Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2010

This is the final segment in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. This posts explains why and how I self-published The Participatory Museum. COST: Museum books tend to be expensive - because they are printed in small runs, the price for a 400-page paperback can be as high as $40.

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Participatory Museum Process Amazon 33

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 15, 2014

Gretchen Jennings convened a group of bloggers and colleagues online to develop a statement about museums'' responsibilities and opportunities in response to the events in Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island. Museums are a part of this educational and cultural network. Where do museums fit in? Here is our statement.

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Museum Blogger Cleveland Missouri 52

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. A third argues that the project won’t be truly participatory unless users get to define what content is sought in the first place. I’ve been using these participatory categories to talk about how we’d like users to participate in different projects.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 13, 2010

On October 20, a young woman named Kate will move into Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and live there for a month. This post is not about the Month at the Museum concept or implementation. Instead, this post focuses on a fascinating aspect of Month at the Museum: the video applications. That will come later.

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Museum Contest Video Chicago 34

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2010

This question is a byproduct of the reality that most participatory projects have poorly articulated value. When a participatory activity is designed without a goal in mind, you end up with a bunch of undervalued stuff and nowhere to put it. Are you making that shift in your thinking about participatory project design?

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Participatory Music Project Video 48

Museum 2.0

MARCH 13, 2013

Visitor-contributed photos surround a collection piece in Carnegie Museum of Art's Oh Snap! It can be incredibly difficult to design a participatory project that involves online and onsite visitor engagement. The museum selected and is featuring 13 works recently added to our photography collection.

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Authoring Open Experiment Museum 53

Museum 2.0

MAY 10, 2011

It's my second week as the Executive Director at The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, CA, and boy is my everything tired. I'm also making the 2011-2012 budget, getting to know our terrific staff and volunteers, and starting up a few small participatory projects to launch us into being a more community-driven institution.

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Museum History Participatory Arts 53

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

There are many participatory kiosks that are functional black holes--visitors make videos or draw pictures or write stories, drop them in a slot, and. There are many participatory kiosks that are functional black holes--visitors make videos or draw pictures or write stories, drop them in a slot, and. nothing happens. nothing happens.

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Participatory Museum YouTube Rate 35

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The Art of Participation provides a retrospective on participatory art as well as presenting opportunities for visitors to engage in contemporary (“now”) works. As the museum's website puts it, "this exhibition examines how artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process."

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Participatory Arts Design Museum 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 15, 2010

Dear Museum 2.0 My book, The Participatory Museum , has done incredibly well so far, but there's a problem: the interactive components aren't working. My book, The Participatory Museum , has done incredibly well so far, but there's a problem: the interactive components aren't working. Thanks in advance.

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Participatory Chapter Museum Case Study 32

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 5, 2008

Cultural Connections is a group of museum professionals who meet up a few times a year and host excellent programs on a variety of topics. This week, they hosted "Let Them Be Heard: Visitor Participation in the Museum Experience," featuring four presentations on incorporating visitors' content into museums. Here's what they did.

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Case Study Participatory Studies Museum 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2010

Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. During the ensuing discussion, one woman asked, "Which audiences are least interested in social participation in museums?" So what's a museum to do--especially one that is funded to encourage youth and teen participation?

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Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 29, 2014

In museums (and zoos), we frequently stop the conversation with visitors when it comes to action--especially political action. The 96Elephants website is a dramatic educational site created by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the zoos and aquaria in NYC. How can you invite them to participate alongside you to save species?

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Action People Conservancy Africa 46

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Imagine that your museum is ready to start creating content on a small-scale in Web 2.0. Imagine you are the Boston Museum of Science, and you are ready to make some videos to post on YouTube. When I search for "Boston Museum of Science" on YouTube, I find 83 videos. You're ready to make a few videos to post on YouTube.

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Museum Technorati Boston YouTube 22

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

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

It started as a handout for a session that Stacey and I are doing at the California Association of Museums, and then I realized it was so darn useful that it was worth sharing with all of you. The majority of our public programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History are created and produced through community collaborations.

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Collaboration Community Tools Museum 55

Museum 2.0

MAY 26, 2009

On a recent trip to DC, an old friend showed me around a new exhibit at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide. The paper is perforated with one section for the promise, which visitors keep, and another section for a signature, which visitors leave at the museum.

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Pledge Museum Digital Indianapolis 23

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2011

Lots of museums these days have video comment booths to invite visitors to tell their stories, but how many of those booths really deliver high-impact content? Last week, I talked with Tina Olsen, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum, about their extraordinary Object Stories project.

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Story Interview Museum Audio 53

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2010

You can join the conversation in the blog comments, or on the Museum 2.0 Like many museum and library professionals, I am enamored of the idea of cultural institutions as “third places” – public venues for informal, peaceable, social engagement outside of home or work. This is the only post written by me, Nina Simon.

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Place Discussion Culture Museum 41

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). Some of these challenges were about mission fit.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 23, 2008

One of the best projects that illustrates the basic idea of Web2.0 - listening and conversation and stakeholders creating their own experience with your organization - comes from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. o is Transparency - and the best example of that is what the Indianapolis Art Museum has done with its pubic metrics on its web site.

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Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

Museum 2.0

APRIL 16, 2008

I've written before about the inspiring work that the Brooklyn Museum of Art is doing with their community-focused efforts. Click is an exhibition process in three parts: The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations.

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Museum Participatory Artist Arts 24

Museum 2.0

APRIL 22, 2008

Why discuss gifting on Museum 2.0? One of my greatest interests is the "p articipatory museum," in which there is substantive, unfacilitated visitor-to-visitor interaction. When I heard the tollbooth story, I started thinking about gifting as a model for participatory experiences in museums. Ideas participatory museum.

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Gift Participatory Museum Model 23

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2008

Last year, I wrote a post explaining what Twitter is and how it might be applied in museums. Now, a year later, I’m using Twitter on a daily basis, and it’s brought up some new observations about participation on websites and in interactive venues like museums. I’d love Museum 2.0 It is not a cocktail party.

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Twitter Participatory Broadcast Museum 24

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 San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

MAY 20, 2008

This blog often analyzes how websites, designed spaces, even dogs promote participatory experiences among users. Today, we look inward for a how-to on one type of participatory design as applied to museum exhibits. But in the museum, the distribution method is more personal.

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Design Participatory Social Museum 21

Museum 2.0

JULY 22, 2008

A platform for museum staff to serve as facilitators of safe spaces for difficult conversations? According to their website : The Living Library works exactly like a normal library – readers come and borrow a 'book' for a limited period of time. Could this be applied to museums? What is the Living Library? I think so.

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Library Model Museum Europe 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 24, 2010

This is the third in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. This post covers my personal process of encouraging--and harnessing--participation in the creation of The Participatory Museum. As the participatory content review progressed well, I started looking for other ways for people to help.

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Participatory Museum Process Experiment 33

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

Today, the Luce Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is launching what they claim is the first ever alternate reality game (ARG) in a museum. Why would an art museum create an ARG? They thrive on secret websites, mysterious codes, and bizarre incidents. The game website is clear.

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Game Museum Arts Alternative 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 12, 2009

I believe that focusing specifically on the social capacity of an object, rather than its content or interpretation, yields new design techniques for museum exhibits and other participatory spaces. I want to connect these students to a larger group of people interested in exploring topics around social technology in museums.

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Design Experiment Seattle Social 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

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

The focus is on bringing in outside influencers--folks from the Burning Man festival to World Without Oil --to help museum experience designers recharge, connect, and explore new ways to do creative work in teams. We've created an alternative website to provide a more participatory version of the standard pre-conference informational site.

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Collaboration Registration Brain Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2008

Joe explains some of the planned intentional dialogue events: First, for the opening night dinner, we hired a local dance company that is putting together pieces about visiting museums, punctuated by an actor/dancer asking provocative questions to the group. I was surprised at how generic the conference appears on the VSA website.

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Studies Associations Houston Museum 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2008

On June 4, we opened The Tech Virtual Test Zone , a new 2000 sq ft gallery at The Tech Museum of Innovation featuring exhibits on the theme of art, film, and music that were originally developed in Second Life by a community of creative amateurs. Some museum pros have been puzzled by this.

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Virtual Tech Lesson Second Life 21

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. It is great to feel more of a part of the museum!" "All

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Museum Arts Problem Design 45

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 2, 2008

Why not ask more typical website questions, "why don't more people visit my blog?" They demonstrate that the blog is a more participatory vehicle than other kinds of media. Museum 2.0's At ASTC in October, museum evaluation rockstar Randi Korn gave a great talk about the role of self-reflection in museum practice.

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Comment Museum Blogger Reflection 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

Yesterday, I had the delightful opportunity to participate in the 3six5 project , a yearlong participatory project in which 365 people write 365 journal entries for every day of 2010. In advance, Daniel and Len had only to promote the concept, set up the website, and start soliciting and slotting in contributors.

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Participatory Project Museum Journal 34