Museum 2.0

APRIL 2, 2014

There are many artistic projects that offer a template for participation, whether a printed play, an orchestral score, or a visual artwork that involves an instructional set (from community murals to Sol LeWitt). One of the things I always focus on in participatory exhibit design is ensuring that everyone has the same tools to work with.

Participatory 52

Participatory Arts Learning Music 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

But not enough people care about it anymore, and the museum is fading into disrepair. The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. Many people would look at the world''s oldest mechanized silk mill and say that the core content of the museum is silk. What do you do?

Museum 53

Museum Community Participatory Product 53

Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2010

I spent last week working with staff at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) on ways to make this encyclopedic art museum more open to visitor participation across programs, exhibitions, and events. While there, I was lucky to get to experience a highly participatory exhibition that the MIA mounts once a decade: Foot in the Door.

Participatory 46

Participatory Museum Arts Artist 46

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. When I talk about designing participatory experiences, I often show the above graphic from Forrester Research. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. This is a problem for two reasons.

Participatory 50

Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

Dear Museum 2.0 As of May 2, I will be the executive director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA (here's the press release ). I am closing down my consulting business at the end of April, but the Museum 2.0 Here are a few things that make the MAH an exciting museum to me: It's small.

Museum 55

Museum History Arts Consultant 55

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

Last month, the Irvine Foundation put out a new report, Getting In On the Act , about participatory arts practice and new frameworks for audience engagement. I've often been asked about examples of participatory practice in theater, dance, and classical music, and this report is a great starting point.

Participatory 50

Participatory Arts Report Case Study 50

Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. When I talk about designing participatory experiences, I often show the above graphic from Forrester Research. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences.

Participatory 44

Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

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 Project 45

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. you tell me.

Participatory 50

Participatory Active Activism Activities 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 23, 2008

One of the best projects that illustrates the basic idea of Web2.0 - listening and conversation and stakeholders creating their own experience with your organization - comes from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. All evaluations are private; all artists are unnamed. They are sensitive to the artists who are being judged. Artist Blogs.

Arts 74

Arts Social Media Examples Organization 74

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 15, 2014

Gretchen Jennings convened a group of bloggers and colleagues online to develop a statement about museums'' responsibilities and opportunities in response to the events in Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island. Museums are a part of this educational and cultural network. Where do museums fit in? Here is our statement.

Museum 52

Museum Blogger Cleveland Culture 52

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 14, 2013

One of the greatest gifts of my babymoon is the opportunity to share the Museum 2.0 First up is Beck Tench, a "simplifier, illustrator, story teller, and technologist" working at the Museum of Life & Science in Durham, NC. As a person who works for a science museum, I work in an environment that supports play.

Museum 51

Museum Roles Participatory Project 51

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 1, 2014

Recently, we''ve been talking at our museum about techniques for capturing compelling audio/video content with visitors. It made me dig up this 2011 interview with Tina Olsen (then at the Portland Art Museum) about their extraordinary Object Stories project. We ended up with a gallery in the museum instead. That is more curated.

Museum 43

Museum Story Project People 43

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2010

This question is a byproduct of the reality that most participatory projects have poorly articulated value. When a participatory activity is designed without a goal in mind, you end up with a bunch of undervalued stuff and nowhere to put it. Are you making that shift in your thinking about participatory project design?

Participatory 48

Participatory Music Project Video 48

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 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. I''ve spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums.

Museum 45

Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

George Scheer is the director and co-founder of Elsewhere Collective, a fascinating "living museum" in a former thrift store in Greensboro, NC. 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.

Museum 49

Museum Artist Participatory Proposal 49

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 Culture 49

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

I'm thrilled to share this brilliant guest post by Marilyn Russell, Curator of Education at the Carnegie Museum of Art. In a straightforward way, Marilyn explains how her team developed a participatory project to improve engagement in a gallery with an awkward entry. It is great to feel more of a part of the museum!" "All

Museum 45

Museum Arts Design Problem 45

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 Arts 29

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 28, 2013

Earlier in 2013, I was amazed to visit one of the new “Studio” spaces at the Denver Art Museum. The Denver Art Museum is no stranger to community collaborations, but we’ve been dipping in our toe a little more deeply when it comes to developing permanent participatory installations.

Denver 35

Denver Museum Arts Collaboration 35

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Let's look at the statistics from three big participatory projects that wrapped up recently. This citywide festival showcased work by 1,517 artists competing for a $200,000 top cash prize awarded by public vote. The Brooklyn Museum just finished the public stage of GO , a "community-curated open studio project."

Arts 47

Arts Artist Museum Award 47

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 Arts Participatory 53

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. The Museum 2.0 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.

Question 49

Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 13, 2010

On October 20, a young woman named Kate will move into Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and live there for a month. This post is not about the Month at the Museum concept or implementation. Instead, this post focuses on a fascinating aspect of Month at the Museum: the video applications. That will come later.

Museum 34

Museum Contest Video Participatory 34

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 9, 2011

She is a fabulous and thoughtful artist. Two weeks ago, we inaugurated a Creativity Lounge on the third floor of our museum. The same day we opened the Creativity Lounge, we opened new exhibitions throughout the building, including a paper collage show in the 3rd floor lobby by local artist Lisa Hochstein.

Museum 51

Museum Arts History Participatory 51

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2016

They wanted to help museums and galleries across the UK make significant, sustained changes in the ways they engage community partners and visitors as participants in their work. The result, Our Museum , is an extraordinary funding program with a focus on community participation. didn't mince words. Here are my three top takeaways.

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Resource Place 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

The artists come from all over (though many are based in the Midwest), and anyone can enter. Now, after attending with museum friends from around the country, I'm hooked. Artprize invited me to talk about art with artists, families, security guards, friends, people old and young, sophisticated and novice, drunk and sober.

Arts 52

Arts Experiment Social Museum 52

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?" I thought the pinnacle of participatory practice was an exhibit that could inspire collective visitor action without facilitation. and "why?"

Participatory 20

Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Last month, MAH curator Susan Hillhouse and I sat down and wrote an exhibition philosophy for our museum. In particular, we want exhibition collaborators--artists, researchers, historians, collectors--to understand our goals and how we intend to steer the exhibition development process.

Museum 38

Museum Participatory Artist History 38

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2012

When talking about active audience engagement with friends in the museum field, I often hear one frustrated question: how can we get adults to participate? In children's museums and science centers, this relationship is at its most extreme. And yet in the museum world, we still see interactives as being mostly for kids.

Interaction 47

Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2012

How do you help visitors know what they can and cannot do in your museum? Most museums have this figured out: they have signs, they have guards, they have cases over the objects. And this works pretty well in science museums, where designers talk about "hardening" exhibits to withstand the more aggressive touchers among us.

Museum 49

Museum Artist Denver Arts 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2009

Over the past year, I've noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects? Teens are a known (and somewhat controllable) entity.

Participatory 24

Participatory Teen Experiment Museum 24

Museum 2.0

MAY 8, 2013

Like a lot of organizations, my museum struggles with two conflicting goals: The museum should be for everyone in our community. 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'

Social 55

Social Museum Arts Program 55

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 Museum 45

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 24, 2012

I like to ask myself this question periodically, challenging myself to find substantive ways for visitors to contribute to our museum. To that end, our exhibitions are full of participatory elements. And when I think back on the past year, some of the most magical things that have happened at the museum have NOT been designed by us.

Open 41

Open Museum Platform Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

MAY 29, 2013

At our museum, we''ve gotten better at communication up from the front desk to the office. People use it to share surprises in the archives, inspiring meetings with artists, dead birds in the lobby, and free food in the fridge. participatory museum professional development' Kudos to Sarah for making it happen.

Facebook 55

Facebook Museum Participatory Group 55

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 Arts History Work 31