Thursday, November 7, 2013

Weekly Blog Roundup

Here's a roundup of blog posts from the museum world this week.

Skip the school bus: our trips for planning a virtual field trip from O Say Can You See (National Museum of American History)

As both the monetary and opportunity costs of field trips rise, virtual field trips are starting to become popular. I'm intrigued by the model but not yet convinced. This blog post is a good overview of the thinking behind a virtual field trip, and definitely shows some of its benefits as well as its challenges.

Participation, Contemplation, and the Complexity of "And" from Museum 2.0

You may have seen some of the recent "get off my lawn" editorials from various corners of the traditional museum world, several of them directed at the newly invigorated Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Basically, the claim is that by increasing the diversity and number of particpatory programs, the museum is ruining its essential experience, that of a quiet contemplative hall for art (and history presumably though that always gets left out of these conversations). You can guess by my tone which side I tend to fall on, but here Nina Simon makes a compelling argument for why the truth is a bit more complex, and why the answers aren't as quite and trite as many of those editorial writers seem to believe.

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