Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2015

Last week, the international press lit up with a story from Paris : the city is removing the "love locks" from the Pont des Arts bridge. And so, one of the most successful, accidental, and fraught participatory projects of the past decade comes to an end. Your love is memorialized forever. Payoff here is fast and powerful.

Participatory 20

Participatory Project Artist Instructional 20

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

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.

Participatory 44

Participatory Museum History International 44

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?

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Participatory Practice Fundraising Relationship 39

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.

Arts 47

Arts Artist Museum Award 47

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

I''m glad to see coverage about art museums involving visitors in exhibitions. There are many curator and museum director voices in the article, but not a single quote from a visitor who engaged in one of these community projects. The metaphor for traditional art museums is the temple. Projects participatory museum'

Journal 54

Journal Participatory Museum Community 54

Deborah Elizabeth Finn

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

Deciding Together Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking. Empowering Communities: Participatory Grantmakers Say We Must Go beyond Feedback. Trust-Based Philanthropy Project. Community-based participatory research. Philanthropy is at a turning point. Here are 6 ways it could go.

Philanthropy 98

Philanthropy Open Participatory Evaluation 98

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.

Participatory 20

Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2016

While there was evidence of plenty of community engagement work across museums and galleries, most of it was funded project by project. Most participatory projects were short-term, siloed innovations, not institutional transformations. This made the work more urgent, fragile. and realistic.

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Resource Place 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 18, 2014

And it''s got me thinking about how we build energy and audience for the arts in this country. Barry Hessenius recently wrote a blog post questioning the theory that more art into the school day will increase and bolster future adult audiences for art experiences. Like Barry, I feel that more art in schools is always better.

Arts 47

Arts Build United States Audience 47

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 1, 2014

It made me dig up this 2011 interview with Tina Olsen (then at the Portland Art Museum) about their extraordinary Object Stories project. They designed a participatory project that delivers a compelling end product for onsite and online visitors… and they learned some unexpected lessons along the way.

Museum 43

Museum Story Project Design 43

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.

Participatory 30

Participatory Museum Vietnam Netherlands 30

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

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

What happens when a formal art museum invites a group of collaborative, participatory artists to be in residence for a year? But for museum and art wonks, it could be. The Machine Project and the Hammer Museum have just released an incredible ebook documenting Machine's year-long residency at the Hammer in 2010.

Artist 39

Artist Museum Project Public 39

Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

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 ). Because of the increased workload I expect in the months to come, as well as the likely possibility that we will start a Museum of Art & History blog, I'm lowering my Museum 2.0

Museum 55

Museum History Arts Consultant 55

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

Want to experience art in a populist, energized, industrial/urban setting? Artprize , now in its second year, is a city-wide art festival with a $250,000 top prize to be awarded to the work that receives the most public votes. It was the best experience I've ever had talking and learning about art. Want to talk about it?

Arts 52

Arts Experiment Artist Social 52

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. Imagine sitting around a conference table planning an upcoming project that involves user-generated content. A third argues that the project won’t be truly participatory unless users get to define what content is sought in the first place.

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Model Active Activism Activities 98

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

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

Scene: a regional workshop on arts engagement. A funder is speaking with conviction about the fact that her foundation is focusing their arts grantmaking strategy on engagement. Engaging people actively in the arts. Here, in no particular order, are ten different kinds of quality in arts experiences: AESTHETIC: is it beautiful?

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Participatory Museum Arts Culture 55

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

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.

Participatory 53

Participatory Museum Arts History 53

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 23, 2018

Two years ago, our team at the MAH embarked on our most challenging co-creation project ever. 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.

Issue 45

Issue Childhood Community Create 45

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. Come share your projects, challenges, questions, wild successes and epic failures with creative changemakers from around the world. Develop compelling, powerful participatory offers and promises for your prospective partners.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. But next month, Britain Loves Wikipedia will commence--the third instance of a strange and fascinating collaborative project between museums and the Wikipedia community (Wikimedians). I hope you'll share your thoughts in the comments.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

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

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. Or factory life in the 1700s. It''s serious.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

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. But there were 52 people who spent several hours working on the project as content reviewers or copy-editors.

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Participatory Museum Process Experiment 32

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. There are many different forms of engagement with many different outcomes depending on your goals, your project, or your institution." I don''t think these goals are universal by any means to the museum or arts field. Engagement?

Goal 48

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. But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. A fitness trail for urban life.

San Francisco 20

San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? But the difference between the two examples teases out a problem in differentiating "participatory design" from "design for participation." In the first case, you are making the design process participatory. In the second, you make the product participatory.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Visitors bond and bridge through participatory experiences at MAH. There were times when coordinating a fire art festival while researching social capital theory made me want to burn my computer. I learn a ton from her every day and wanted to share her thinking--and her graduate thesis--with you.

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Museum Program Participatory Community 49

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

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"?

Museum 45

Museum Arts Problem Design 45

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 History 45

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 Vietnam 45

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

This simple participatory project invites visitors to contribute their own small objects in little alcoves in our bathrooms. We have seven participatory elements in our current exhibitions on three floors, ranging from voting to talkback walls to an in-depth "make a memory jar" craft activity.

Museum 47

Museum Difference Examples Participatory 47

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. With a project like Granito, the film is only the beginning and serves as an invitation for everyone to share their story.

Guatemala 94

Guatemala Movie Artist Award 94