February 2012
12 posts
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The Top 5 Reasons to Follow a Museum Mascot on...
So, I’m back from my wee trip to Edinburgh and I had an absolutely amazing time. Besides catching up on lots of baby-free shopping, eating out and going to the cinema, I finally managed to visit the Museum of Fire, one of Edinburgh’s hidden gems, see the excellent Fascinating Mummies special exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland and, of course, attend the RBS Lates: Night of...
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Museum Mascots on Social Media: Part 3
24 February 2012
Welcome to the third and final part of Owney the Dog’s series of guest posts about some of his fellow museum mascots on social media. Of course, you can also follow Owney himself on Twitter and Facebook.
I’m Friends with Two Mummies, a Mammoth, a Sabertooth Cat, and an 1800s Tavernkeeper, and You Can Be, Too!
By Owney the Dog, a real, 1890s terrier mutt who gained fame and...
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Museum Mascots on Social Media: Part 2
22 February 2012
We continue with Part 2 in our series of guest posts from Owney the Dog, who has interviewed some of his fellow museum mascots to spread awareness of museum critters (and other non animal mascots^^) on social media. Of course, you can also follow Owney himself on Twitter and Facebook.
I’m Friends with Two Mummies, a Mammoth, a Sabertooth Cat, and an 1800s Tavernkeeper, and You...
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Museum Mascots on Social Media: Part 1
20 February 2012
I’m really excited about this week. Firstly, because I’m off on a short holiday to Edinburgh to see the new Fascinating Mummies exhibition at my beloved National Museum of Scotland, and to attend the RBS Museum Lates: Night of the Mummy event. Secondly, because I’ve always been a huge fan of the National Postal Museum (a.k.a. “my favourite...
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My Gallery of the Year: Imagine
16 February 2012
“Imagine a place where you can create your own story, make music with your friends, dress up for a party or bring a dragon to life! Or would you rather build a fantasy landscape with castles, animals and trees?” (gallery intro panel)
I’ve made no big secret about just how much I love the new Imagine gallery at the National Museum of Scotland. So much so, in...
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How To Go On A Museum Date
14 February 2012
Love it or hate it, today is Valentine’s Day. When I was thinking of a museum related post I could for the blog today, I was reminded of a project I was involved with at National Museums Scotland just before I left. We worked with some groups of young people to create their own self-guided tours around the Museum of Scotland. As well as perennial favourite topics such as...
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The Twitter-Pig
10 February 2012
When I was about four years old, my mum knitted me a pig, hence forth known as ‘Kuschelschwein’ (Engl: cuddle pig) in our family. It became one of my favourite toys…
…until one year, when we were on holiday with another family, and the pig went missing. We’re fairly sure the kid from the other family took it - big, pink cuddle pigs don’t...
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Examples of how museums are using Pinterest
7 February 2012
Following on from my introduction post about museums and Pinterest, I’ve browsed through all the boards of all the 30+ museums I’d found so far, and here are some specific examples of how museums are using Pinterest.
To showcase their collections
Pinterest is all about organising images into themes. And what does that remind you of in terms of museums? Exactly, an...
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Museums and Pinterest: An Introduction
6 February 2012
Unless you’ve been hiding under a social media rock, you’ve probably come across Pinterest by now, or at least heard of it even if you haven’t checked it out yourself. It’s the latest hot new thing. Well, it’s not that new actually, it was founded in March 2010, but it was not until 2011 that it became ‘one to watch’, exploding from around...
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Museum Visit #11/2012: Jewish Museum Berlin in the...
5 February 2012
Don’t worry, I’m not going to blog about it every time I go for afternoon tea at the Jewish Museum, I just wanted to share these lovely winter photos with you which I took this weekend. We took #MuseumBaby for a wee walk along the road, and watching him experience snow for the first time in his life was absolutely brilliant! To thaw out, we went for hot chocolate and...
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30th Lange Nacht der Museen (Museum Visits...
3 February 2012
So, last weekend saw the winter edition of Berlin’s Lange Nacht der Museen (Long Night of Museums). As I mentioned in August, Berlin is the mother of all long museum nights, since they were the first to get the ball rolling. In fact, they are so keen here, that they hold the event twice a year, on the last Saturday in January and August. This time around was a particularly...
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Adopt-a-Museum #26: Casa Museo de Lope de Vega →
2 February 2012
This week’s edition of Adopt-a-Museum has been published a few days later than usual, but better late than never, as they say. Once again we’re heading to Spain, to the Casa Museo de Lope de Vega, adopted by Olga Baird from England. This puts Spain in joint second place with Scotland and the USA, as the country with most featured museums, with four each. In the lead...
January 2012
11 posts
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Museum Visit #5/2012: Jewish Museum Berlin
31 January 2012
You may think that there is nothing worth seeing at the Jewish Museum Berlin, since so far this year all I’ve ever reported is going there for afternoon tea, but of course it’s much more than a café venue. During their last visit to Berlin, my parents spent almost 5 hours there and reportedly only saw half of it (they were very thorough)! Since I live right next door...
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Museum Visit #4/2012: DDR Museum
26 January 2012
Yesterday, I visited the DDR Museum with my brother, who has come to stay for a few days. We’re going to the Long Night of Museums on Saturday (the main reason for his visit), but we wanted to spend some extra time at the DDR Museum, which I had previously checked out in December and decided it would be worth visiting with a couple of hours to spare. And indeed, we spent...
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Museum Visit #3/2012: 'Forever Young'
23 January 2012
So, last week I had my ‘real’ first museum visit of 2012, and by real I mean the first visit where I actually went to see an exhibition, rather than just lounge around having afternoon tea.
My destination was the Deutsches Historische Museum, here in Berlin, which is currently showing ‘Für Immer Jung’ (Eng: Forever Young), commemorating the 50th...
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52 Museums in 52 Weeks - Part 3
16 January 2012
Favourite Temporary Exhibitions
I’ve counted 20 temporary exhibitions I visited in 2011, including ones on bathrooms, war photography, movie storyboards, Alice in Wonderland, fire and The Queen, so it’s difficult to choose, but taking into account the overall impact and interest in the subject matter, I think my three favourites are:
Mammuts: Giganten der Eiszeit at...
Museum Visit #2/2012
14 January 2012
So, today I was back at the Jewish Museum Berlin’s Glass Courtyard again, this time to meet up with a friend who is helping me navigate the German job application system, which is nothing short of a science. I think this may become my new favourite museum-y hangout, though hopefully with more afternoon teas and fewer job applications in future.
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Museum140 Shorty
11 January 2012
This week, Museum140 started back with Adopt-a-Museum after our Christmas break and already we’ve got new submissions coming in, which shows how the project continues to resonate with our followers. I am therefore thrilled that Museum140 has been nominated in the Shorty Awards, which honour the best in social media. It really adds significance to all our hard work over the...
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52 Museums in 52 Weeks - Part 2
9 January 2012
Best Food
No question, the award for best food experience has to go to the National Library of Scotland, simply for their selection of gluten free cakes! No, they’re not made fresh in house, they are pre-packaged from a gluten free range, but at least they recognise that they have customers with a need for this and they have three or four different varieties!
When you are in...
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Audience research: a job in numbers
6 January 2012
While we’re still on the subject of looking back and reflecting on the year that was, I thought I’d re-blog the following post, which was was featured on the National Museums Scotland blog The Feast Bowl last year:
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My name is Jenni Fuchs, and until recently I was the Audience Research Officer at National Museums Scotland. I used to...
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Museum Visit #1/ 2012: The JMB Glass Courtyard
5 January 2012
Almost a week into the new year without seeing the inside of a museum, I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms. But today we made the first museum visit of 2012, even though it was just next door to the Jewish Museum Berlin, and even though it was just for afternoon tea. It still counts, right? We had granny Scotland staying with us, who mostly wanted to spend time with her...
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52 Museums in 52 Weeks - Part 1
4 January 2012
This time last year I had the idea that, as a challenge for the year, I would try to visit 52 museums in 52 weeks. However, with #MuseumBaby to look after I didn’t know how feasible this project was or whether I’d just end up being one of those mums who visits the National Museum of Scotland every other day because it’s free and it’s raining again outside....
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Happy New Year!
2 January 2012
It’s the first #MuseumMonday of 2012, the perfect day to wish you all a Happy New Year full of of health, happiness and, of course, museums ;-)
But before jumping head first into the new year ahead, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect back on the year that was. And what an eventful year it has been in museum terms:
In March I launched Museum140 as a platform for...
December 2011
12 posts
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A Currywurst Christmas Story
24 December
Earlier in the week I wrote about a story writing competition that the Deutsches Currywurst Museum here in Berlin had been running, where they were inviting people to submit a Christmas story featuring a selection of certain words related to the museum. I’ve translated my winning story in to English, and since its set on Christmas Eve I thought today would be the perfect day to...
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Lots of Baubles for the Crowdsourced Christmas...
22 December 2011
First of all, thank you to everyone who sent in baubles for our crowdsourced Christmas tree! We had 15 baubles submitted in total, some of them via Twitter and Facebook - both faithful old friends and new acquaintances - as well as some additional ones drawn by the guests at our Advent housewarming party. It’s just the right number, actually, to be able to include them all...
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Christmas came early!
21 December 2011
In November, the Deutsches Currywurst Museum launched a competition in which they were calling for people to write and send in Christmas stories featuring, you’ve guessed it, currywurst* as a central theme. The stories could be funny, serious, sad, true or completely made up, as long as they featured at least five of the following words (or rather, their German equivalents,...
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Museum-y Christmas Gift Guide: Part 2
14 December 2011
Children love Christmas, and a Christmas gift guide wouldn’t be complete without a few suggestions for the kids in your life. It’s never too early to start them on museums I say (our wee man had visited 20 different museums by his first birthday!), so here are some ‘Kids in Museums’ gift ideas (all suggestions run left to right, top to bottom):
For Kids...
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Museum-y Christmas Gift Guide: Part 1
13 December 2011
Only just over a week to go until Christmas. Have you done all your Christmas shopping yet? If you are still short of a few presents, why not check out some of these museum-y gift suggestions (all suggestions run left to right, top to bottom):
For Museum Lovers
The most obvious gift for museum lovers is a museum membership. You’ll be making someone happy AND supporting...
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Gallery of the Day: Facing the Sea
12 December 2011
I must press on with my gallery guides for the new National Museum of Scotland if I want to get them all posted before the end of the year. Facing the Sea is another of the first floor atrium galleries in the World Cultures block:
The Pacific is a vast ocean scattered with thousands of islands. Here, people belong as much to the sea as to the land. For thousands of years...
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Christmas Elves for Charity
6 December 2011
Happy St Nicholas Day! At the risk of turning into a Christmas blog, especially since today’s post has nothing to do with museums (just a very vague link to Museum140), I wanted to write about a fundraiser here in Germany that we got involved with:
The start up company Spieltz sells board games printed on canvas, and you can also create your own games and have them...
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Crowdsourced Christmas Tree
5 December 2011
Right, that’s the Secret Santa 2.0 sorted out. 37 people (including myself) from 8 different countries signed up. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone in matching up and sending out all the names - such a responsibility!
Next thing, I need to sort out a Christmas tree. Due to #MuseumBaby’s tendency to pull out, pull down or pull apart anything decorative, and...
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Museum140 Advent Calendar
1 December
We have just featured our 22nd museum on Museum140’s Adopt-a-Museum and the project is still going strong with lots of interest coming in. However, although we’re confidently hoping we can continue and make it to 100 museums, we’re taking a wee break during December. It’s a really busy time for everyone and lots of people go on holiday, and we don’t want...
November 2011
12 posts
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Scottish National Portrait Gallery - Sneak Peek
28 November 2011
While we were in Edinburgh last week, the boy and I got invited to a friends and family preview day at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where staff got to show their friends and family round the refurbished gallery in advance of the official opening on 1 December (btw, what a nice idea to say thank you to staff for all...
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Secret Santa 2.0
25 November 2011
I love Christmas! There, I’ve said it. But even more than Christmas itself, I love Advent and the whole build up in the time leading up to Christmas. The last three years I was responsible for organising Secret Santa at work (if you’re from a German speaking country you may be more familiar with the term ‘Wichteln’) - well, to be honest, I was also the one...
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Museum140 Goodies
24 November 2011
Almost forgot to blog about the Museum140 goodies that we recently created through Moo, and which were waiting for me in Edinburgh where I’d had them delivered.
As a thank you to all our Adopt-a-Museum adopters and as an incentive to encourage more people to adopt a museum, we’ve had these stylish stickers made:
Anyone who has already adopted a museum will of...
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The 100 Poem Challenge
7 November 2011
One of the wonderful things about Twitter is discovering new and interesting people that you would probably never have come across in real life. Jen Campbell, 24, who goes by @aeroplanegirl on Twitter, is a poet, short story writer and bookseller from London who I first became aware of through her hilarious collection of “Weird Things Customers Say in...
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October 2011
5 posts
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Say It With Muffins
27 October 2011
Autumn has well and truly arrived in Berlin. The days are getting blustery and slightly damp, perfect weather for some cosy afternoon home baking. As my former colleagues from National Museums Scotland will tell you, I have a slight obsession with baking muffins. In the run up to my wedding I was testing out different flavours for our muffin pyramid, and they...