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Museum Educators’ Unrealized Potential
This post, by Gretchen Jennings, is reblogged from Museum Commons. Thanks to Gretchen for allowing me to share this. Gretchen Jennings, author of the blog Museum Commons The museum blogosphere in the...
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Should museums respond to the grand jury verdicts in Ferguson and New York City?
I am taking a break today from my ongoing exploration of field trips to explore a currently pressing issue. I will return to the subject of schools and museums on Thursday. Over the past ten days, I...
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Joint Statement from Museum Bloggers and Colleagues on Ferguson and related...
A few weeks ago, Gretchen Jennings reached out to a number of bloggers to discuss what we could do to address events in Ferguson, Cleveland, and Staten Island. These bloggers, including myself, decided...
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Why are children’s museums museums?
In graduate school in the Museum Education Program at George Washington University (admittedly more years ago than I should admit to), the first semester was dedicated primarily to the idea of...
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What is an ethical museum?
In early December, I wrote a post considering whether and how museums should respond to the grand jury verdicts in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York. My response was, and remains, that...
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How can museums foster empathy?
The other day my 11-year-old son told me, “Poor people are poor because they don’t try hard enough.” I hope that he said this just to provoke me into debate (like mother like son). But the truth is, I...
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Should museum professionals get into museums for free?
One of the great perks of working in the museum field is free entry into other museums. I recently went to Indianapolis, and visited three museums in two days. The cost of visiting these three museums,...
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When does the risk of misunderstanding outweigh the value of an activity or...
Franke L. Smith is an Education Coordinator at Hickory Hill, a Watson-Brown Foundation historic home, near Augusta, Georgia. At the American Alliance of Museums conference in May, Franke and I began a...
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When do we edit participation?
Last week, in honor of Bastille Day, we opened the PlayHouse Art Room to the public with a flag-making activity. We saw a range of flags created by kids and parents. As I share them, imagine some music...
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Should we accept this gift?
A month ago, a donor offered to buy the Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum life-sized replicas of three dinosaur heads: Tyrannosaurus Rex, Allosaurus, and Velociraptor. This offer coincided with a...
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Should exhibits tell stories?
This is a post I have been trying to write for a long time – over a year. I’m still struggling, so bear with me. There has been a great deal written over the past few years about museums and...
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Can what museums choose to exhibit or promote define the character of their...
Lately, I have been thinking about the relationship between museums and cities, and how museums support or impact their cities. As part of this exploration, I picked up Gail Lord and Ngaire...
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What do Stories Do? Interview with Lane Beckes
A few weeks ago I shared a post questioning whether storytelling was an appropriate or useful format for museums exhibitions. This post received a number of comments, including people suggesting that...
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How do museums in small cities gain and wield soft power? Interview with...
Ngaire Blankenberg is Director, Europe and Principal Consultant at Lord Cultural Resources, where she has worked for the past eight years. Lord Cultural Resources is one of the largest consultancies...
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Should Museums Celebrate the Holiday Season?
A few weeks ago, I walked into the Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum to find floor staff creating a clever string of “lights” made of construction paper and cardboard tubes. They wanted to hang it...
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How do you celebrate the program and not the check?
I often think about how goals are, or should be, powerful guides in museum work, in particular in program design and refinement. But lately I have been thinking differently about goals, and about how...
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What does good staff training look like?
At the PlayHouse, we brought on two new managers this week. These managers are responsible for supervising front line, daily operations – things like opening and closing registers, making sure the...
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When are education materials good marketing materials?
Two museums are planning a joint marketing campaign around the theme of “exploration.” Both museums promote exploration as part of their mission; one has an upcoming exhibit on the theme of space...
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What data do we use to define success?
On Tuesday we are hosting a cocktail party for major donors – people who, over the 15 years of building the PlayHouse, have donated $5000 or more. The goal of this event is to thank them for what they...
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What is the relationship between “community need” and museums?
In December, I asked readers “What are your museum questions?” One colleague, Andrea Jones, emailed me to say that she has been thinking about questions around “community need.” That email grew into an...
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