wrote in typical museum or even gallery-speak.

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Arts Experiment Artist Social 52

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2009

Facilitated/Unfacilitated Blend When we started this course, I really pushed the students to think about ways to induce unfacilitated interactions among strangers. I love facilitated experiences, but I worry that they aren't scalable to every visitor. They were roped to very specific locations and activities.

Advice 31

Advice Museum Facilitation Student 31

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 10, 2009

This can be an incredibly technical topic, as it focuses on the ways that platforms (online, exhibits, museums) can harness the individual activities of many visitors and create meaningful experiential outputs that connect people to each other. But designing an entire museum that functions this way probably isn't your goal. exhibition.

Social Network 22

Social Network Tech Network Museum 22

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.

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Slides Museum Los Angeles San Jose 22

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 18, 2009

I've been thinking recently about how I originally got interested in talking to strangers in museums. Working in museums as floor staff cracked open the social stranger door for me. My first museum job was working on the floor at the Acton Science Discovery Museum in Massachusetts. It was blue. It was polyester.

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Tools Museum Participatory Massachusetts 34

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. This week, we tackle educational programs and this question: what program could compel you to dress in carrots and hit the streets? The Spy Museum puts on extraordinary educational programs. Good question.

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Program People Museum Lecture 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

s Hawaiian son as applied to museums. Consider these two stories of museum-related wikis that struggled. In May of 2007, Woody Sobey released a wiki for science museum educators to share their demos. Woody had seeded the site with about 12 demos from his own museum, but the wiki never took off. What's a wiki? over email.

Wiki 23

Wiki Wikipedia Museum Doc 23

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. We need to set up spaces in which doing the right thing--welcoming all kinds of people--is easy, facilitated and enforced.

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Place Discussion Library Museum 30

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2010

Stage two provides an opportunity for inquiry and for visitors to take action and ask questions. The me-to-we design stages become even more important when facilitation is not possible. Here's how the Flickr experience maps to me-to-we design: For a museum example, consider the Walters Art Museum's Heroes exhibition.

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Design Museum Social Participatory 34