Museum 2.0

MARCH 6, 2018

The outcome is open-ended and visitor-driven. This is the participatory museum, played out loud. It's rare that someone sits down to bang out noise. 95% of our piano users play music, beautifully. The piano is a simple invitation to meaningful visitor participation. The activity is clear and well-scaffolded. A special skill.

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Participatory Museum Sound Homeless 37

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

This person is writing about a participatory element (the "pastport") that we included in the exhibition Crossing Cultures. People could take the pastports home or hang them, open to a preferred page, on a clothesline. We created a simple wheel with open-ended questions about identity and place, setting it in a lounge area.

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Participatory Museum History Arts 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

It made me think in ways that I haven't before about the relation of art--as expressive culture--to democracy. It is multi-disciplinary, incorporates diverse voices from our community, and provides interactive and participatory opportunities for visitor involvement. Note: you can view these photos of the exhibition on Flickr here.)

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Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

Museum 2.0

JUNE 25, 2014

Two years ago, we mounted one of our most successful participatory exhibits ever at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History: Memory Jars. Two years later, this project is still one of the most fondly remembered participatory experiences at the museum--by visitors and staff. He creates a visual representation of his story.

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Participatory Evaluation Project Museum 52

The Modern Nonprofit

MAY 1, 2024

Well-planned events enable nonprofits, community groups, businesses and government agencies to showcase AAPI arts, food, performances, and more. The Art of Celebration: Showcasing AAPI Cultural Richness Incorporating cultural performances and art displays is a great way to bring the essence of AAPI heritage to life at your event.

Celebrate 59

Celebrate Education Fundraising Culture 59

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

I thought about all of this when reading about the recent incident at the Perez Art Museum Miami, where artist Maximo Carminero smashed a vase by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei in an unauthorized act of visitor participation. It is not acceptable to walk into a museum and destroy another artist''s work of art.

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Museum Arts Artist Participatory 50

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. By limiting artworks by size alone, Foot in the Door is open to a huge range of content and media.

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Participatory Museum Arts Artist 46

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

As a designer, I'm always trying to ensure that participatory activities, however casual, impact both the participant and the organization. If fundraisers are so keen on relationships, why weren't they the first into social media and participatory projects on behalf of their organizations? What's going on here?

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Participatory Practice Fundraising Relationship 39

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. This exhibition represents a few big shifts for us: We used a more participatory design process. We had some money.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The theme of TEDxSantaCruz was "Open." It gave me a chance to really think about how we have been opening up our museum and what it means for our community. We can change that by embracing participatory culture and opening up to the active, social ways that people engage with art, history, science, and ideas today.

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Museum Open Charlotte Participatory 55

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 10, 2012

What happens when you let visitors vote on art? Let's look at the statistics from three big participatory projects that wrapped up recently. Each of these invited members of the public to vote on art in a way that had substantive consequences--big cash prizes awarded, prestige granted, exhibitions offered.

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Arts Artist Museum Award 47

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.

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Denver Museum Arts Collaboration 35

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2010

As many of you know, I've been working for the past year+ on a book about visitor participation in museums, libraries, science centers, and art galleries. The Participatory Museum is a practical guide to visitor participation. The Participatory Museum is an attempt at providing such a resource. Tweet about it.

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Participatory Museum Vietnam Netherlands 30

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

JUNE 29, 2007

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology Gender, Race and Open Source June 29, 2007 My session on Free and Open Source software and the US Social Forum went great yesterday. That speaks volumes to me.

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Open Source Open Music Software 100

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

Our museum in Santa Cruz has been slammed by those who believe participatory experiences have gone too far. We always knew that the inclusion of participatory and community-centered practices in arts institutions was controversial. To me, the backlash against participatory and community-centered experiences is not surprising.

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Participatory Museum Arts History 53

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Last week, Douglas McLellan of artsJournal ran a multi-vocal forum on the relationship between arts organizations and audiences, asking: In this age of self expression and information overload, do our artists and arts organizations need to lead more or learn to follow their communities more? Here are three of my favorites.

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Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 24, 2012

To that end, our exhibitions are full of participatory elements. Riding the art couch through downtown Santa Cruz with two visitors and a dog while blasting the Jackson 5 was one of the highlights of my year. It happens because people see an opening where there wasn't one before. Happening Couch. Evergreen Cemetery Board Game.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

MARCH 13, 2013

Visitor-contributed photos surround a collection piece in Carnegie Museum of Art's Oh Snap! It can be incredibly difficult to design a participatory project that involves online and onsite visitor engagement. In this guest post, Jeffrey shares the story behind their big hit with a visitor co-created exhibition.

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Authoring Open Experiment Museum 53

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

George is a stranger I met last week at SFMOMA’s new show, The Art of Participation:1950 to Now. The Art of Participation provides a retrospective on participatory art as well as presenting opportunities for visitors to engage in contemporary (“now”) works. Here are two pictures. The first one is me. DO message clearly.

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Participatory Arts Design Museum 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 20, 2009

I’d never attended before and was impressed by many very smart, international people doing radical projects to make museum collections and experiences accessible and participatory online. Are participatory activities happening on the web because that is the best place for them? Instead, I found a standard art museum.

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Participatory Museum Web Indianapolis 35

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. You will learn the theory and practice of how to open your organization to robust community participation. Develop compelling, powerful participatory offers and promises for your prospective partners.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? The exhibit opens. 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. In the first case, you are making the design process participatory.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. This means that not only have they turned their museum into an experimental project space, they have opened that space explicitly and intentionally to community co-production. It''s serious. Everyone has something to give.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

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. Reassert the "forum"?

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Museum Arts Problem Design 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 10, 2018

I didn't know how to open a meeting. Priya Parker's wonderful book The Art of Gathering shares the core principles of how to drive. Here are my three big takeaways from The Art of Gathering : Hosting is an exercise in courageous leadership. If we open meetings with purpose, we should close them that way too.

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Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

Two weeks ago, I wrote about t he use of the word "quality" in the arts and its many forms. A commenter, Stacy Peterson, responded by turning my exploration back on itself: Quality makes sense but engagement is more open to interpretation. I don''t think these goals are universal by any means to the museum or arts field.

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Goal Museum Evaluation History 48

Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

"The arts are future-making." I wrote this down when Deborah Cullinan said it at a meeting of arts leaders about a year ago. Deborah''s vision for the arts leading the way to stronger future inspired me. Deborah''s vision for the arts leading the way to stronger future inspired me. They were open books.

San Francisco 20

San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

I am just starting to dive into the science of intergroup relations (psychology-speak for social bridging), and I greatly appreciate these individuals who are working to popularize and open up what could otherwise be esoteric research. inclusion Museum of Art and History research social bridging Unusual Projects and Influences'

Measure 47

Measure Arts People Museum 47

Museum 2.0

APRIL 21, 2011

I'm reaching the end of my consulting days, with just one more day on the road before I dedicate myself to Santa Cruz and The Museum of Art & History. On Monday, April 25, I'll be participating in an online video chat with Andrew Taylor and James Undercofler to explore new business models for arts organizations.

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Arts Model Wisconsin Business 26

Museum 2.0

MARCH 17, 2010

This is the second in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. Several hundred people contributed their opinions, stories, suggestions, and edits to The Participatory Museum as it was written. Several said things like, "I was curious to see how this kind of participatory, collaborative approach would work in practice."

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Participatory Museum Process Experiment 32

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. Wikipedia Loves Art, Take One The first version of Wikipedia Loves Art first took place in February 2009. In contrast, the Wikimedians were focused on making cultural content digitally available online using as open a licensing structure as possible.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

My style of teaching is participatory; I don’t lecture with PPT endlessly and involve the audience. Last year, I did a workshop at a conference for professionals who do audio description, a service that makes visual images of theatre, television, movies, and other art forms accessible to people are who blind or have low vision.

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Detroit Instructional Instruction PPT 78

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. The exhibition evolved after it opened. Short story: we learned a lot. What did we learn?

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Issue Childhood Community Create 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. The first part is saying yes and being open to the community." Yesterday, a lovely article came out in the local paper about what we're trying to do to become a thriving community hub. Let me know what you think and what this brings up for you.

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Museum History Arts Work 31

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. The system of making and distributing documentary films is changing rapidly.

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Guatemala Movie Artist Award 94

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2009

While the majority of experience-based museums like children's and science museums have unrestricted noncommercial photography policies, many collections-based art and history museums continue to maintain highly restrictive photo policies. There are thriving groups of Flickr users who share photos of themselves imitating art.

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Museum Photo Policy Open 54

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 11, 2012

I can't say that any one experience--working on a collage with other visitors, swinging on a hammock, discovering a participatory display for pocket artifacts in the bathroom--directly contributed to increased attendance and giving. They all have in concert, and they build on each other.

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Audience Museum Participatory History 47