Thinking about Museums

What is the opposite of fragile?

December 15, 2025 Ed Rodley

This originally appeared in Episode #6 of my newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed already, now’s a great time! Once I was able to operate my laptop again,

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This Isn’t What I Signed Up For, But…

April 7, 2025 Ed Rodley

Ed’s announcment of the launch of his new newsletter, “This Isn’t What I Signed Up For, But…” Since you’ve shown enough interest to subscribe to this blog, I think you might enjoy signing up for it!

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The book has a publication date!

March 30, 2025 Ed Rodley

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Anniversaries

November 13, 2023 Ed Rodley

I am madly preparing to depart for Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia at the end of the week. The kind folks at the National Digital

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On finding the plot again

September 6, 2022 Ed Rodley

Last month I came across a post on Twitter by Venkatesh Rao. It was he who back in 2017 introduced me to the idea of

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Getting back in the saddle

January 18, 2022 Ed Rodley

A long-overdue update on the book, and other news.

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How are you?

October 29, 2021 Ed Rodley

A postcard from an absent friend, namely me!

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On modern guilds

September 8, 2020 Ed Rodley

Acknowledging the present crisis I’ve been wondering what the future of museum work might look like. As the world starts to hesitantly open up again,

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Where to now, friends?

July 15, 2020 Ed Rodley

What I’m interested in is where to go next, personally, professionally, and as a society.

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Intention, reflection, and onboarding & offboarding

February 29, 2020 Ed Rodley

Happy Leap Day! I’ve had a bunch of conversations lately that are all converging around the intersection of reflection and learning. I had a meeting

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Engaging with “Engagement”

December 30, 2019 Ed Rodley

Happy holidays, comrades! Here we are, on the cusp of 2020, and I want to ring out the old year by reflecting on some of

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Defining “engagement”

December 4, 2019 Ed Rodley

Imagine a typical museum visitor in the act of “being engaged” by something at the museum. What are they doing? Thinking? Feeling? Can you describe what that “engagement” looks like? How can you know that visitor is engaged as opposed to confused or looking at their email? Is engagement like pornography; hard to define but you know it when you see it? I don’t think so.

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