Museopunks
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Episode 45: Getting By With A Little Help
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mutual aid systems rely on forms of exchange, sharing support and resources, to enable communities to care for their members in the face of difficulty...
Episode 44: A conversation among friends
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been a few weeks since the world was upended in the wake of COVID-19. In this episode, we catch up with an old friend, Sharna Jackson, to hold ...
Episode 43: How do we live in turbulent times?
20 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Even before a pandemic changed everything, we were living in turbulent times. Extreme partisanship defines politics in many countries, inequality grow...
Episode 42: A #MuseumMeToo Moment
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since the #MeToo movement began in 2017, many in the museum sector have wondered when members of our own community would be called to account. In this...
Episode 41: Digitization is not neutral
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past decade, museums have increasingly shared high resolution open access images of their collections. Yet there are significant legal and et...
Episode 40: A very human exhibition
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Being Human, the new permanent gallery at Wellcome Collection, explores what it means to be human in the 21st century. In creating the exhibition, the...
Episode 39: A new definition of “museum”?
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The season for existential crises continued this past month when the International Council of Museums (ICOM) announced that a working group had propos...
Episode 38: Decolonisation And Its Discontents
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As decolonisation moves more firmly onto the agenda in museums, so to does its critique. In this episode, we speak with Sumaya Kassim, author of the e...
Episode 37: Experience doesn’t pay the rent
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Unpaid internships are commonplace in the museum world, supported by a culture that suggests “experience” and the chance to get “a foot in the d...
Episode 36: Queering Your Museum
12 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The end of Pride Month does not mean that we should stop talking or thinking about LGBTQIA+ inclusion and queer curating practices in museums. This mo...
Episode 35: Show Me The Money!
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On September 11, 2018, the Board of Directors of the Mountain-Plains Museums Association unanimously voted to require that any jobs or paid internship...
Episode 34: Paradigm Lost
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In early 2019, experience designer Ed Rodley asked the hivemind what they saw as the biggest issues facing ppl who make museum experiences in 2019? Th...
Episode 33: A Museum for Everyone
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
OF/BY/FOR ALL is a global movement and a set of tools to help community institutions around the world become more representative OF and co-created BY...
Episode 32: Changing The Canon
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Museum collections in established institutions come with long histories. So how do you change a museum’s canon? In this episode, we speak with Chris...
Episode 31: Are Museums Safe Spaces for Unsafe Ideas?
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Since the mid-1990s, it has been received wisdom that museums are, or should be, “safe spaces for unsafe ideas.” But is this true? Are museum safe...
Episode 30: Truth & Reconciliation in Museums
04 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How can museums participate in transitional justice, which seeks to address massive human rights violations? In this episode, Suse is joined by Omar ...
Episode 29: Virtually Yours (Part 2)
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this special two-part episode, Suse and special guest co-host Desi Gonzales, explore virtual reality in museums. In part two, we take a deep dive i...
Episode 28: Virtually Yours (Part 1)
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If there is a hot technology in museums right now, it is virtual reality–a technology sometimes credited as being the “ultimate empathy machine.”...
Episode 27: Museums Are Not Neutral
28 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With a reticence towards partisan politics, museums are sometimes perceived to be neutral institutions, many avoiding taking a visible stand on issues...
Episode 26: Decolonise the Museum!
12 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The vision of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, describes how the museum “will reflect and realize the values of decolonization in all of its pr...
Episode 25: The Next Chapter
08 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As former Museopunk Jeffrey Inscho leaves the museum world, we take a moment reflect on the factors that influence a decision to leave or join the mus...
Episode 24: Institutional Bravery
02 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Increasingly, it feels like progressive museum practice is also political museum practice. So what does it mean for a museum to take a stand, and put ...
Episode 23: The Gendered Museum
18 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know that several studies in recent years have shown that when women enter a specific field in large numbers, the pay for that field declines ...
Episode 22: Human Behavior
16 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Museums that want to impact their visitors are often concerned with changing their behaviors. However, before any kind of change can take place, it's ...
Episode 21: The Outsiders
11 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Since the 1960s, artists have been critically examining the practices of museums, at times critiquing the idea of what a museum is and how it presents...
Episode 20: An Ode to Self-Care
12 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Progressive museum work, particularly when focussed around community engagement, is often a form of emotion work that demands emotional labor. Museum ...
Episode 19: The State of Love and Trust
16 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Don’t call this a comeback! After an almost three-year hiatus, Museopunks returns to explore progressive museum practice. How much has changed since...
007: Punks Interrupted
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when technical difficulties get in the way of regularly scheduled programming? The Punks make do, of course. In this episode, Suse and Je...
008: Intergallactic Planetary
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
On August 27 this year, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in NYC announced that it had acquired Planetary, an iPad app, which ...
009: Museums as Digital Citizens
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
DigitalCitizenship.net cites nine individual elements of digital citizenship: access, commerce, communication, literacy, etiquette, law, rights & resp...
010: Inspiration, Muses and Forces that Inspire Creative Digital Work
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of MCN2013, we’ll hear a lot about great #musetech projects and issues facing the sector. But in this session, the Punks want to lea...
011: Communication Breakdown
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Marshall McLuhan once proposed that new technologies introduce new habits of perception, new ways of seeing and interacting with the world. In this se...
012:Innovative Curation
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Museopunks regularly digs into some of the more innovative practice in museums, but so far, we’ve haven’t tackled curating. In this episode, Suse ...
013: Digital As A Dimension of Everything
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most interesting sessions at MCN2013 was on The Future of Museum Digital Departments, which featured staff from the Tate, the National Gall...
014: The Economics of Free
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Tyler Green (Modern Art Notes) recently wrote that “In the future, most American art museums — say, those with operating budgets of ~$7 million an...
015: Professional Identity
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be a museum professional with an active online presence? How does blogging, Twitter, and other forms of social media communicatio...
016: Net Neutrality
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Net neutrality is a hot topic at the moment, in light of changes proposed by US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler that would...
017: Digital Fabrication
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Discussions about 3D scanning and printing technologies have started to gain momentum in the museum world, as they seem to offer museums significant n...
018: Rhetoric of the Future
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What role does language have in dictating the way we talk and think about the future – and present – in museums? Does talking about the future hol...
004: Back to the Future
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 2008, AAM (now the American Alliance of Museums) established the Center for the Future of Museums to help museums understand the cultural, politica...
005: Game On!
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Games are such a hot topic in museums, but the topic is a complex one. As blogger Kevin Bacon (no, not that one) points out, video games are expensive...
006: Museums as Media Organizations
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
News and media organizations have been undergoing similar challenges to those facing museums in the digital age, with increased competition for attent...
003: The Shape of Punk to Come
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, Collections Trust CEO Nick Poole did a short analysis of 40 mission statements of leading UK museums and galleries, and discovered that the w...
002: Flip the Script
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What role does design and design thinking play in museum innovation? In this episode, the Punks dig into one of the “secret themes” that emerged o...
001: Kick Out the Jams
06 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In this, the inaugural episode of the Museopunks podcast, the Punks chat to Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy at the Smithsonian I...