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

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. Loyalty gifts can work in your favor.

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Arts Generation Culture Giving 31

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2016

I wrote this book because of a fundamental curiosity about what relevance is and how it works. 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. A is working the door. B is shifting the room.

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Museum Arts Language Chapter 20

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

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.” . Thank you so much for supporting us and believing in our work! .

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Results email Fundraising Story 122

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. He gives you the inside story about the work of art. Visibility.

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Personal Create Photography Museum 50

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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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

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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Teen Volunteer Create Design 20

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

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

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

OCTOBER 12, 2011

The majority of foundation funding for the arts goes to large, established organizations that present work that is based in the European canon for a primarily white, upper-income audience. 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.

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Arts Fund Artist Houston 52

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

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. I happened to be at DAM for work and got to experience this amazing exhibit. It is an incredible museum experience.

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Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

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

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). Sarah has worked at the Walker since 1992 and is currently the Director of Education and Community Programs. How does the process of getting an innovation off the ground work at the Walker?

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

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

APRIL 8, 2015

I''m getting ready for the American Alliance of Museums conference later this month. Here''s how it works: Join the LinkedIn group (if you are searching, it''s called "Hack Your Hello''s at AAM"). It worked decently well last year, and I hope it might be even better in 2015. That''s it. Follow people, not topics.

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Museum Mentoring Linkedin Hints 20

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

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. I firmly believe that all people have something meaningful to contribute to our communities, cultural work, and society at large--including youth. Doron doesn’t work with A students or B students.

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Teen Arts Classroom Student 25

Tech Soup

JUNE 21, 2012

Here in TechSoup’s San Francisco office, we use audio and video conferencing every day to talk with people working remotely in the Bay Area, New York, or Seattle, as well as with our partner nonprofits around the world. Teen Outreach Pregnancy Services. " —Laura Pedersen. Executive Director.

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Foundation San Francisco Donation Los Angeles 63

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. And it ended with this: No wonder it [MOMA] ends up showing shallow, label-dependent art rather than work that offers deeper, more contradictory encounters. The review was harsh.

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Arts Museum Artist Audio 30

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." This seems like an appropriate time to share the story.

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Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

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

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 worked with volunteers and interns again to create soundscapes that focused on collecting. We had some money.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

The end of a conference is often a time of great enthusiasm quickly followed by a gaping maw of inability to act on that enthusiasm back at work. Especially when working with technology, leading with tools instead of mission-driven projects is a mistake. There are some ideas that will never fly where you work. That’s fine.

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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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Arts Wisconsin Los Angeles Denver 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 7, 2007

Five stakeholders in different cities want to see the work that's been done so far. Where else can you find Pakistani bathroom signage or Mexican biker teens while researching a project? The scenic contractors need to know what a "degraded plaster" wall finish means to you. Your boss is in California picking out antique fountains.

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Flickr Work Photo Teen 20

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 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. There are lots of great science museum resources, but not where these kids can walk after school. Where it didn''t work, no local support stepped up. That taught us a lot.

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Green Interview Share Community 20

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. We will always find it hard to implement equity and access, metaphorically throwing open the doors, if our leaders don’t spend time thinking about how we do our work.

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Museum Accessibility Articulate Teen 29

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 Let''s say you work at an organization that mostly caters to a middle and upper-class, white audience. Let''s say you work at an organization that mostly caters to a middle and upper-class, white audience. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture.

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St. Louis Museum Audience Teen 45

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.

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Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22

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. Gender equity work in math and science isn’t exactly woo-worthy.

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Interview Museum Teen Myspace 20

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.

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Participatory Museum Teen Voice 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

I just returned from the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia. I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. what is the value of the exhibition experience to non-participants, that is, regular museum visitors?

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Slides Participatory Museum Children 20