Is Your Museum Selling Out? Try This Game About Revenue And Ethics

The stupid fetish of free admission, and the end of the British Museum . In it, he argues that the British Museum's value has been se...

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What The Museum Sell Out Game (Re)Taught Me About Participation Inequality

Last week on this blog, I tried an experiment . I wanted to open up conversation about how we judge the relative ethics of various sources...

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Breaking The Mold

Dear reader, Today is my birthday. I decided to give myself a gift this year: permission to change the blog. I've been blogging w...

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Meditations On Relevance, Part 1: Overview

"We want our museum to be relevant." I've heard (and said) this many times. But what does it mean for a cultural instituti...

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Meditations On Relevance, Part 2: Content Vs. Form

In pop culture-land, relevance is all about now. Who's hot. What's trending. If people on the street are talking about X, the muse...

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Meditations On Relevance, Part 3: Who Decides What's Relevant?

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Wh...

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Meditations On Relevance, Part 4: Guest Comic And Open Thread

For the past few weeks, I've been writing about relevance and museums. The conversation in the comments on each post has been fascinatin...

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Meditations On Relevance Part 5: Relevance Is A Bridge

Blessing of the Replica Boards, July 19, 2015, 8am. Photo by Jon Bailiff. Relevance is not an end unto itself. It is a bridge. When you ...

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Fighting For Inclusion

These are the notes and slides for a keynote speech I'm giving this Saturday at MuseumNext in Indianapolis. If you'll be there...

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Use This: Audience Research In Rotterdam Provides A Template For Smarter Segmenting

Imagine a concise, well-designed report on audiences for cultural activities in a large urban city. Imagine it peppered with snappy graphi...

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Seeking Your Stories Of Relevance And Irrelevance For A New Book Project

Dear friends, I know I that I haven't been sharing a lot on the blog, but behind the scenes, you've inspired me to write more tha...

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Women Of Color Leading Essential, Activist Work In Cultural Institutions

swag , and getting heard. Ravon spoke at MuseumNext last month (video here ) about how communities of color claim space and power in the de...

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Odysseyworks: An Empathy-Based Approach To Making Art

The quest for relevance begins with knowing your audience. Who are the people with whom you want to connect? What are their dreams, their im...

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A Different Story Of Thanksgiving: The Repatriation Journey Of Glenbow Museum And The Blackfoot Nations

I spent last week holed up in a cabin, working on my forthcoming book, The Art of Relevance . One of the most powerful books I read while ...

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Can We Talk About Money? Tweetchat On #Radicalgiving December 18

On December 18, at 10am PT/1pm ET, I invite you to join the denizens of , Museum Commons , and Incluseum for a 30-min tweetchat about how...

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Give Yourself Some Space In 2016

Every once in a while I look at my growing toddler and think: time will never go backwards. She'll never be this age again. Sometimes,...

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Does Your Institution Have An Advocacy Policy?

In October of 2015, I got a call from a community partner. The Beach Flats Community Garden was under threat, and this friend of the garde...

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