Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

In this post, George grapples with the challenges of balancing the care for a museum collection with that of contemporary artists-in-residence who are constantly reinterpreting it. Every Saturday, the curatorial team at Elsewhere , a living museum in downtown Greensboro, NC, reviews the project proposals of its artists-in-residence.

Artist 49

Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. In the fall of 2013, they launched Re:Make , an ambitious project to redevelop the museum, live, on the floor, with a mix of staff, guest artists, and community members. They see it as the future of their museum.

Museum 53

Museum Product Participatory Community 53

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2012

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. The event involved over fifty artists throughout the building helping visitors make their own paper, write poems, stitch books, etc.

Activities 50

Activities Active Activism Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. But the point is that the MAH, like just about every other museum in the known universe, was content to define the museum experience as something removed from the outside world, a rarefied church-like space of refined artistic reflection.

Museum 31

Museum History Arts Work 31

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.

San Francisco 23

San Francisco Participatory Artist Museum 23

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).

Museum 45

Museum Participatory Artist History 45

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.

Story 31

Story Georgia Participatory Museum 31

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

In particular, we want exhibition collaborators--artists, researchers, historians, collectors--to understand our goals and how we intend to steer the exhibition development process. We knew internally that we wanted our exhibitions to become more interdisciplinary, more participatory, and more responsive to audience needs.

Museum 38

Museum Artist Participatory History 38

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2018

One that has found remarkable success is California’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Audiences of all backgrounds found ways to connect with museums as it presented exhibitions with the help of foster youth, migrant farmers, roller-derby girls, mushroom hunters, surfers and incarcerated artists, among others.

Audience 49

Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

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.

Museum 53

Museum History Participatory Arts 53

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 25, 2011

Note From Beth: Yesterday, I attended a convening called “ Beyond Dynamic Adaptability ” for arts organizations about cultural participation in the arts. But that is only the jumping off point for the inquiry.

Guatemala 93

Guatemala Movie Artist Award 93

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. Artists work incredibly hard to produce their work. This isn't even participatory. It's just fun.

Design 45

Design Participatory Learning Instruction 45

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.

Participatory 20

Participatory Community Museum History 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2012

But we've just compiled all our attendance data for the past year at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (our fiscal year ends on June 30), and several people have written to me asking for the numbers behind our turnaround. design new programs with a focus on history. I promise--after this post, I'll stop writing about this.

Museum 47

Museum History Arts Artist 47

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 23, 2018

We partnered with foster youth, former foster youth, artists, and community advocates to create an exhibition that used art to spark action on issues facing foster youth. This project wove together many different participatory threads. Short story: we learned a lot. We wrote a toolkit about our process. What did we learn?

Issue 45

Issue Childhood Community Create 45

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

We've gotten a little more organized at The Museum of Art & History , and we've now released opportunities for summer internships. This internship is for the truly self-motivated person out there with a brilliant idea for making museums more participatory, welcoming, community spaces who just lacks an institution at which to try it out.

Museum 34

Museum Participatory Arts Attitude 34

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.

Platform 41

Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

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.

Museum 29

Museum Difference Participatory History 29

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.

Museum 35

Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 9, 2011

She is a fabulous and thoughtful artist. It's a little living room in a lobby area that invites people to lounge on comfortable chairs, leaf through magazines and books related to art and Santa Cruz history, and generally hang out. You can learn more about her work here. The area that houses the Creativity Lounge also shows art.

Museum 51

Museum Arts History Columbus 51

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

We have witnessed and experienced incredible moments of transformation: homeless people and history buffs working together on historic restoration, graffiti artists and knitters collaborating on new artistic projects, visitors from different backgrounds making collages, or sculptures, or dance performances together.

Measure 47

Measure Arts People Museum 47

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.

Museum 45

Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2012

There are many participatory experiences that appeal primarily to adults, and they are designed distinctly for adults. There's a huge difference between the edgy, DIY beauty of Candy Chang 's participatory urban artworks and the dayglow colors, exclamatory language , and preschool fonts of most museum interactives.

Interaction 47

Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

For years, I've been fascinated and a bit perplexed by the Elsewhere Collaborative , a thrift store turned artists' studio/living museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. Over the past seven years, this exploration has been undertaken by a staff of artists and more than 35 creators each year participating in our residency program.

Collaboration 36

Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2017

This is the ninth 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. Working with creative people taught me to think like an artist: observe, explore, dive in, look out. We develop the ideas. We explore the possible programs.

Develop 20

Develop Artist Participatory Blended 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2012

At the museum of art and history where I work, we are grappling with the question of how to help people enjoy themselves while keeping the art and artifacts safe. In the history gallery, we have some blended props and artifacts, and it's rarely clear what is and is not ok to touch. Engagement with local artists.

Museum 49

Museum Denver Artist Milwaukee 49

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 15, 2014

Artists and arts organizations are contributing their spaces and their creative energies. Yet our posts contain similar phrases such as “21st century museums,” “changing museum paradigms,” “inclusiveness,” “co-curation,” “participatory” and “the museum as forum.”

Museum 52

Museum Blogger Cleveland Missouri 52

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 26, 2012

This article sparked some interesting discussion online with colleagues from natural history museums, which deal with damage and touching very differently than art institutions do. What happens to objects when they are no longer art? How should (and do) we treat them?

Denver 33

Denver Museum Arts Participatory 33

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2011

These are both busy people, and while they are very artistic, neither is a crack drawer. This experience reminded me of how much confidence it takes to say yes to any new activities (this isn't limited to participatory projects) because of unfamiliarity with the process. I asked what plan B was if visitors didn't draw the items.

Participatory 43

Participatory Classroom Help Artist 43

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've seen this line of questioning almost completely disappear in the past two years due to many research studies and reports on the value and rise of participation, but in 2006-7, social media and participatory culture was still seen as nascent (and possibly a passing fad). In 2008, the conversation started shifting to "how" and "what."

Question 49

Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

In particular, we had a great group of 15 talking about participatory history experiences on Sunday. Participatory art and co-creation on the rise. History and science museums. I was also thrilled to see Michelle DelCarlo do a pop up "pop up museum" during the conference, advertised only through Twitter.

Reflection 43

Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 12, 2017

A cheerful curly-haired deli owner stands in front of 30 of us and shares a quote he loves: "Artists live in the present and write detailed histories of the future." It was even more useful to learn how participatory writing visions can be. A vision is a detailed history of the future. WHAT IS A VISION? Write it that way.

History 26

History Pennsylvania Michigan Indiana 26

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

The ideal candidate has a good grasp of our local artistic assets in Santa Cruz County, a knack for participatory placemaking, and enthusiasm about putting on a show. creative placemaking design Museum of Art and History programs public space' multiple times per week.

Public 20

Public Activities Active Activism 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 21, 2014

I''ve now been the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History for three years. Over the past three years, we''ve tripled our attendance, doubled our budget, and, most importantly, established deep and diverse relationships with community members, artists, and organizations across Santa Cruz County.

Museum 49

Museum Director History Teen 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2012

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), we've started experimenting with a "community first" approach to program development. We had about thirty participants ranging from MAH trustees to artists, educators to architects, moms to grandfathers. It was an evening meeting with beer and chips. Then, we went honeycomb-crazy.

Program 49

Program Community Design Museum 49

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

These are the slides and notes for the talk I gave at the American Alliance of Museums conference on Monday, April 27 about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. When I became the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago, I took this work with me. We exist for people who live in Santa Cruz County.

Build 20

Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 13, 2010

Why the Video Contest Worked Video contests are one of the most challenging kinds of participatory projects to pull off. Nothing warms my heart like seeing outtakes of a guy trying to scale the walls of MSI, or a man spinning a yarn about his family's long history sleeping in museums.

Museum 34

Museum Contest Video Chicago 34