Nina Simon

This exhibition was produced as a class project in a course on Social Technology in the UW Museology program. I challenged the students to create an exhibition with one goal, "get strangers to talk to each other." There was no content or artifact...

The Tech Virtual Test Zone is the physical proving ground for The Tech Museum's new exhibit development process (detailed below in the process section). The specific goals for the exhibition were: --to create an exhibition of 5-10 interactive...

I've been involved in several temporary exhibits, but this was the most unique installation I've ever managed. I approached an artist, made a proposal, and three weeks later he was installing exhibits at our institution for free. Not only that, but...

This is a review of the Digiark gallery, not the specific exhibition currently on display. I first posted a version of this on the Museum 2.0 blog here: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2010/08/take-seat-beautiful-casual-areas-at.html The Digiark...

I love science centers. My first jobs were in science and children's museums. Where other adults cringe at the noise and insanity of your average whizzing, banging, zooming center, I (usually) revel in it. But science centers also frustrate me. They...

This is a review of a very small museum called the Brazos Valley African American Museum. I was fortunate enough to visit it during the Texas Association of Museums conference, and it brought up thoughts and emotions that I wanted to share in this...

In April, I sat in a half-empty classroom in the middle of the day with an actor and a bunch of visitors and cried. I was in a children's museum. I wasn't injured. I'm not imbalanced. The Power of Children exhibition is just that good. I visited...

This is a love letter to an exhibit, written in patchouli ink across the back of an old Janis Joplin record. In March 2009, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience, featuring rock posters from San...

The Museum of Jurassic Technology in L.A. (www.mjt.org) is one of my favorite museums. It's quirky, confounding, and exquisitely strange--and that strangeness captures my imagination in a way that more typical exhibits and presentation styles...

Loved this simple element in a small children's museum in Brazos Valley, Texas. An old VW bug and a whole bunch of paints. Apparently they scrape it every few months - it's been used for this purpose...

Everyone always talks about the learning value of failure. It's hard, it's painful, but you gain more than you lose--at least, that's how the story goes. In reality, we all spend most of our time trying to avoid failure, because the unpleasantness can h...

When it comes to user participation in cultural institutions and the arts, it's popular to launch projects that pit visitors against experts. There was Click! at the Brooklyn Museum, where you could track how people of various levels of art expertise ra...

When I was in Taiwan, I heard again and again from museum professionals: "We are very conservative in Taiwanese museums. We're not doing innovative things with visitor participation or Web 2.0. Everyone is so focused on everything looking perfect and th...

I spent last week in the glorious country of Taiwan, hiking, eating, and working with museum professionals and graduate students at a conference hosted at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts. Among other things, I led a workshop on "social objects"-...

Dear Museum 2.0 readers,I need your help. As some of you know, I'm working on a project to open an experimental cafe in Santa Cruz that serves craft beer, Belgian frites, and intriguing encounters with strangers. The concept is to combine the work I've ...

Last month, I got a chance to talk with Nell Taylor, founder of the Chicago Underground Library. I was fascinated by the project’s innovative approach to collecting, sharing, and connecting people through locally-produced media. Nell will be respondin...

Today, a pause button on standard Museum 2.0 posts and a musing on the particular thrills and perils of fandom. I've thinking about veneration, the private delicious feeling when you bear witness to something glorious--a guitar solo, a mathematical proo...

Let's say you work at an organization that mostly caters to a middle and upper-class, white audience. Let's say you have a sincere interest in reaching and working with more ethnically, racially, and economically diverse audiences. What does it take to ...

I've been spending time recently interviewing people who run unusual cultural and learning venues. Skill-sharing free schools. Community science workshops. Art spaces masquerading as laundromats and letterpresses. I'm fascinated by these places because ...

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?" I immediately flashed to ...

Dear Museum 2.0 readers,Today is my birthday. It's been an intense year - finishing the book and spending lots of time on the road working with cultural institutions. Plus climbing trips, a new obsession with beach volleyball, and the death of a treasur...

Let's say you want to make a documentary about the World Cup. Or sail around the world. Or produce an art exhibit with elementary school students. Or build an open-source PCR machine for copying DNA. How would you fund it?Kickstarter is a website for cr...

Most of my work contracts involve a conversation that goes something like this:"We want to find ways to make our institution more participatory and lively." "Great!""We want to cultivate a more diverse audience, especially younger people, and we w...

This is a bonus installment of a book discussion about Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place. Every Tuesday in June, this blog featured a guest post examining some aspect of the book. Then I received this commentary from Elaine Heumann Gurian, a m...

This is the fifth installment of a book discussion about Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place. Every Tuesday in June, this blog is featuring a guest post examining some aspect of the book. This provocative guest post was co-written by Suzanne Fis...

Last week, I visited the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle. I've long admired this museum for its all-encompassing commitment to community co-creation, and the visit was a kind of pilgrimage to their new site (opened in 2008). I'm always a bit nervous w...