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. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. This is a problem for two reasons.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. First, exhibits that invite self-expression appeal to a tiny percentage of museum audiences.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2012

Last Friday, I witnessed something beautiful at my museum. A group in their late teens/early 20s were wandering through the museumwide exhibition on love. They were in a playful mood, talking about the objects, playing the games, responding on the comment boards. Kyle had brought his baby with him.

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Community Social Build Teen 42

Museum 2.0

APRIL 6, 2011

Let's say you spend a year working with a group of teens to co-create an exhibition, or you invite members and local artists to help redesign the lobby. The exhibition or program is of high quality, and from the visitor perspective, it may look like museum as usual. Community processes are both exciting and time-consuming.

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Participatory Process Museum Children 48

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2019

I tell the story of the one-man band because I think many museum professionals feel like him. But, most importantly, few museum professionals have a free hand or moment. I hope to hear you articulate your thoughts in comments or on social. Museums rarely have the funding to replicate positions. Are we using them well?

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Museum Accessibility Articulate Teen 29

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2007

But I’d been scribbling notes for an art museum label post for awhile, and then yesterday, the NY Times had a review of a new show at MOMA, Comic Abstraction. MOMA has standard art museum labels. When I asked an art museum educator about this (“How should I look at art?”) The review was harsh. Is this enough? I loved that.

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Museum Arts Artist Audio 30

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

From a museum perspective, I think there's a lot to learn from these venues' business models, approach to collecting and exhibiting work, and connection with their audiences. This list is by no means exhaustive: please add your favorites (especially non-American ones) in the comments. Machine Project (Los Angeles, CA).

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Culture Alternative Museum St. Louis 49

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

At one point, he commented that there's a difference between the "framework" and the "sensibility" for engagement. A museum can be friendly, or serious, or funny, while maintaining a traditional relationship with visitors as consumers of experiences. But it's far more typical to focus on just one. Adam is a master of sensibility.

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Voice Museum Denver Participatory 42

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

It's not every day that a visitor buys pizza for everyone in the museum. Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. The group was mostly young (teens to thirties) and nerd-diverse: a little bit punk, a little bit hacker, a little bit craft grrl. It was pretty freaking amazing.

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Community Reflection Online Museum 43

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 Ideas Job Project 52

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2008

Thanks to Bryan Kennedy from the Science Museum of Minnesota for providing this overview/reflection on the Museums and the Web conference that recently concluded in Montreal. Museums and the Web 2008 guest blogger Bryan Kennedy here. The Walker Art Center is turning its teen website over to the teens.

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Museum Web Flickr Teen 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 24, 2011

This post features an interview with Sarah Schultz, a museum staffer at one of the institutions Light profiled in the book (the Walker Art Center). It's easier to secure grants for community-based programming or exhibitions, but it's not easy to get funding for some of the core work that museums do.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

Helene Moglen, professor of literature, UCSC After a year of tinkering, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is now showing an exhibition, All You Need is Love , that embodies our new direction as an institution. So many museum exhibitions relegate the participatory bits in at the end. The Love Lounge I LOVE. with sharpies.

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Participatory Museum Arts Interaction 51

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

In many museums, comment cards are currently the most "participatory" part of the visitor experience. There are few, if any, ways to write back and continue the conversation with the visitor who commented. In other words, comment cards aren't effectively organized for use. Enter the internet.

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Comment Tools Museum Ideas 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more. Sounds like there might be some overlap with your museum audience? Both geocaching and museums are fundamentally about exploration and discovery.

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Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2013

I spent the weekend queuing up posts for my forthcoming blog-cation--nine weeks of guest posts and reruns from the Museum 2.0 You''re in for a treat, with upcoming posts on creativity, collections management, elitism, science play, permanent participatory galleries, partnering with underserved teens, magic vests, and more.

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Museum Reflection Participatory Conference 35

NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton - Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History Elaine Charnov - The NY Public Library Jason Eppink - Museum of the Moving Image Syed Salahuddin - Babycastles Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library 100 Years of the flagship library in New York.

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Culture Game Change 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?" Over the past four years, I''ve been running a small regional art and history museum in Santa Cruz, CA. and "why?" to "how?".

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 30, 2007

James Yasko is writing an article for an upcoming issue of Museum News on museums and Web 2.0. Here's the question: What advice do you have, as one who keeps up with technology as it relates to museums, to a group looking to incorporate Web 2.0 Has your tagging system increased overall google hits for the museum?

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Museum Advice Web Interview 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

One of the best personal brands that I’ve seen on Instagram from a nonprofit leader is Thomas P Campbell the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum. This shot is a painting at a museum visited during a professional conference for museums. This shot is from a program for teens that the met sponsors, #metteens.

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Personal Create Nonprofit Arts 50

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. As always, I welcome your questions and comments. Pocket Museums in bathrooms. Digital Collections comment wall.

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Participatory Museum International History 44

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

This summer, I worked with the Chabot Space & Science Center on a design institute in which eleven teens from their Galaxy Explorers program designed media pieces for an upcoming Smithsonian exhibition on black holes. There was no initial design, no graphics, and no idea of where the teen' work would fit into an overall structure.

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Teen Volunteer Create Design 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

Many institutions do this unintentionally--by providing post-its or comment books, pens or crayons. I encourage you to share your own rules and thoughts on this in the comments. Rabinowitz commented that "as a 40-year veteran of history museum interpretation, I can say that I never learned so much from and about visitors."

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Goal Difference Design Platform 31

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 20, 2015

Later, when were chatting with a small group of people in the lobby, we noticed a group of teens walking by looking a little sad. ABCs: He started off with some basics – a riff on Guy Kawasaki’s Always Be Commenting. @rauldemolina : These kids didn’t make @labanda !

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Digital Learning Artist Arts 50

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. 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.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

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

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 7, 2008

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. I spent an hour this morning "brand listening" to what the online world says about one of my favorite museums, the Exploratorium.

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Museum Teen Community Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite museums are small, funky places run by iconoclasts—but that’s not useful to most professionals who work for organizations in which they have little control over size or leadership matters. I worked on one project in which the client institution thought they wanted unfettered teen expression.

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Project Museum Teen Minnesota 22

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? Community First Program Design At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we've gravitated towards a "community first" program planning model. My answer: neither.

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Teen Museum Voice Community 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2007

Last week, Elaine Gurian and I talked about radical change in museums. Former museum start-up queen, Jen is taking a small organization whose goal is to promote girls’ involvement in math and science through research and programming to new, innovative, exciting places. Braincake isn’t some fakey attempt to pander to teens.

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Interview Museum Teen Myspace 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 19, 2008

Every museum has a number for its operating cost per visitor. Most museums don't strategically set this number--too many operating costs are fixed by building needs--but they can use it to assess how expensive each visitor interaction is and evaluate the efficacy of programs. So where do online initiatives fit in?

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Virtual Museum Flickr Evaluation 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2009

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission.

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Community Museum San Diego Participatory 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2007

This week, thoughts on Chapter 12 of Elaine Gurian’s book Civilizing the Museum , "Threshold Fear: Architecture program planning." In this essay, Elaine discusses the various barriers to entry for non-traditional visitors to museums, that is, the threshold fear that keeps such potential visitors from walking in our doors.

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People Museum Chapter San Jose 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2007

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. I invite you to do the same in the comments. of comments directly addressed questions posed by the curators, whereas 2.4% What were they about?

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Voice Museum Lesson Pledge 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 7, 2007

You can upload photos to it, tag them, share them, comment on them, and search for them. Where else can you find Pakistani bathroom signage or Mexican biker teens while researching a project? Commenting and review functionality. Five stakeholders in different cities want to see the work that's been done so far. Where do you go?

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Flickr Work Museum Tag 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

Last week, I wrote about the ways that dogs can be useful social objects --and you had lots of good comments and input. Sure, it's social, but people stick to their own "pods"--families, teens, adults--and don't diverge or merge. Ideas participatory museum Unusual Projects and Influences visitors. Tags: Core Museum 2.0

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Museum Participatory Interaction Teen 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2010

You can join the conversation in the blog comments, or on the Museum 2.0 This space definitely looked like a third place this past Wednesday night when we hosted an overnight teen event designed to help teens see how they can make a difference in the world. note: I've written about innovation at COSI before here.)

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Place Discussion Columbus Teen 23