Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

I've long believed that museums have a special opportunity to support the community spirit of Web 2.0 This month brings three examples of museums hosting meetups for online communities: On 8.6.08, the Computer History Museum (Silicon Valley, CA) hosted a Yelp! To some people, these events may sound like losers.

Museum 22

Museum Hosting Model Community 22

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?”) Sounds great. The review was harsh.

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Museum Arts Artist Audio 30

Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. I know this sounds strange coming from someone writing an admittedly self-expressive blog post, but hear me out. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2011

As one participant said, "the museum feels friendly in a way it usually doesn't." People make the museum friendly, not activities. For example, visitors were invited to add their own secrets to hampers in front of selected artworks and were instructed to write secrets or memories that those specific artworks evoked.

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Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 13, 2007

Barrie gives lovely instructions on how to close your eyes, squeeze tight, and conjure the Mermaid's Lagoon. But it's not so easy to integrate into larger-scale museum writing. And if you try to write this way without sincerity, it will sound as flat as other text. The key is not to write the story/label/instructions.

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Museum Model Voice Storytelling 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.

Participatory 44

Participatory Museum History International 44

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 19, 2006

These moments when the audio stream was dropping in and out, a video and audio lag time between the 2 worlds of 15-45 seconds (adding some confusion), feedback and distorted sound quality, and a chaotic chat stream. A Museum group is also forming to discuss and explore what museum's can do in SL. So back to last night's events.

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Second Life Life Reflection Avatar 50

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 17, 2007

I visited the Exploratorium a few weeks ago and saw their new exhibition Listen: Making Sense of Sound. It's summer; the museum and the exhibition were hopping. No one reads the full instruction book for a board game; no one reads the full label for an exhibit. Tags: exhibition Museums Engaging in 2.0 Buying a ticket.

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Game Museum Phase Skills 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 Second Life Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 9, 2007

At the risk of sounding like the biggest dork on the East Coast, a few weeks ago I sat down with some friends to play the new Lord of the Rings board game. Serious games now are viewed as “resources” (for education, training, instruction, simulation) or “platforms” (for messages, persuasion). We succeeded.

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Game Museum Alternative Storytelling 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 8, 2007

One of the most obvious places to seek out this kind of experience—in a good way—is the museum. I’d love to find myself rapt, ogling some exhibit or artifact with no regard for the school groups and sound effects swarming around me. Why isn’t Al Green coming over the mental stereo in the museum? But it almost never happens.

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Public Museum Arts Environment 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 7, 2010

Sound scary? She was given lots of instruction and support as she was costumed and asked to help present a slow dance. They repeated their actions and instructions over and over. This week, I met New York choreographer Dean Moss and learned about his fascinating contemporary dance piece Kisaeng Becomes You (2009).

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Audience New York Instruction Instructional 37

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 2, 2008

I have to feel like the post is open enough to my experience, that the blogger and the community of that blog would find my voice worthwhile, that I have some strong reaction I want to share, that I won't sound stupid. Museum 2.0's and most of the blog reading I do isn't like that. I feel them every day.

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Comment Museum Blogger Reflection 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 30, 2007

It's a worthwhile 30 minutes of discussion about the use of sound to provide an emotional context for stories--specifically, stories about science. They have arguments about consciousness without sounding pretentious. Sure, they're each good on their own, but the magic happens in their exchanges.

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Audio Storytelling Tutorial Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 22, 2006

Every year, there’s a Flash festival/conference, Flashforward , that highlights novel uses of flash in web navigation, art, games, instructional demos, and more. That all sounds pretty New Age-y. Today, I want to share a small application that was nominated for the prize in Navigation… but it’s a lot more than that.

Game 20

Game Utah Flash Management 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 6, 2010

My first jobs were in science and children's museums. There are few instructions, and the experience seemed to be genuinely about exploring as opposed to learning information. Many of the exhibits are facilitated (there are 11 paid floor staff plus volunteers in the museum at most times). I love science centers.

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Review Albuquerque Museum New Mexico 24

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

s Hawaiian son as applied to museums. Consider these two stories of museum-related wikis that struggled. In May of 2007, Woody Sobey released a wiki for science museum educators to share their demos. Woody had seeded the site with about 12 demos from his own museum, but the wiki never took off. What's a wiki?

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Wiki Wikipedia Museum Doc 23

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 19, 2009

Advertisements for the skull blanketed Amsterdam, and other museums even tried to get in on the buzz generated by its presentation. By positioning the feedback stations outside the flow of the museum (and within a solely skull-branded structure), the resultant videos were more topical and focused than museum standard.

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Interaction Video Hype Museum 20