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 Arts Participatory 53

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.

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Museum Artist Participatory Proposal 49

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

The man is artist Rocky Lewycky , whose work is part of a group show of visual artists who have won a prestigious regional fellowship. If an artist can come into a museum and smash stuff, what does that tell visitors? It is not acceptable to walk into a museum and destroy another artist''s work of art. Definitely.

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Museum Arts Artist Participatory 50

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.

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Museum Community Participatory Product 53

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).

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Museum Participatory Artist Project 45

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.

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Design Participatory Learning Museum 45

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.

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Museum Participatory Artist History 38

Forum One

JUNE 6, 2024

Think like a musician Those who have played music in a band or orchestra or sang in a choir understand the profound impact of an engaged and participatory audience. Like a good ask-me-anything session with your favorite artist, these bits of interactivity boost engagement.

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Design Create Storytelling Interaction 75

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.

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Museum Arts History Work 31

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.

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Museum Arts History Participatory 51

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."

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

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.

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Museum Arts Change History 47

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 Participatory Museum Georgia 31

Museum 2.0

MAY 8, 2013

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we''re approaching this challenge through a different lens: social bridging. Museum of Art and History programs social bridging' It can lead to parallel programming: bike night for hipsters, bee night for hippies, family night for kiddies. And rarely the twain shall meet.

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Social Museum Arts Program 55

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.

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Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

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 Arts 29

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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Open Museum Platform Participatory 41

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.

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Museum Artist Denver Arts 49

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

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.

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Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

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.

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Museum Participatory Arts Attitude 34

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 Question Participatory Evaluation 45

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.

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Participatory Help Classroom Activities 43

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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Participatory San Francisco Museum Artist 23

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.

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Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

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.

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Measure Arts People Social 47

The Modern Nonprofit

MAY 1, 2024

Embarking on Your AAPI Heritage Month Journey Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, celebrated every May in the United States, provides an important opportunity to honor the history, culture, and achievements of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Artists, writers, and cultural leaders. Their fame attracts interest.

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Celebrate Education Fundraising Culture 59

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.

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Program Community Design Museum 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.”

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Museum Blogger Cleveland Culture 52

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.

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Reflection Museum Columbus Conference 43

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 14, 2013

We ran with it and have since generated data about decision-making, cooperation, competition and negotiation for scientists (and also some artists) to play with. He''ll be able to watch how certain activities evolve into coordination and what kinds of histories the people who most easily coordinate have in common.

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Museum Roles Participatory Project 51

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.

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Museum Contest Video Participatory 34

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.

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Museum Director History Culture 49

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?

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Denver Museum Arts Participatory 33

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?

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Issue Community Create Childhood 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 7, 2010

Most of my work contracts involve a conversation that goes something like this: "We want to find ways to make our institution more participatory and lively." It requires trading a certain history for an uncertain future--a nerve-wracking prospect no matter the situation. Fabulous!" "But This is incredibly scary.

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Audience Museum Oakland Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

In a straightforward way, Marilyn explains how her team developed a participatory project to improve engagement in a gallery with an awkward entry. Our colleagues in the Museum of Natural History were eager collaborators. This is a perfect example of a museum using participation as a design solution.

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Museum Arts Design Problem 45