While working at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History during the pandemic, Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (https://www.morganrehnberg.com) recognized the institution's limited capacity to develop new digitals exhibits with the proprietary solutio

104. What Large Institutions Can Learn From Small Museums

Feb 26th, 2024 14m 52s

The Murney Tower Museum (https://www.murneytower.com) in Kingston, Ontario, Canada is a small museum. Open for only four months of the year and featuring only one full-time staff member, the museum is representative of the many small institutio

103. How Computers Transformed Museums and Created A New Type of Professional

Nov 13th, 2023 14m 59s

Computing work keeps museums running, but it’s largely invisible. That is, unless something goes wrong. For Dr. Paul Marty (https://marty.cci.fsu.edu/), Professor in the School of Information at Florida State University and his colleague Kathy

102. Copies in Museums

Jul 31st, 2023 14m 55s

On Berlin’s Museum Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Island), four stone lion statues perch in the Pergamon Museum (https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/pergamonmuseum/home/). Three of these lions are originals — that is to

101. Buzludzha Always Centered Visitor Experience. Dora Ivanova is Using Its Structure to Create a New One.

Jan 23rd, 2023 19m 48s

Since it opened in 1981 to celebrate the ruling Bulgarian Communist Party, Buzludzha has centered the visitor experience. Every detail and sightline of the enormous disk of concrete perched on a mountaintop in the middle of Bulgaria was designe

100. The Archipelago Museum

Nov 28th, 2022 11m 23s

In the early days of this podcast, every time I searched for Museum Archipelago on the internet, the top result would be a small museum in rural Finland called the Archipelago Museum. As my podcast continued to grow and my search rankings impr

99. Museums in Video Games

Aug 8th, 2022 14m 20s

The Computer Games Museum in Berlin knows that its visitors want to play games, so it lets them. The artifacts are fully-playable video games, from early arcade classics like PacMac to modern console and PC games, all with original hardware and

98. At the Panama Canal Museum, Ana Elizabeth González Creates a Global Connection Point

Feb 14th, 2022 13m 3s

When Ana Elizabeth González was growing up in Panama, the history she learned about the Panama Canal in school told a narrow story about the engineering feat of the Canal’s construction by the United States. This public history reflected the po

97. Richard Nixon Hoped to Never Say These Words about Apollo 11. In A New Exhibit, He Does.

Jan 17th, 2022 14m 58s

As the Apollo 11 astronauts hurtled towards the moon on July 18th, 1969, members of the Nixon administration realized they should probably make a contingency plan. If the astronauts didn’t make it – or, even more horrible, if they made it to th

96. Tegan Kehoe Explores American Healthcare Through 50 Museum Artifacts

Nov 15th, 2021 14m 57s

Public historian and writer Tegan Kehoe knows that museum visitors act differently around the same object presented in different contexts—like how the same visitor excited by a bayonet that causes a triangular wound in an exhibit of 18th-centur

95. The Museum of Technology in Helsinki, Finland Knows Even the Most Futuristic Technology Will One Day Be History

Aug 31st, 2021 11m 31s

In 1969, noticing that technological progress was changing their fields, heads of Finish industry came together to found a technology museum in Finland. Today, the Museum of Technology in Helsinki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Techno

94. Jazz Dottin Guides Viewers Through Massachusetts’s Buried Black History

Jun 28th, 2021 11m 54s

The deliberate exclusion of Black history and the history of slavery in the American South has been slow to reverse. But Jazz Dottin, creator and host of the Black Gems Unearthed YouTube channel says it can be just as slow in New England. Each

93. Bulgaria’s Narrow Gauge Railway Winds Through History. Ivan Pulevski Helped Turn One of Its Station Stops Into a Museum.

Jun 7th, 2021 11m 10s

In 1916, concerned that the remote Rhodope mountains would be hard to defend against foreign invaders, a young Bulgarian Kingdom decided to build a narrow gauge railway to connect villages and towns to the rest of the country. The Bulgarian Kin

92. The Pleven Panorama Museum Transports Visitors Through Time, But Not Space

May 3rd, 2021 12m 22s

The Pleven Panorama transports visitors through time, but not space. The huge, hand-painted panorama features the decisive battles of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877–78, fought at this exact spot, which led to Bulgaria’s Liberation. The landsca

91. How Fake Museums Are Used in Theme Parks with Shaelyn Amaio

Apr 19th, 2021 12m 35s

Museums can be a shorthand for truth, or for history, or for what a culture values. Disney theme parks all around the world use fake museums as a tool to immerse visitors in the themed environment. This detailed world-building can make the imag

90. Civil Rights Progress Isn't Linear. The Grove Museum Interprets Tallahassee's Struggle in an Unexpected Setting.

Mar 15th, 2021 14m 53s

The Grove Museum inside the historic Call/Collins House is one of Tallahassee’s newest museums, and it’s changing how the city interprets its own history. Instead of focusing on the mansion house’s famous owners, including Florida Governor LeRo

89. Tehmina Goskar Critically Engages with Curation, Wherever It Happens

Feb 22nd, 2021 14m 47s

Dr. Tehmina Goskar, director of the Curatorial Research Centre, co-founded MuseumHour with Sophie Ballinger in October 2014. The weekly peer-to-peer chat on Twitter “holds space for debate” for museum people all around the world. This month, G

88. Jérôme Blachon Collects and Transmits Precious Memories at the Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Haute-Garonne, France

Jan 25th, 2021 7m 25s

During World War II, a Nazi collbatoring regime governed the south of France, and the city of Toulouse was a Resistance hub. The Vichy Government promoted anti-Semitism and collaborated with the Nazis, most specifically by deporting Jews to con

87. The Vitosha Bear Museum Lives in a Tiny Mountain Hut

Nov 16th, 2020 9m 13s

Vitosha Mountain, the southern border of Sofia, Bulgaria, is home to about 15 brown bears and one bear museum. According to Dr. Nikola Doykin, fauna expert at the Vitosha Nature Park Directorate, the bear population is stable—if humans stay awa

86. Nashid Madyun Fights the Compression of Black History at the Meek-Eaton Black Archives

Sep 21st, 2020 13m 25s

History professor Dr. James Eaton taught his students with the mantra: “African American History is the History of America.” As chair of the history department at FAMU, a historically Black University in Tallahassee, Florida, he was used to tea

85. The John G. Riley House is All That Remains of Smokey Hollow. Althemese Barnes Turned It Into a Museum on Tallahassee’s Black History

Aug 31st, 2020 14m 54s

During the period of Jim Crow and the Black Codes, a self-sustaining Black enclave called Smokey Hollow developed near downtown Tallahassee, Florida. As the first Black principal of Lincoln High School, John G. Riley was a critical part of the

84. On Richmond’s Transformed Monument Avenue, A Group of Historians Erect Rogue Historical Markers

Aug 10th, 2020 14m 25s

Near the empty pedestals of Confederate figures that used to tower over Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, a new type of historical marker now stands. The markers have most of the trappings of a state-erected historical plaque—but these are

83. Chris Newell Forges The Snowshoe Path as the First Wabanaki Leader of the Abbe Museum

Jul 6th, 2020 14m 59s

Chris Newell remembers the almost giddy level of excitement he felt when he visited the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine as a kid. Every summer, the family drove for more than two hours for his father to perform songs about their Passamaquoddy

82. Statues and Museums

Jun 15th, 2020 11m 1s

In the wake of the racist murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol tore down a statue of Edward Colston, a prominent 17th Century slave trader. Protesters rolled the statue through the street and pushed it

81. Living History in a Pandemic at Old Sturbridge Village

Jun 1st, 2020 12m 30s

Old Sturbridge Village is a living history museum in Massachusetts depicting life in rural New England during the early 19th century. But the early 19th century isn’t specific enough for the site’s historical interpreters—to immerse visitors in