Welcome to Roedde House Museum, a uniquely restored Heritage house in the heart of the West End.

Take a stroll through the peaceful, leafy Barclay Heritage Square; sit under the gazebo or on one of the many benches and take in the sights of Roedde House and its Victorian neighbours, such as Barclay Manor, standing proudly amidst the apartment buildings.

Guardian Professional June 7, 2013 Most museums have already embraced mobile, and they are thinking about it in more sophisticated and strategic ways.
Last week, this network published an open letter from Fusion Analytics calling for museums to do more to embrace mobile. It caused quite a stir among museum professionals. Whilst some responded favourably, many asked who these people were to patronise us, telling us what we already knew, and the Twitter discussion demonstrated that the issue was by no means as simple as had been portrayed.

A few months ago we set up Mobile Experiences: Cultural Audiences (ME:CA) because we wanted to directly address some of this thinking. We wanted to get away from a focus on technology and avoid a knee-jerk and panicked reaction to growing smartphone use.

Instead we thought it was time to have more considered, evidence-based conversations about mobile that concentrated on the audience experience. As part of our first workshop, we invited 20 cultural professionals to discuss what they felt were the exciting opportunities for developing mobile experiences and what were the challenges. The results were telling.

In our discussions, the possibilities afforded by the amazing capabilities of smartphones were clear. Not only can they deliver more information to the user, but they can also be playful, social, locative and therefore potentially create powerful experiences. Read more

Workers at cultural and heritage sites protest government cuts CBC News May 30, 2013

Some of the U.K.'s most visited cultural and tourism spots are closing their doors Thursday or Friday as part of a one-day strike to protest recent cuts.

Approximately half of the National Gallery in London, one floor of the National Portrait Gallery and the entire Tate Liverpool museum were closed to the public on Thursday — to name just a few of the high-profile sites participating.

On Friday, the strike will affect the British Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, according to the Public and Commercial Services Union.

Meanwhile, workers at popular heritage site Stonehenge will walk out on Sunday.

According to the PCS union, the U.K.'s largest civil service union, the industrial action is part of a three-month campaign by its members to protest government cuts to pay, pensions and jobs.

A national walkout is also planned for the end of June. CBC News

Hyperallergic, by Allison Meier on May 24, 2013 With Detroit on the brink of declaring bankruptcy, all avenues to rescue the city from insolvency are being put on the table. One of these is the multi-billion dollar art collection held by the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum (DIA), a possibility which could be pushed for in a bankruptcy situation to cover some of the city’s billions in debt.

“I believe that the only reason the city would sell the collection would be to satisfy the creditors,” Annmarie Erickson, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of DIA, told Hyperallergic.

According to the Detroit Free Press: “Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr is considering whether the multibillion-dollar collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts should be considered city assets that potentially could be sold to cover about $15 billion in debt.” Read more

Museum 2.0 Blog by Nina Simon, May 8, 2013 - Like a lot of organizations, my museum struggles with two conflicting goals:

1. The museum should be for everyone in our community.
2. It's impossible for any organization or business to do a great job being for everyone. We're more successful when we target particular communities or audiences and design experiences for them.

How do you reconcile the desire to be inclusive with the practical imperative to target? In the past, I've subscribed to the theory that an organization should target many different groups and types of people to serve a constellation of specific audiences across diverse affinities, needs, and interests. 
But ultimately, that's still targeting. It's still grouping. And while it may be effective when it comes to marketing, it's limiting if your mission is to reach and engage with a wide range of people. It can lead to parallel programming: bike night for hipsters, bee night for hippies, family night for kiddies. And rarely the twain shall meet.
At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, we're approaching this challenge through a different lens: social bridging. One of our core programming goals is to build social capital by forging unexpected connections between diverse collaborators and audience members. We intentionally develop events and exhibitions that matchmake unlikely partners--opera and ukelele, Cindy Sherman and amateur photographers, welding and knitting. Our goal in doing this work is to bring people together across difference and build a more cohesive community.  
We have been explicitly focusing on social bridging for more than a year now. What started as a series of experiments and happy accidents is now embedded in how we develop and evaluate projects. We've seen surprising and powerful results--visitors from different backgrounds getting to know each other, homeless people and museum volunteers working together, artists from different worlds building new collaborative projects. Visitors now spontaneously volunteer that "meeting new people" and "being part of a bigger community" are two of the things they love most about the museum experience.
This has led to a surprising outcome: we are now de-targeting many programs. This isn't just a philosophical shift--it's also being driven by visitors' behavior. "Family Art Workshops" suffer from anemic participation whereas multi-generational festivals are overrun with families. Single-speaker lectures languish while lightning talks featuring teen photographers, phD anthropologists, and professional dancers are packed. Programs that emphasize bringing diverse people together are more popular than those that serve intact groups. Why fight it? Read more

The Guardian, April 9, 2013
Many gallery websites now offer a rich, behind-the-scenes look at their vast collections. Here, we take a virtual tour of the most (and least) innovative museums.