Since relaunching last summer, we’ve followed the blog Museum 2.0 with interest. On it, Nina Simon, a multi-tasking author, consultant, and exhibit designer, makes the case for making museums more visitor centered and engaging. In other words: Incorporate the kinds of participatory tools people are already using on the social Web en masse. Sounds like a no-brainer, but for museums it represents a dramatic shift in how visitors are defined; “passive consumers” are now “cultural participants.”

It’s not mere branding speak but a matter of survival. Over the past two decades, cultural institutions have seen their audiences decline as other forms of entertainment and learning have emerged. A 2008 survey by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts charted these trends; read it here.

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Our weekly round up of local news, events, and cultural happenings we’re tracking. Off we go…

One more whale skeleton and we’ve got a trend. The soon-to-open Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC has devoted their atrium to a blue-whale skeleton. On Saturday, Ottawa’s Museum of Nature will unveil an exhibit of a juvenile blue-whale skeleton, on view for the first time since it was donated in 1975. The museum has undergone an extensive six-year, $250-million overhaul that was part renovation (a view of the show-stealing staircases inside their ‘lantern’ addition is pictured left), part restoration, and aimed at showcasing Canada’s rich natural heritage. “Probably the only thing Canadians agree on is their pride in the physical beauty and remarkable nature of the natural environment of the country,” says Joanne DiCosimo, the museum’s president and CEO. “And our public wants to learn more about their impact on the natural environment as well as, as much as we can tell them about the changes through time in the natural landscape.” Image slideshow, video tour, and article found on Globe and Mail.

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This week’s round up of news and cultural happenings is rather museum-heavy; always lots going on as institutions prepare to launch their summer blockbusters. We’re no exception: Fox, Fluevog & Friends: The Story Behind the Shoes launches exactly one week today (one of the 150 pair of shoes featured in the exhibition is pictured left). The building is buzzing.

The quest for the 20-minute neighbourhood. Ever since last year’s feature exhibition Velo-City: Vancouver and the Bicycle Revolution, we’ve kept an eye on two-wheeled matters—news, ideas, design, etc. But what of pedestrian traffic as a city-making/organizing tool? The City of Portland recently unveiled a new 30-year plan for the city that introduced the concept of the 20-minute neighbourhood. “The idea? Simple: everything a person needs for his or her daily life should be within an inviting 20-minute stroll of home.” Key components include things like walkability, scale, density, and amenities like transit connections, schools, and parks. Most interesting is this: though Portland is held up as a model of progressive urban planning and livability, only one district comes closest to meeting this ideal. Wonder how many neighbourhoods in Vancouver would pass the test. (Portland Monthly)

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A round up of news stories we followed this week, plus other events and cultural happenings worth a notice.

You see arugula, I see an eyesore? As City Council pushes for a green, sustainable Vancouver (allowing backyard chickens, introducing new bike lanes, building a demonstration garden on City Hall property, etc.), awkward snags in the day-to-day functioning of city emerge. Two neighbours in East Van are going head-to-head over a vegetable garden. Seems the tenants at 470 E. 56th Ave. have turned the front and back yards of the property over to vegetables, growing everything from kale to raspberries to herbs. Every inch is maximized for growing—even the dandelions are used for tea. (An image of the yard from last summer is pictured left.) They write a blog about their “yarden” project, too, and have even offered workshops to would-be farmers. Their neighbour says their efforts are impacting the value of his property and that weeds are travelling into his yard. The City is now involved, expressing their support but also requiring clean up of beds planted on the city land the tenants have taken over between the sidewalk and the street, among other things. Question is: Would the neighbours complain, and thus the city be involved, if the house were located near Commercial Drive where such philosophies are more commonplace? Or are the tenants pushing things too far, too fast, politicizing the issue instead of just trying to get along? Would love feedback on all this. See the article in today’s Globe and Mail for additional background.

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A weekly round up of the news and cultural happenings we followed this week.

Vancouver gets animated: Pixar officially opened offices in Gastown this week. Always so much media coverage (hype?) around these Vancouver 2.0/creative class/Hollywood North stories, and more to come: “no fewer than three American studios are opening up shops in Vancouver: Pixar, Digital Domain and Sony Pictures Imageworks, which plans to formally announce its Vancouver studio next month.” (Globe and Mail)

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Our weekly summary of local news and cultural happenings—and a shameless plug for an upcoming MOV program… Read on!

Curtains for the Ridge Theatre? Ian Bailey reports that the historic Ridge Theatre may be on the verge of closing. Owner Leonard Schein says the single-screen cinema model can’t compete with the multiplex. (One wonders how his Park Theatre on Cambie Street is doing. ?) (Globe and Mail)

An Exhibit We Wish We Could Check Out: Next week, Sustainable Futures opens at London’s stellar Design Museum. The show promises to be a smart sampling of the best green designs, products, and the like, all meant to inspire a better way. (Design Museum)

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The local news and cultural happenings we followed this week—and what we’re up to this weekend.

Yet another take on cabinets of curiosities. During the four-month run of Ravishing Beasts—our feature exhibit on taxidermy—the blog looked at how the design world is reinterpreting the natural world. You’d be hard-pressed to open a shelter mag these days without finding some reference to this trend, or something about creating off-beat vignettes that go beyond books and vases and into the slightly macabre. An image of Patch NYC’s vignette from the French edition of Marie Claire magazine is pictured left. (Poppytalk)

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Here’s that post I’ve been promising—long overdue! Consider this the last entry on the collecting-practices talk we hosted a couple weeks back, where we invited museum directors from the city’s west side—what Dr. Anthony Shelton of the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) refers to as the “other side”—to discuss their most recent acquisitions.

First, there was MOV’s Nancy Noble discussing the myriad changes we’ve made in recent months (a Q&A based on her presentation is found here). She also discussed the challenges of managing a collection that often reflects the “colonial wanderings” of Vancouver residents, rather than our new direction as a museum of Vancouver. Our name change wasn’t mere wordplay.

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Last week, MOV hosted a talk with the directors of three Vancouver museums on the future of museum collecting. This posts offers a follow-up Q&A with MOV’s CEO Nancy Noble. Next week, we’ll look at the trends discussed by the other speakers, Dr. Anthony Shelton of the Museum of Anthropology, and Dr. Wayne Maddison of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum.

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Vancouver’s cultural institutions are at a major turning point. We’ve just rebranded/relaunched/reinvented (a process chronicled on this blog and elsewhere. See recent coverage on BC Business here). Our west side neighbour, the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, is set to unveil an impressive expansion and renovation in early 2010—an effort years in the making. And the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, also at UBC, is at work on a new $50-million complex that will house a research centre and a museum devoted to the university’s natural-history collections. It, too, is expected to launch in early 2010. Then are the ongoing plans for a new location for the Vancouver Art Gallery and talk of a National Maritime Centre to be located on the shore of North Vancouver. Add it all up, and we’re on the verge of a very different arts and culture scene—even if it takes years to achieve yet.

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