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

Amy Sample Ward

JUNE 21, 2011

Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image. Trying to engaged the teen-to-twenty-something who normally may not use the research library. Ruth Cohen – American Museum of natural History. Jason Eppink – Museum of the Moving Image.

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Game Culture Museum Change 140

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.

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Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

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

Connection Cafe

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

You gravitated toward the museum, zoo, gallery, symphony, cultural management organization because of your roots. Instead of an event, create a little scavenger hunt for kids to complete as they walk through your historic mansion or art museum, to make it fun for kids to explore and learn. Maybe it’s the same with some of you, too.

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Arts Generation Culture Giving 31

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2016

Here's one of my favorite stories about the London Science Museum and their work to make their science shows relevant to families with deaf or hearing-impaired family members. Think of the Subjects to Change teen program, or the free lunches at the Cleveland Public Library. This chapter appears midway through the book.

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 22, 2010

These are some thoughts on a very small museum called the Brazos Valley African American Museum. I was fortunate enough to visit it during the Texas Association of Museums conference, and it brought up some reactions and emotions that I wanted to share with you. I felt lucky it existed.

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Museum Experiment Community Texas 23

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 1, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0. I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. This is a problem for two reasons.

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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. Sounds like there might be some overlap with your museum audience? Both geocaching and museums are fundamentally about exploration and discovery.

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Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

This summer, I worked with the Chabot Space & Science Center on a design institute in which eleven teens from their Galaxy Explorers program designed media pieces for an upcoming Smithsonian exhibition on black holes. There was no initial design, no graphics, and no idea of where the teen' work would fit into an overall structure.

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? Community First Program Design At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we've gravitated towards a "community first" program planning model. My answer: neither.

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Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

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.

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Museum Web Teen Flickr 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

One of the best personal brands that I’ve seen on Instagram from a nonprofit leader is Thomas P Campbell the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum. This shot is a painting at a museum visited during a professional conference for museums. This shot is from a program for teens that the met sponsors, #metteens.

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Personal Create Photography Museum 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 11, 2016

Museums , gardens, and parks have jumped on it. As a parent of two teens, I was curious if there were any potential safety issues to discuss with them or if they had downloaded or wanted to play. Others are using it to lure visitors to their location. A Few Concerns.

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Ohio Hype Nonprofit Game 50

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 1, 2006

specializes in designing museum experiences and exhibitions that are community informed, socially stimulating, technologically ambitious, and intriguingly experimental. I am available for consulting and strategic development, and creative design and leadership of exhibition, technology, and museum planning projects.

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Museum Professional Service Participatory 21

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.

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Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

Get Fully Funded

AUGUST 24, 2021

For example: “Many teen girls struggle with their self-esteem thanks to Instagram and Snapchat. Please help us open the door for a teen to attend our personal development conference, benefit from having a mentor, and get on a path to college and a career.” . We are so excited for them! .

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Results email Fundraising Story 122

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.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. First, exhibits that invite self-expression appeal to a tiny percentage of museum audiences.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

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

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

OCTOBER 12, 2011

There's the barrier of the concern that this work is "social work" and not art--and therefore doesn't belong in a museum or a theater. He got to see the museum process from the inside. One of the institutions that really impresses me in supporting this kind of social change through the arts is, strangely enough, a children's museum.

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Arts Fund Artist Houston 52

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. Community members served on juries, and we invited hundreds of museum members, donors, and visitors to weigh in on proposed designs.

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Community Build Arts History 34

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

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. In 2003, writer George Scheer inherited his grandmother's thrift store and decided to turn it into an artists' center and museum.

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Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2007

But I’d been scribbling notes for an art museum label post for awhile, and then yesterday, the NY Times had a review of a new show at MOMA, Comic Abstraction. MOMA has standard art museum labels. When I asked an art museum educator about this (“How should I look at art?”) The review was harsh. Is this enough? I loved that.

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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 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.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Tech Soup

JUNE 21, 2012

Teen Outreach Pregnancy Services. Most often, private operating foundations are organizations that operate museums, theaters, or arts centers, although any other charitable activity conducted directly by the foundation can qualify. " —Laura Pedersen. Executive Director.

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Foundation San Francisco Donation Los Angeles 63

Museum 2.0

APRIL 8, 2015

I''m getting ready for the American Alliance of Museums conference later this month. How can you tell if you want to go to "Museums and Communities" or "Museums and Social Issues" or "Museums and Very Cute Lizards"? If the best part of the conference isn''t on the agenda, how the heck are you supposed to access it?

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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.

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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.

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Game Culture Change Museum 52

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Very, very few museum visitors are in the "dog and baby" category. I will always remember when Robin Dowden of the Walker Art Center told me that she knew their teen website was working because she thought it was ugly and impossible to navigate. She needs to nap when she gets cranky, even though she keeps flailing her limbs.

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People Articulate Culture Teen 54

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

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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.

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Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

Connection Cafe

OCTOBER 19, 2015

After jumping in, you swam across the short length of the hole (about 10 yards), and emerge, wet and freezing, only to get to race through temps in the teens to try to warm up in a lukewarm hot tub. Museums, zoos, and aquariums are finding that crowdfundraising can be a strategic tool to add to their fundraising playbook.

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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. We made a giant mobile for the center of the museum out of origami birds folded from visitor comments received in the past year.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2008

First, I want to extend a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed to the nascent Museum 2.0 We're still looking for your Museum 2.0-related There's a new Pew Research report on teens and gaming showing that 97% of American teens play some kind of video games (console, online, mobile, etc). Living Archive.

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