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exploring museums, technology, and ideas
Understanding this moment: The tension between professionalism and participation
For more than a decade, there has been an increasing push towards participatory practices in museums, in part with the eye to democratizing the museum. It is proposed that participatory practices can make our institutions more open to diverse visitors; that through their use we can invite in more voices who might not otherwise have the opportunity to […]
Posted in: Ideas
Living (and learning) with social media
September 29, 2016
When I applied to join the faculty at GWU this year, I spent a lot of time working on my statement of teaching philosophy. I hadn’t written anything like this before, and wanted to make sure that my approach to teaching was informed, and appropriate to the types of subjects I’d be teaching. One of the pedagogic approaches I was most […]
Posted in: Professional development, teaching
Blogging is not like riding a bike
September 2, 2016
This week, I assigned blogging projects to students in both my new classes at GWU, tasking them to start weekly writing about the issues they encounter during the course. I feel happy about instilling a regular writing practice as core to professional development. But I also feel hypocritical, since it’s some years since I maintained my blog, or other writing […]
Posted in: Personal
Farewell BMA, Hello GWU!
August 9, 2016
Today marks 808 days since I moved to the USA to join the staff at The Baltimore Museum of Art. It was by far one of the best things I’ve ever done. Living in Baltimore and working at the BMA has expanded my perspectives–personal and professional–and highlighted the limitations of my prior experiences, which were ultimately pretty narrow. […]
Posted in: Personal
A Series of Epistolary Romances (the CODE|WORDS experiment continues)
February 10, 2016
Late last week, we quietly announced that CODE|WORDS–the experiment in online discourse that Ed Rodley, Rob Stein, and I kicked off in 2014–is back. It has a new format and a new set of instigators, plus new authors and new topics. I’m happy to see its return. When we started CODE|WORDS, our aims were to pilot a new approach to the […]
Posted in: CODE | WORDS, Museum Sector
#drinkingaboutmuseums Baltimore
February 8, 2016
Although I haven’t felt significantly homesickness since moving to the USA, one thing I do miss is the group of friends and colleagues who regularly used to congregate in Sydney for #drinkingaboutmuseums. In that diverse group of professionals, which ranged from emerging career folk to those in leadership positions, were likeminded souls who pushed my thinking and grew […]
Posted in: Drinking about museums
Transforming audiences, transforming museums
January 27, 2016
Digital transformation is really about something else that often isn’t openly talked about – transforming audiences. – Seb Chan What does it mean to transform an audience? Is it a shift in the make-up of an audience, how that audience is conceived, how an audience behaves and interacts with an institution, or all three? I’ve been trying […]
Posted in: Ideas, Institutional change
Invisible Architectures
March 11, 2015
Well, the MCN2015 theme has been posted, and I could not be more excited to share it with you: MCN 2015: The Invisible Architectures of Connected Museums: Making Meaning with People, Collections, and Information The world continues to move past the simple physical/digital dialectic towards a more nuanced matrix of architectures uniting digital and material culture. For […]
Posted in: Conferences, Ideas
The long hello.
March 7, 2015
Last week marked nine months since I moved to the USA, and in that time I have barely written. It seems an age since my blog was a critical part of my museum practice. But why? I’d long wondered whether my move into an institution full time would impact my work, and the obvious takeaway from […]
Posted in: Personal
museum geek 
October 23, 2016
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