Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 23, 2007

One of my most exciting moments of ASTC this year was picking up a copy of the newly released Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions , a collection of essays ten years in the making, edited by Kathy McLean and Wendy Pollock. The book opens with a list of reasons why museums might use "visitor-response elements in exhibitions."

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Museum Voice Case Study Discussion 20

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.

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Museum Question Participatory Vietnam 45

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 2, 2010

Hi folks, Seems like it's time for another Museum 2.0 book club, where we pick a book, read it, and then I and guest bloggers write about aspects of the book that intrigue and stimulate us. If the problem is us, let's start 2011 with some ideas on how to change.

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Museum Participatory Blogger Culture 26

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2007

This is the final installment of Museum 2.0’s s book club on Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions , a collection of essays edited by Wendy Pollock and Kathy McLean. The best visitor voices projects don’t come out of marketing blitzes or grudging concessions to visitors. They don’t have anything interesting to say.

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Voice Case Study Museum Map 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2007

Welcome to the first installment of the Visitor Voices book club. This week, we're looking at the first section, Talking Back and Talking Together , which features comment boards, talk-back walls, and discussion forums at a variety of museums. Rather than rehash each of the projects (hint: read the book!),

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Voice Museum Pledge Lesson 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 3, 2019

But we also know that it hasn’t made an appreciable impact on the people coming to museums. Now, I’m not an expert in throwing open the doors, but just one voice, trying to make this happen. No one in leadership in a museum can be immune to the financial responsibilities of keeping collections available. That is, except museums.

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Accessibility Museum Australia Voice 32

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2009

I'm working on a section of my book about sharing social objects and am writing about the most common way that visitors share their object experiences in museums: through photographs. Revenue Streams: Museums want to maintain control of sales of "officially sanctioned" images of objects via catalogues and postcards.

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Museum Photo Policy Open 54

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2017

Since then, I've learned how many people read books with their ears instead of their eyes. I knew if I wanted to make the book relevant and accessible, I should get on it. The great Jon Moscone lent his voice to his preface, too. It honestly hadn't crossed my mind.

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Arts Portugal Colombia Romania 23

Museum 2.0

MARCH 12, 2008

One of the surprise benefits of Saturday's Museums and Civic Discourse session was the chance to sit down with Mitch Allen of Left Coast Press (formerly AltaMira press), publisher of the Museums and Social Discourse journal among many, many other museum publications. I read Visitor Voices , which clarified some options.

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Museum Design Hints Press 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2012

This post is the third and final in a series of reactions to Blueprint , a book chronicling the rise and fall of the Dutch Museum of National History (INNL) in 2008-2011. How is the exhibit living on at the museum and what is it like to take over someone else’s project? We don’t think so.

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National Netherlands Museum History 27

ASU Lodestar Center

AUGUST 9, 2011

My favorite historian, Peter Dobkin Hall , wrote a defining essay in one of his books that describes the "invention" of the nonprofit sector in the United States. I can understand why somebody interested in museums wouldn't want to cover ground on health sector management. As an industry, legal service charities are small.

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Museum Nonprofit Policy Professional 100

Museum 2.0

JUNE 17, 2015

Last week, I sat on the jury for the first Cultural Innovation International Prize given by the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona , and this week, I'm offering a workshop for museum professionals across Poland participating together in a "Museum Lab" in Warsaw. The second post , in which Museum 2.0

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Difference Poland Museum Minnesota 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. Most of my work involves museums, but these categories can be useful in any project that involves user participation. Nina Simon is an independent museum exhibit designer and publisher of the Museum 2.0

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

Have Fun - Do Good

SEPTEMBER 1, 2006

Because I love to read, I've been thinking it would be cool to have a Giving Circle Book Group where the group reads an inspiring book by a nonprofit, or an individual affiliated with a nonprofit, and then gives to that cause. This was my favorite book of 2005). Book cover image via Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative.

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Group Afghanistan France Organization 40

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Roberto Bedoya : The "Yes And" Argument and its Civic Implications Bedoya, the Executive Director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council, makes a beautiful statement that arts administrators need to facilitate a multiplicity of leading voices, or as he puts it, "the courage of imagination and the plural."

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Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 13, 2007

This week, a look at the third section of Visitor Voices , the excellent book coedited by Kathy McLean and Wendy Pollock. Who controls the content in the museum? Who controls the museum experience? First, museum content. First, museum content. Who controls the meaning making? Of course not.

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Voice Create Museum Arts 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 21, 2008

This week, we're covering the third objective in Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's book Groundswell : energizing (chapter 6). In this post, an exploration of ways that museums can support promoters, convert detractors, and generally energize visitors to share their experience with others. Maybe a comment card or book.

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Museum Review Rate Voice 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

Over the past few months, I've been doing research for a forthcoming book on relevance. One of the best parts of developing a book is learning new stories. For me, the early stage of writing a book is a treasure hunt--an excuse to seek out new examples and ideas that strengthen the story. Our cultural universe is full of stars.

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Culture Work Museum New York City 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 2, 2013

We just posted a part-time position at my museum for a Community Engagement/Marketing Associate. Does a Small Museum Really Need a Marketing Person? At our museum, we distribute marketing tasks--some with our membership director, our programs staff, and our visitor services staff. But then, a few things happened. We started.

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Job Marketing Difference Museum 51

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 13, 2007

Which makes it feel special and tenuous and right-nowish, even though the book is bound and its author dead. But it's not so easy to integrate into larger-scale museum writing. Have you ever walked someone, a non-museum professional, through an exhibition you have or are working on? The difficulty is which one to choose.

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Museum Model Voice Storytelling 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 28, 2009

What role does “promoting human happiness” play in the mission statements and actions of museums? That’s the question I’m pondering thanks to Jane McGonigal and the Center for the Future of Museums (CFM). Earlier today, the CFM offered a free webcast of Jane McGonigal’s talk on gaming, happiness, and museums.

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Museum Game Structure South America 21

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.

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Question Participatory Museum Vietnam 49

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 7, 2008

This week, we're covering the first objective in Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's book Groundswell : listening (chapter 5). For many museums, visitor research--how people use the museum, navigate exhibits, and understand content--may be an equally important arena in which to adopt groundswell listening techniques.

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Museum Teen Second Life Discussion 20

Have Fun - Do Good

SEPTEMBER 6, 2006

In a time when going to the plastic surgeon is as easy as booking an appointment at the dentist, what kind of body image do young women have today? stories story museum women international A lot of young women today are also becoming increasingly aware of the importance of sustainability.

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Museum International Story Music 40

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2011

Background: Why They Did What They Did The Henry Art Gallery exhibition we worked with, Vortexhibition Polyphonica , was intended to explore three big ideas: Different voices “intervene” or add new points of view to the exhibition at periodic intervals. As one participant said, "the museum feels friendly in a way it usually doesn't."

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Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

Have Fun - Do Good

JUNE 9, 2007

It isn't often that you can't wait to keep reading a book about genocide, but that is how it was while I was reading Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. The book is interspersed with personal anecdotes from Cheadle and Prendergast.

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Darfur Hints Press United States 40

Museum 2.0

MARCH 15, 2010

People often ask me which museums are my favorite. I visit lots of perfectly nice, perfectly forgettable museums. In some cases, that's based on subject matter, as at the Museum of Jurassic Technology or the American Visionary Art Museum. Some are scrappy and iconoclastic, like the City Museum in St.

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Support Museum St. Louis NSF 41

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. Our archeology did not aim to uncover the hidden voice of my grandmother, but instead to begin an ongoing practice of recreation.

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Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

Museum 2.0

APRIL 2, 2014

It is what it sounds like: a book of original sheet music, beautifully designed and complemented with artwork and text. In his thoughtful preface to this project, I reconnected with five lessons I''ve learned from participatory projects in museums and cultural sites. There are twenty songs in Song Reader.

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Participatory Arts Music Learning 52

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

Last week marked four years for the Museum 2.0 People--especially young folks looking to break into the museum business--often ask me how I got here. Ed Rodley recently wrote a blog post about museum jobs entitled "Getting Hired: It's Who You Know and Who Knows You." hour at the Museum. I made $26/hour at NASA and $7.25/hour

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Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 7, 2010

Most museums that offer interactive exhibits, media elements, or participatory activities offer them alongside traditional labels and interpretative tools. Two institutions I see making this "or" choice in exciting ways are the Brooklyn Museum and the Oakland Museum in California. You can't always do "and."

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Audience Museum Oakland Participatory 40

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 20, 2009

is the managing editor for Global Voices. Allison Fine , author of the book Momentum, writes about social activism in the nonprofit sector and the implications on the ground and at the big picture level. is the author of the popular Museum 2.0 Blog that covers how museums are using social media. Social Change Activists.

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Technology Companies Netsquared Social Media 76

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

I designed this exercise after a delightful experience visiting the Barnes Foundation Museum where the art work is hung on the wall in a way to facilitate pattern recognition and learning about art concepts. “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. ” Anne Lamott.

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Reflection NTEN Change Exercise 127

Museum 2.0

MARCH 25, 2015

This is the first in a two-part series about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History’s new theory of change. This week, Ian David Moss and I are each writing blog posts about our collaborative process to develop a theory of change at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. For three years, we hit the gas at my museum—hard.

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Process Change Develop Museum 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2008

Museums (and libraries) are trusted sources of information. In February 2001, AAM commissioned a study about the trustworthiness of museums and found that "Almost 9 out of 10 Americans (87%) find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices.

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Participatory Museum Teen Voice 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 9, 2008

s essays have appeared in Good Housekeeping, The Huffington Post and Imagining Ourselves, an online exhibit founded by Paula Goldmanfor the International Museum of Women in San Francisco. Georgia Popplewell from Global Voices asked people if they would consider donating their schwag for the Cambodian bloggers conference.

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Rwanda Raise Project San Francisco 50

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 2, 2008

Today, Museum 2.0 I started the Museum 2.0 blog in 2006 as a personal learning exercise about "the ways that museums do and can evolve from 1.0 I started the Museum 2.0 blog in 2006 as a personal learning exercise about "the ways that museums do and can evolve from 1.0 and watched the Museum 2.0

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Museum Voice Minnesota Participatory 20