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. And rarely the twain shall meet.

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Social Museum Arts Program 55

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.

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Museum Difference Participatory Arts 29

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2019

I tell the story of the one-man band because I think many museum professionals feel like him. We are spinning and performing, and most people have no idea of the preplanning it takes to make it look so easy. But, most importantly, few museum professionals have a free hand or moment. Museums are for people, after all.

Museum 29

Museum Accessibility Articulate Teen 29

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 Job Ideas Project 52

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Last Friday night, my museum hosted a fabulous (in my biased opinion) event called Race Through Time. When Friday night rolled around, we did see a crowd that skewed decidedly younger and hipper than our standard museum audience. Performances just for teens. Late night mixers at museums for young adults.

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Audience Develop Museum History 52

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

Maybe it's a live music concert, or a museum visit, or a play. Museums and other venues are offering special programs for teens, for hipsters, for people who want a more active or spiritual or participatory experience. You have a great time. What will it take for you to do it again?

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Arts Museum Calendar Music 50

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 1, 2006

Have an audacious idea but don't know where to start? specializes in designing museum experiences and exhibitions that are community informed, socially stimulating, technologically ambitious, and intriguingly experimental. Ready to turn your institution into a site of participatory engagement?

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Museum Professional Service Participatory 21

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. What makes Machine special is its brand of humor and accessibility, combined with a real dedication to experimenting on the borders of art, science, and ideas.

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Culture Alternative Museum St. Louis 49

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). One key idea that Paul Light talks about is the notion of slack. In the 1990s, we decided we wanted to engage a teen audience. That's how we build trust. It's inherent in what we do.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 3, 2005

Some of the entries of what you can read on the Walker Blog, may appear at first glance to be mundane details of cube life , but then you remember that it is a museum blog and it makes the institution seem more human. While Reggie was empowered by the director of his department, the idea of blogging came from new media.

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Arts Artist Process Remix 50

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 Blackboard 51

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

OpenAI

JULY 14, 2022

The Orrigos have worked in top children's hospitals around the country and now virtually meet up with families, bringing children’s ideas to life through personalized cartoons, music videos, and mobility friendly video games. “It’s an infinite museum where I can choose which private collections I want to visit.

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Artist San Francisco Cancer Chad 53

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.

Culture 52

Culture Game Change Museum 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

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

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Very, very few museum visitors are in the "dog and baby" category. I will always remember when Robin Dowden of the Walker Art Center told me that she knew their teen website was working because she thought it was ugly and impossible to navigate. She needs to nap when she gets cranky, even though she keeps flailing her limbs.

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People Articulate Culture Audience 54

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. He got in touch with me last week to discuss some ideas for the article and asked me to respond to a few questions. Museums need to develop sustainable models for projects that require frequent content updates.

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Museum Advice Web Interview 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Weekly, I hear from someone who is putting ideas from the book into action. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" Over 150,000 people have accessed the free online version. and "why?"

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

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. We made a giant mobile for the center of the museum out of origami birds folded from visitor comments received in the past year.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

Get Fully Funded

AUGUST 24, 2021

For example: “Many teen girls struggle with their self-esteem thanks to Instagram and Snapchat. Please help us open the door for a teen to attend our personal development conference, benefit from having a mentor, and get on a path to college and a career.” . We are so excited for them! .

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email Results Fundraising Donor 122

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 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

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. First, you have to connect your idea to the institutional mission. It’s nice to have both. It takes six steps.

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Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

Connection Cafe

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

You gravitated toward the museum, zoo, gallery, symphony, cultural management organization because of your roots. Instead of an event, create a little scavenger hunt for kids to complete as they walk through your historic mansion or art museum, to make it fun for kids to explore and learn. Maybe it’s the same with some of you, too.

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Arts Culture Generation Organization 31

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2016

Here's one of my favorite stories about the London Science Museum and their work to make their science shows relevant to families with deaf or hearing-impaired family members. Think of the Subjects to Change teen program, or the free lunches at the Cleveland Public Library. This chapter appears midway through the book.

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Museum Arts Chapter Language 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

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." This is the opposite situation of the previous design goal, one typical in science and children's museums.

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Goal Difference Design Platform 31

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

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

JULY 9, 2007

Last week, Elaine Gurian and I talked about radical change in museums. She said it can happen in one of two ways—either the organization is small enough that no one will notice, or has a director with such strong vision they can charm and fund the pants off of a new idea. Braincake isn’t some fakey attempt to pander to teens.

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Interview Museum Teen Myspace 20

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

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

Sure, it's social, but people stick to their own "pods"--families, teens, adults--and don't diverge or merge. Out on the boardwalk, or at the zoo or a museum, there's a common experience of the sights, sounds, smells, activities of the place. Ideas participatory museum Unusual Projects and Influences visitors.

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Museum Participatory Interaction Teen 20

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.

People 20

People Museum Chapter San Jose 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 4, 2007

On Tuesday, I reviewed Elaine Gurian’s essay, Choosing Among the Options , on museum archetypes and self-definition. Today, discussion with Elaine about ways museums choose their direction, how change is possible, and new museum types to be added to the list. What if you don’t want to be identified as one type of museum?

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Museum Change Puerto Rico Arts 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

They were nervous but ready for the challenge, and when I explained the idea of social objects (external objects that can be the basis for conversation) they got pretty engaged in the activity. For me, the experience changed my perspective on what teens want from social environments and encounters.

Life 21

Life Teen Culture Attitude 21

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

In many museums, comment cards are currently the most "participatory" part of the visitor experience. complaints about the third floor bathroom), not ideas or opportunities. These services could be a powerful, cheap alternative to comment cards--especially those that are focused towards making suggestions about the museum.

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Comment Tools Museum Conversation 20