Forum One

MAY 3, 2021

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. To provide tools and guidance to empower people’s journeys and inspire conversation about race, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) developed “Talking About Race.” Fighting Polluters Since 1970.

Award 73

Award Museum History Storytelling 73

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.

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Museum History Netherlands Create 36

Forum One

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

There’s nothing wrong with this kind of modeling, but the extent of its use is unclear, and the lack of clarity makes some users question the data they’re seeing. For example, we’ve seen our client at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture uncover visitor behavior in GA4 that they couldn’t see before.

Analytics 76

Analytics Museum University Google 76

Museum 2.0

MARCH 29, 2011

Last month, I learned about a fabulous, simple participatory experiment called “Case by Case” at the San Diego Museum of Natural History that uses visitor feedback to develop more effective object labels. Questions and answers rolled in. There are only pictures,” you know you aren’t meeting expectations. Beiber Rules!”)

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San Diego History Museum Participatory 55

Museum 2.0

MAY 30, 2012

This post is the second 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. The NMA was accused of presenting a “black armband” view of Australia’s history (i.e., In this sense, the NMA was deemed to have missed a trick.

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History Museum Australia National 35

VQ Strategies

MARCH 22, 2022

The article opens with a question that visitors to Disney theme parks frequently ask of Disney employees, “What time is the 3 o’clock parade?” Reading this immediately reminded me of my years working in museums, developing exhibitions and training and supporting volunteers who worked as interpreters in our blockbuster shows.

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Training Train Museum Volunteer 74

Museum 2.0

MAY 21, 2014

I''ve now been the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History for three years. I''m open to any questions you want to share in the comments. We talk a lot at our museum about empowering our visitors, collaborators, interns, and staff by making space for them to shine. In the meantime, here are some.

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Museum Director History Teen 49

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

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

DECEMBER 15, 2014

Gretchen Jennings convened a group of bloggers and colleagues online to develop a statement about museums'' responsibilities and opportunities in response to the events in Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island. Museums are a part of this educational and cultural network. Where do museums fit in? Here is our statement.

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Museum Blogger Cleveland Missouri 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

But not enough people care about it anymore, and the museum is fading into disrepair. The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. Many people would look at the world''s oldest mechanized silk mill and say that the core content of the museum is silk.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Every day for the past two months, a man has entered the largest gallery in my museum. It also complicates the question of what is acceptable in a museum. If an artist can come into a museum and smash stuff, what does that tell visitors? It is not acceptable to walk into a museum and destroy another artist''s work of art.

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Museum Arts Artist Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

APRIL 28, 2020

Many museum conferences have a moment of unfettered camaraderie and unvarnished joy--that moment is at karaoke. It was one of those moments when I was standing on a banquet (why question the story now?) It was one of those moments when I was standing on a banquet (why question the story now?), I know that there will be a rising.

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Museum History Mentoring Pledge 58

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. We've morphed ourselves into an alternate history. Maybe that’s not the question for today though. Because to go back to comfort, I’d say let that question wait for a few days. And that’s a form of guidance.

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Museum Work Time Doc 20

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

MAY 2, 2012

Today is my one-year anniversary as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. A year ago, I put my consultant hat on the shelf and decided to jump into museum management (a sentence I NEVER would have imagined writing five years ago). I'm open to any questions you want to raise in the comments.

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Museum Director Participatory Culture 55

Bloomerang

APRIL 12, 2022

When my sister first started working with a nonprofit museum, she had a lot to learn about the fundraising process for the organization. The museum had notes saved in their donor management software about the seating preferences for their major donors and that particular donor preferred their regular seat toward the front.

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Software Management Donor Guide 98

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Writing my masters thesis for Gothenburg University’s International Museum Studies program while also working four days a week as the Director of Community Programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History this spring was certainly a challenge but also an incredible opportunity.

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Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Museum 2.0

APRIL 11, 2012

Once there was a project to design a national history museum in the Netherlands. The team developed some highly innovative digital projects and approaches to history. While not wholly explored, that question reverberates throughout a new book, Blueprint , that shares the plans for the Dutch Museum of National History.

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Museum North America Netherlands History 34

Museum 2.0

JUNE 5, 2019

I was proud to work with amazing colleagues to lead major change at the museum. My favorite question Geoffrey asked me was about engaging with people who were critical of the transformation of the MAH. Here's his question and my full answer (which was edited down for length in the published article). It was not easy.

Interview 36

Interview Change Museum History 36

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. For years we have been producing digital media to fulfill our mission of educating the public about science and history.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

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

DECEMBER 18, 2013

These are the questions that underpin Museum Camp 2014 , a professional development experience in which diverse people from the arts, community activism, and social services will measure the immeasurable together. This is the second year that the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) is hosting Museum Camp.

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Museum Impact Social Evaluation 46

TechImpact

MARCH 31, 2014

The National History Museum of Los Angeles does a great job of highlighting their staff in their Instagram posts. Encourage interaction on your feed by running contests, asking questions, ask for a #regram, and encourage people to share your message. Here are a few tips to help your nonprofit get up to speed with Instagram!

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Los Angeles Tips Images Feeds 237

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

DECEMBER 11, 2020

Museums have used games to engage visitors for decades. SR: I came to games before I came to museums. My grandmother cheated at Candyland and uno. :) Games, I think, have a nice Venn diagram of overlap between museum lovers. I love thinking we're getting new museum lovers through games. How did you get into museum games?

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Game Museum Design Digital 55

Museum 2.0

MAY 6, 2016

Five years ago, I left the consulting world to take the helm at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) at a time of crisis and change. As I did at the one-year and three-year mark, here are some of the things I'm most proud of, mistakes I've made, and questions on my mind as we head into the next five years.

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Museum Director Arts History 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 10, 2016

Museum technology nerds: this post is for you. I've been thinking recently about distributed content experiences--ways for people to interact with museum content (art, history, science, etc.) as they make their way through the world outside the museum. At the museum? but none of them are great. Who's tackling them?

Museum 20

Museum Experiment Digital Podcast 20

Top Nonprofits

FEBRUARY 18, 2021

Our participants came from a variety of sectors including museums, advocacy, arts, religion, and education. The first question asked was “What changes have you seen in your audience during 2020? their audience over social media – Instagram, YouTube and Facebook– by appealing to their “history buffs”. What was positive?

Conversation 52

Conversation Mexico Museum Europe 52

Bloomerang

OCTOBER 20, 2021

With that in mind, ask yourself these questions: Do you have board members who are giving consistently? . Are you asking them to contribute to something specific that they have already indicated interest in, like the Sanderson Sisters Museum? Do you have volunteers who are volunteering multiple times each month? .

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Gift Teach Fundraising Donor 135

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

JANUARY 13, 2011

Rather than just doing an activity, visitors should be able to contribute in a way that provides a valuable outcome for the institution and the wider museum audience. This week, I saw a great example at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum that blew me away with its power and simplicity. It is this station that grabbed my attention.

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Participatory Museum Action Experiment 44

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

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?" Over the past four years, I''ve been running a small regional art and history museum in Santa Cruz, CA. and "why?" to "how?".

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

M+R

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

The questions we need to ask go beyond the immediate revenue numbers. Let’s go back to the core questions we started with. So the key question is of course, does all of this extra work yield results? Her clients include Oxfam America, the American Museum of Natural History, and the American Red Cross.

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America Digital Audience Channel 105

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

The book of the same title that he edited is rocking my world, both as a museum professional who cares about inclusion and as a new mother. My biggest question for these social psychologists is this: how do we apply their lessons to our work? I realize that I may sound like a college freshman who just discovered Psych 101, but heck.

Measure 47

Measure Arts People Museum 47

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 old are they?")

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Participatory San Diego Museum History 48