Opening up the Museum: Nina Simon @ TEDxSantaCruz

Nina Simon is Executive Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), which has gone through a radical transformation over the past year to become a thriving central gathering place. Opening up the MAH to the community has more than doubled attendance and introduced new levels of collaboration, dynamism, and relevance to the museum. Simon teaches radical exhibition design in the University of Washington Museology graduate program and writes the popular blog Museum 2.0. Her 2010 book, The Participatory Museum, was named "a future classic of museology" and is used as a text in cultural organizations and graduate programs internationally. Previously, Simon worked as an independent consultant to over 100 museums and cultural centers around the world, focusing on participatory community engagement. She served as curator at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif., and was the Experience Development Specialist at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

[HarlanLovestone]

I'm an artist-curator trying to start an arts space in my community and this has made it clear to me that art needs to be more inclusive and interactive. This video has also given  some great ideas that I will borrow.

[j.nereim]

Some years back, I accidentally visited a museum exhibit about tattoos. This turned out to be one of my best museum experiences ever, because after seeing it, I knew more about this whole element of our culture that I had never considered before. Since then, I have been able to strike up conversations with all sorts of people, who were probably different from me, about their tattoos--what the tattoos they wore were about, what the tattoos meant to the wearer, all sorts of issues. No one has ever been angry at me for being interested in them.

[surabhitrivedi]

This speech got me goosebumps. I love how you see the museums and are able to exponentially expand its potentials!

[JulieNorthumberland]

Nina your enthusiasm and passion is infectious!! I work in community engagement for a housing provider and you have given me so many ideas that I will crib mercilessly. Thanks so much for sharing your ideas, expressed so eloquently and with such grace. I totally get the dog analogy, it was one of the parts that really chimed with me :-)

[mattygibson]

Brilliant. I am studying anthropology and this was inspiration in my research and writing. I want to go to her exhibits and be a part of them. It is our loss that she is no longer working in the field, but I imagine she has inspired many.

(Also, Matty was here.)

[verras.]

As someone who is working on opening a living museum, I really appreciated the content in this video. It's making our board look at the displays at our museum and try to figure out how we can implement the concepts in this video. Thank you, so much, for posting this.

[brittabaele]

What an inspirering talk. Thank you for the visible idea's, it's stuff to think about and act on. 😍

[Aritul]

Incredible talk. It makes me think about what we can do at the library where I work to attract students.

[ninaksimon]

The value, I think, is in the low barrier to a safe and positive interaction with a stranger. Talking about your dog is like talking about the weather. It's easy and harmless. While that may not be life-changing, social bridging theory makes me believe that it is essential in moving towards a society in which we have greater understanding of and compassion for others.

[shokh]

I love the way she present and I love the topic good for you 👏👏👏

[GCraigVachon]

exposing the big conversations that we need to have - bravo!

[webfloater]

Great idea. I'd like to think about how it can apply to smaller towns and cities, where there may be no museum. It occurs to me that this idea can work at big and small levels. Maybe this is even more important on a small scale.

[kristinekovacevic]

Nina, I am a museum professional, and I tend to look at things in a very practical way. I love what you are doing with the memory jars, but what will you do with them when the installation is over? I don't think it would work to throw them out since you are dealing with very sensitive issues that the visitor has entrusted to the museum. You cannot accession them and keep them in the collection, since there might be a lack of context or relevance.

[MissMadMuzak]

"How can we make museum artifacts more like dogs?" <-- Best. Statement. Ever.

[ninaksimon]

Hi Kristine,
We invited people to come in and take them home if they wished, and then we recycled the rest of them into our program supplies. We did work with a graduate student to catalog all of them digitally--photographs of the jars and transcriptions of label content--to document the project.

We see this as comparable to a temporary exhibition, not a collection-building project.

[minimumutopia]

There are two different points here, it seems to me: building community and the closed nature of the museum.
Cultivating creativity is highly laudable, but, imho, the museum is not a studio, and all the art making that can be cultivated there doesn't take us any closer to the core work of museums: evaluating and collecting, cataloging and classifying, not to overlook preservation. If we want a more open museum we need to have the techniques for creating an ordered collection known to more people.
Additionally, the philosophy of art, the history of art history and that of anthropology need to be made available freely and easily. Museums that make this knowledge accessible and readily available are the ones that are genuinely opening up.

If the museum wants to be a focus in the community, be a means to generating sociability and interaction more broadly, the museums can advocate for social causes, participate more in public education, sponsor and encourage cultural events in local communities and neighbourhoods.
As much as what Nina Simon says is germane to changing today's museum, I am not convinced that what the museum actually is has been sufficiently thought through to amount to more than partial and cosmetic change in the life of the museum as we know it.

[designedbydavid]

Amazing talk. Thank you very much. This is why I work in museums.

[franangel]

Great, glad your spreading the word.  There are a few that are using interactive participation.  We all have the gift of creativity, one way or another. Exciting!

[tarunchowdhury]

Thanks mam ! for addressing the importance of the museum

[ThinkMuseums]

Their is a big discourse going on about defining a museum, however, it looks like more work needed in our public programs.