Over the past week, I have heard from friends and former colleagues from around the country and beyond. While these connections are the silver lining in the enormous, dark coronavirus cloud, so much of the conversation is about lost jobs, fear for laid off employees, the sound of ambulances going by, and radical uncertainty. Personally,…
A week ago (but it feels like months) Thinking About Museums blogger Ed Rodley suggested that a day of virtual drinking with colleagues would be good for our museum-loving souls. I am one of 55 people globally who offered to host virtual cocktails. So please join me at 5pm Central Time tonight, with this Zoom…
This is a week for reaching out; for me, that includes working on a post for Museum Questions, after a very long absence. This is a week when, while spending time isolated, we learn we are not alone. This short episode of “The Daily” shares how the tone of the internet has changed over the…
Join our amazing team! The Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum is hiring a Membership and Marketing Coordinator, a part-time (29 hours per week) position with a flexible schedule. This staff member will be in charge of the museum’s membership program, as well as considering data across the museum and coordinating marketing, especially on social media and the museum’s…
This post is one I wrote with artist Margaret LeJeune for the Coalition of Museums for Climate Justice, which we are resharing here!
Interview with Joel Spencer: Maker Spaces and the Reference Interview Joel Spencer is a native of Champaign, Illinois. Joel graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in history in 2008, and a master’s degree in library and information science in 2010. While in library school Joel focused on community engagement and teen…
Edward Clapp is an author of Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds. This book, and the research behind it, are an initiative of the Agency by Design project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero. One of the challenges in talking about “making” is how big our definition can grow.…
This week’s guest post is by Nicole R. Rivera, Ed.D. Nicole is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at North Central College. She is also the Academic Research and Evaluation Partner of the DuPage Children’s Museum in Naperville, IL. For the past two years, I have been working with the DuPage museum to explore what parents and…
A few months ago, Mike Murawski, in partnership with LaTanya Autry of the Mississippi Museum of Art and The Empathetic Museum, created t-shirts to support a “Museums are not Neutral” campaign. Murawski wrote, “Museums have the potential to be relevant, socially-engaged spaces in our communities. Yet, too often, they strive to remain “above” the political and social…
There’s a cult of failure these days. A google search for “failure” brings up articles like “Why success always starts with failure” and the New York Times article “On campus, failure is on the syllabus.” In fact, failure is so in vogue that there is now a museum dedicated to it. Failure is hot in museums,…
Museum Questions 