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.

Museum 29

Museum Difference Participatory History 29

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2010

Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. During the ensuing discussion, one woman asked, "Which audiences are least interested in social participation in museums?" Many teens love to perform for each other. First, teens often have incredibly tight social spheres.

Teen 49

Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Get Fully Funded

AUGUST 24, 2021

A fundraising email is not the right place to thank Board members, reflect on events that already happened, spotlight a wonderful volunteer, or highlight a major donor. For example: “Many teen girls struggle with their self-esteem thanks to Instagram and Snapchat. That means you may need to leave out a few things.

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Results email Fundraising Story 122

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more. Thousands of people geocache for a variety of reasons: to explore new places, to have outdoor adventures, to search for surprises out in the world.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

It's not every day that a visitor buys pizza for everyone in the museum. Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. The group was mostly young (teens to thirties) and nerd-diverse: a little bit punk, a little bit hacker, a little bit craft grrl. It was pretty freaking amazing.

Reflection 43

Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2008

Thanks to Bryan Kennedy from the Science Museum of Minnesota for providing this overview/reflection on the Museums and the Web conference that recently concluded in Montreal. Museums and the Web 2008 guest blogger Bryan Kennedy here. The Walker Art Center is turning its teen website over to the teens.

Museum 20

Museum Web Teen Flickr 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Last Friday night, my museum hosted a fabulous (in my biased opinion) event called Race Through Time. When Friday night rolled around, we did see a crowd that skewed decidedly younger and hipper than our standard museum audience. Performances just for teens. Late night mixers at museums for young adults.

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Audience Develop Museum History 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

I'm fascinated by these places because of their ability to attract diverse audiences to idiosyncratic experiences, and I'm curious how they stay afloat. From a museum perspective, I think there's a lot to learn from these venues' business models, approach to collecting and exhibiting work, and connection with their audiences.

Culture 49

Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2009

This week, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience , featuring rock posters from San Francisco in the heyday of Bill Graham and electric kool-aid. It is an incredible museum experience. The visitor is given a copy of her poster and the museum keeps a copy as well.

Denver 21

Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

I've long believed that museums have a special opportunity to support the community spirit of Web 2.0 This month brings three examples of museums hosting meetups for online communities: On 8.6.08, the Computer History Museum (Silicon Valley, CA) hosted a Yelp! Me: Have you ever been to this museum? meetup for Elite Yelp!

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2013

I spent the weekend queuing up posts for my forthcoming blog-cation--nine weeks of guest posts and reruns from the Museum 2.0 You''re in for a treat, with upcoming posts on creativity, collections management, elitism, science play, permanent participatory galleries, partnering with underserved teens, magic vests, and more.

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Museum Participatory Reflection Conference 35

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2017

This is the second installation 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. We started designing ways to make Abbott Square a desirable “first landing place” in downtown—especially for families with children.

Community 34

Community Build Arts History 34

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 24, 2011

This post features an interview with Sarah Schultz, a museum staffer at one of the institutions Light profiled in the book (the Walker Art Center). It's easier to secure grants for community-based programming or exhibitions, but it's not easy to get funding for some of the core work that museums do. That's how we build trust.

Arts 46

Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

JULY 6, 2016

FoodWhat's staff and teens have taught me a lot about what it really means to be relevant to people who are often overlooked or ignored. FoodWhat empowers teens to change their lives through farming and food justice. When Doron visits schools to invite teens to apply for FoodWhat, he gives a five-minute pitch on their terms.

Teen 25

Teen Arts Classroom Student 25

NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton - Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History Elaine Charnov - The NY Public Library Jason Eppink - Museum of the Moving Image Syed Salahuddin - Babycastles Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library 100 Years of the flagship library in New York.

Game 52

Game Culture Change Museum 52

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

Last week marked four years for the Museum 2.0 People--especially young folks looking to break into the museum business--often ask me how I got here. Ed Rodley recently wrote a blog post about museum jobs entitled "Getting Hired: It's Who You Know and Who Knows You." hour at the Museum. I made $26/hour at NASA and $7.25/hour

Museum 52

Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite museums are small, funky places run by iconoclasts—but that’s not useful to most professionals who work for organizations in which they have little control over size or leadership matters. I worked on one project in which the client institution thought they wanted unfettered teen expression.

Project 22

Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

Museum 2.0

MARCH 18, 2015

The people were of all ages--moms with babies strapped to their fronts, six year-olds using skillsaws, pre-teens building robots, teenagers doing homework. The design and feel of the place was different than any science center I''d ever experienced. In most cases, they''re not places where kids can go by themselves at all.

Green 20

Green Interview Share Community 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2009

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission.

Community 22

Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

Rabinowitz commented that "as a 40-year veteran of history museum interpretation, I can say that I never learned so much from and about visitors." This is the opposite situation of the previous design goal, one typical in science and children's museums.

Design 31

Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2008

Museums (and libraries) are trusted sources of information. In February 2001, AAM commissioned a study about the trustworthiness of museums and found that "Almost 9 out of 10 Americans (87%) find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices.

Participatory 20

Participatory Museum Teen Voice 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 7, 2008

For many museums, visitor research--how people use the museum, navigate exhibits, and understand content--may be an equally important arena in which to adopt groundswell listening techniques. I spent an hour this morning "brand listening" to what the online world says about one of my favorite museums, the Exploratorium.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Second Life Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2007

Last week, Elaine Gurian and I talked about radical change in museums. Former museum start-up queen, Jen is taking a small organization whose goal is to promote girls’ involvement in math and science through research and programming to new, innovative, exciting places. Braincake isn’t some fakey attempt to pander to teens.

Interview 20

Interview Museum Teen Myspace 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 22, 2015

A community by GEOGRAPHY is defined by place. The simplest version of this community is the place where you live. But you might also feel part of a geographic community related to the place you grew up, or a place you used to live, or a place you often visit. A community by IDENTITY is defined by attributes.

Community 20

Community Minnesota Teen Movie 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 Diane is both visionary and no-nonsense about deconstructing the barriers that many low-income and non-white teenagers and families face when entering a museum. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture. blog posts from the past.

St. Louis 45

St. Louis Museum Audience Teen 45

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 3, 2005

Some of the entries of what you can read on the Walker Blog, may appear at first glance to be mundane details of cube life , but then you remember that it is a museum blog and it makes the institution seem more human. This is a place to honestly show people what happens at an. week to writing. Words of advice to others. institution.

Artist 50

Artist Arts Process Remix 50

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2019

I tell the story of the one-man band because I think many museum professionals feel like him. But, most importantly, few museum professionals have a free hand or moment. Museums rarely have the funding to replicate positions. If you have a teen program running, there are no second teen programs person out drumming up business.

Museum 29

Museum Accessibility Articulate Teen 29

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

It's not because the boardwalk is a social place. Sure, it's social, but people stick to their own "pods"--families, teens, adults--and don't diverge or merge. Out on the boardwalk, or at the zoo or a museum, there's a common experience of the sights, sounds, smells, activities of the place. Why does this happen?

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Teen Game 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 4, 2007

On Tuesday, I reviewed Elaine Gurian’s essay, Choosing Among the Options , on museum archetypes and self-definition. Today, discussion with Elaine about ways museums choose their direction, how change is possible, and new museum types to be added to the list. What if you don’t want to be identified as one type of museum?

Museum 20

Museum Puerto Rico Change Boston 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 13, 2007

A museum experience I’ll always remember: In 2002, I worked at the Boston Museum of Science with a program in which high school students from a nearby charter school spent half their school time at the museum. They took regular classes, museum-specific classes, and had internship-style museum jobs.

Lesson 20

Lesson Museum Music Classes 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2007

This week, thoughts on Chapter 12 of Elaine Gurian’s book Civilizing the Museum , "Threshold Fear: Architecture program planning." In this essay, Elaine discusses the various barriers to entry for non-traditional visitors to museums, that is, the threshold fear that keeps such potential visitors from walking in our doors.

People 20

People Museum San Jose Chapter 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 19, 2006

This morning I attended the MacArthur Foundation Digital Learning briefing that was taking place at the Natural History Museum in NYC. These social networking spaces are becoming the place where a lot of (informal) learning by young people is taking place. It was the ultimate digital media multi-tasking experience.

Digital 50

Digital Learning Media Avatar 50

Museum 2.0

MAY 16, 2007

The recent flurry of restrictions that has sent teens fleeing? into the museum is the potential to encourage more positive in-museum interactions among strangers. I want in-person museum experiences to be more like experiences on social sites like Flickr, where strangers connect and form relationships around content.

Museum 20

Museum Myspace Facilitation Social Network 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2007

This week, we're looking at the first section, Talking Back and Talking Together , which features comment boards, talk-back walls, and discussion forums at a variety of museums. At the Boston Museum of Science's video kiosk on wind power, 3/4 of people were most interested in making their own video (as opposed to watching others).

Voice 20

Voice Museum Lesson Pledge 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 7, 2007

It has the most photos from the most people and places. Where else can you find Pakistani bathroom signage or Mexican biker teens while researching a project? So what makes Flickr so useful? This isn't a set of proprietary or stock images. It's photos taken all over the world by pros and amateurs.

Flickr 20

Flickr Work Photo Teen 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 3, 2008

Nina Simon a proud member of Gen Y, writes the very awesome Museum 2.0 blog, but you don't have to be a museum person to get a lot of value from it. Holy Meatballs is Global Kids project blog - I've pointed to the posts by teens. Nonprofit Programs and Social Actions. Also, Maddie Grant.

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Blogger Change Social Philanthropy 50