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 had some money.

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 22, 2012

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, we take our interns seriously, give them real responsibility, creative challenges, and meaningful work opportunities. I'm particularly excited about two internships that relate to participatory exhibition design. First, there is the Participatory Exhibit Design Internship.

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Participatory Museum Photography Unconference 37

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

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. We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way.

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Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

As of May 2, I will be the executive director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA (here's the press release ). Because of the increased workload I expect in the months to come, as well as the likely possibility that we will start a Museum of Art & History blog, I'm lowering my Museum 2.0

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History Museum Arts Consultant 55

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. I thought the pinnacle of participatory practice was an exhibit that could inspire collective visitor action without facilitation. Over the past four years, I''ve been running a small regional art and history museum in Santa Cruz, CA.

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

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. To date, the solution has been to put photos on the walls, pray for funding, and ignore the front-end evaluation bit.

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San Diego History Museum Participatory 55

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 early participatory projects are terrific. Where would you start?

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Museum History Netherlands Create 36

Museum 2.0

JUNE 24, 2010

She did several things over the course of the tour to make it participatory, and she did so in a natural, delightful way. and then recounted some related fact or history. It was clear that Vi isn't just someone who talks about history. But participatory facilitation can be taught. What made it so special?

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Museum Participatory Model Seattle 51

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 13, 2011

The best participatory projects are useful. The participatory activity in question is part of the new Unfinished Business gallery, a room in which the museum engages with a contemporary issue related to the passion and work of Jane Addams and the historic Hull-House activist residents. Yes, this activity is political.

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Participatory Museum Action Experiment 44

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. A strong participatory process is not a loosey-goosey, open the doors and do whatever strategy. It''s not a question of the participatory process being unidirectional, something that we are doing for you the community.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 27, 2010

There were a number of online/offline participatory visitor experiences. At the Natural History Museum, we visited the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins , an immersive, interactive journey through the origins of human beings and the dramatic stories of survival and extinction in the midst of earth’s history of climate change.

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DC Asia Offline Participatory 91

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. The reason I was interested in this job is because last fall the trustees put out a new strategic plan with a vision statement that positions the museum as a thriving central gathering place around art, history, ideas and culture," she said.

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Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. Develop compelling, powerful participatory offers and promises for your prospective partners. Tour MAH participatory exhibitions and shadow MAH community events. And it's not just for museum people.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 21, 2012

We decided to show a selection of Danny's lists in a hallway surrounded by a participatory element where we invite visitors to contribute to new lists on evocative themes ("Things we forget," "The best feelings in the world," etc.) One of the collections on display is a set of "found lists" collected by a local farmer, Danny Lazzarini.

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Participatory Difference Analysis Museum 39

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Visitors bond and bridge through participatory experiences at MAH. To apply the results of my analysis to produce a community-driven program design specifically for implementation at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (the MAH). You can download and read the full version of my thesis here.

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Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2012

A few weeks ago, the MAH Director of Community Programs, Stacey Garcia, came to me with an idea. Stacey has been collaborating with local artists to produce a series of content-rich events that invite visitors to participate in a range of hands-on activities.

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Activities Active Activism Participatory 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 7, 2014

Here’s another example of how Billboard is using nostalgia in its tweets: This Week In Billboard Chart History: TLC Takes ‘No Scrubs’ To No. Use Participatory Research Techniques To Discover Engagement Topics. Billboard (@billboard) April 7, 2014.

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Social Media Headline Media Social 101

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 11, 2012

I can't say that any one experience--working on a collage with other visitors, swinging on a hammock, discovering a participatory display for pocket artifacts in the bathroom--directly contributed to increased attendance and giving. They all have in concert, and they build on each other.

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Audience Museum Participatory History 47

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2018

One that has found remarkable success is California’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. On the side of practice, there's a much longer history and body of organizations working on audience age and income diversity than on race. This is both an issue of practice and of media coverage. Conference sessions on reaching young people.

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Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 8, 2014

Last summer it was beach chairs for a history exhibit. But on another level, the wishlist is the most participatory part of the newsletter. When she said this, I realized that what we thought of as a thrifty practicality is actually a great symbol of our participatory, inclusive ethos. It''s the one part that begs a response.

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Newsletter Museum Participatory History 35

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. A third argues that the project won’t be truly participatory unless users get to define what content is sought in the first place. Despite its long history, few researchers studied the use and impact of citizen science until the 1980s.

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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. Ze Frank is a participatory artist who creates digital projects that are explicitly about creating and enhancing authentic interpersonal connections. The scale and scope of participation in A Show is extraordinary.

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Museum Participatory Artist History 45

Museum 2.0

MAY 10, 2011

It's my second week as the Executive Director at The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, CA, and boy is my everything tired. I'm also making the 2011-2012 budget, getting to know our terrific staff and volunteers, and starting up a few small participatory projects to launch us into being a more community-driven institution.

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Museum History Participatory Arts 53

Museum 2.0

MARCH 20, 2013

This week, the Santa Cruz Weekly's cover story is about my museum (the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History ) and the work we have done to make it a more participatory, community-centered place over the past two years. Perry describes me as the "conductor" of a community-programmed orchestra.

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Story Georgia Participatory Museum 31

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 11, 2015

INTERNSHIPS If you want to join us in Santa Cruz for more professional learning, consider an internship at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We''re offering internships this summer in: Participatory Exhibition Design. Help take the participatory elements of this permanent gallery to the finish line. Community Programs.

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Participatory Community Museum History 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 10, 2013

The weather is hopefully the least of the reasons you should want to come work with us here at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. These are unpaid, part-time internships in which you will make a significant contribution to our work, and at the same time, learn a heck of a lot about participatory design and community engagement.

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San Francisco Participatory Artist Museum 23

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

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. 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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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? History Museums OPPORTUNITIES - History museums are in many ways the best-suited for visitor participation.

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Museum Difference Participatory History 29

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 28, 2011

We've been offering a host of participatory and interactive experiences at the Museum of Art & History this season. I loved Jasper Visser's list of 30 "do's" for designing participatory projects earlier this month. This isn't even participatory. All of them are cheap, mostly simple, and occasionally, dangerous.

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Design Participatory Learning Instruction 45

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. This past weekend, in conjunction with our exhibition about Ze Frank's current participatory project, A Show , we hosted " Ze Frank Weekend "--a quickie summer camp of workshops, activities, presentations, and lots of hugging.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Here's the short version (read the whole thing here ): The Museum of Art & History is committed to creating exhibitions that inspire our diverse audiences to engage deeply with contemporary art and Santa Cruz County history. It's a working document, and we mean to put it to work planning new projects with our partners.

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Museum Artist Participatory History 38

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

I''ve seen participatory artworks that lay untouched by visitors because the invitation to participate is not explicit enough. Throw in a few participatory elements, and suddenly you have visitors trying to arbitrate amongst themselves. institutional change Museum of Art and History risk'

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Museum Arts Artist Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

APRIL 4, 2012

Museums have been grappling with this question for years ( here's a 2007 roundup of such projects ), most aggressively in zoos and natural history museums where staff hope to inspire conservation and in history/concept museums that focus on civic engagement and activism. There was no specific instruction with the dots.

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Story Participatory Museum History 47

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 24, 2012

To that end, our exhibitions are full of participatory elements. What started as a fun personal project for her will hopefully become part of our permanent history gallery--a space we are trying to make more interactive over the coming years. Visitors can comment on how we can improve or what they would like to see.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2019

Today, I wanted to think about participatory elements, something so essential to this blog. With this in mind, when we produce participatory experiences, while our impetus is to serve our power users with extra content or “check for understanding” interactives, there are so many other ways to use interactives.

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Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

This simple participatory project invites visitors to contribute their own small objects in little alcoves in our bathrooms. We have seven participatory elements in our current exhibitions on three floors, ranging from voting to talkback walls to an in-depth "make a memory jar" craft activity. and I hope you share them in the comments.

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Museum Difference Examples Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Proposals involve sculpture, performance, participatory-projects, videos, and installation that use and respond to the museum’s collection. Successful” artworks draw out qualities in the collection, reflect material histories, and show the artists’ process and conceptualization. Restoration is a formal gesture for most museums.

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