I’m thrilled to be the latest writer featured in the “Meet a Museum Blogger” series on Jamie Glavic’s Museum Minute blog. In it, I give some background on why I started this blog, and how grateful I am to the online community of museum professionals for sharing your thoughts, experiences, and opinions in a public forum.
Museums SHOULD be about enlightenment, inspiration, or quiet reflection.
Museums should NOT be about fun and entertainment.
Frankly, I’m a bit sick of these blanket pronouncements, from both sides of the aisle. While CNN’s opinion piece “Why I Hate Museums” laments how boring museums are, the New York Times bit “High Culture Goes Hands-On” rails against not just people having fun in museums but even people having a shred of “engagement” in museums. You can see more examples of black and white arguments about what museums should and shouldn’t be (and what “good” and “bad” visitors are) in the comments on the CNN article and in letters to the NYTimes editor.
This is the second in a series of posts about my experience as a student in the MoMA-led MOOC “Art and Inquiry.” Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
This post was written in response to Mairin Kerr’s “Are Museums Apps Boring?” on the Edgital blog.
As someone who has spent a large part of my career thinking about online outreach and engagement, I’m especially drawn to apps that are not designed to only be used inside a museum.
I’ve just wrapped up week 1 of my first MOOC experience, Art and Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies for Your Classroom, taught by MoMA educator Lisa Mazzola on Coursera.
During last week’s broadcast of The Kojo Nnamdi Show, art critic Tyler Green referenced a question that’s been floating around museums for nearly two decades: “Well, if people can see the images online, will they need to come to the museum?” It’s okay to groan if you’ve heard this one before. Green’s answer: We’ve seen an increase in attendance since museums have started putting their collections online, therefore these efforts—at least indirectly—have encouraged more people to visit and see art firsthand for themselves. So why won’t this question die?
Today’s post is a great example of how Twitter has changed (and vastly improved) my information gathering about technology projects. I recently put out a call for information about how museums are handling the various tasks associated with tablets—everything from where you store them securely to how you charge them and synch the content on all of them at the same time. I was also interested in reviews of iPad cases that incorporate a mechanism (e.g., strap or handle) for one-handed operation and for showing the screen to others (e.g., a small group of students in a gallery).
A Storify roundup of highlights from this year’s American Alliance of Museums Meeting in Baltimore.
Last week during their annual developer-focused conference, Google provided a first glimpse of Google Play for Education. While coverage in education and tech blogs has focused on what this new development could mean for teachers and school administrators, I wanted to provide a quick guide for those of us in museum education. What does this mean for our work with teachers and students? And how can museums play a role in providing quality educational content?
A woman struggles to keep her eyes open and her mind alert during a tour of an art museum. A woman’s eyes grow wide and light up as she makes a personal connection with a sculpture in that same museum. Why the difference? According to a new ad from AT&T, it’s an HTC phone running Facebook Home (an app that fills the home screen with a steady stream of Facebook posts) that makes all the difference.
The story of this woman’s museum experience caught my attention. But I’m an art lover, a museum educator, and a social media geek. What does the rest of the (perhaps less-invested) world think of this TV commercial? I turned to the social Web to find out.