| This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
Mary Maher, Editor/Interviewer
For nearly forty years, Paul Orselli has worked to create inventive and playful museums and exhibits. He is now the President and Chief Instigator at POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.), an exhibit design and development corporation he founded.
Paul has consulted on museum projects in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. His clients include the New York Hall of Science, the Exploratorium, the National Science Foundation, and Science Projects in London. He has taught and lectured at numerous universities on museum topics and has presented at professional conferences around the world. He is also a grant recipient of the Fulbright Specialist program.
Paul has also been the editor and originator of the four best-selling Exhibit Cheapbooks, published by Association of Science and Technology Centers, and has served on the board of NAME (National Association for Museum Exhibition).
MAHER: What was your first museum experience, and what led you to a museum career?
ORSELLI: When I was a little kid, my father took me on a visit to the Cultural Center in downtown Detroit, which housed the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Detroit Historical Museum was nearby. At least that’s the story I tell myself. I used to kid my father when he was alive, that if he had brought me to a courtroom or a hospital that day he would’ve gotten a lawyer or a doctor. But instead he got a museum person. I think in the end he was quite happy with that.
On a later visit with my family to the Ontario Science Center in Toronto, we spent the whole day there. Afterwards I wrote them a fan letter saying how much I enjoyed the museum—especially the chemistry demonstrations—and asked if they could send me some of the “recipes.” They send me a letter back with a photocopy of their floor chemistry demonstrations that included stuff like sulfuric acid. I remember riding my purple banana seat Sears bicycle back from school with a big bottle of sulfuric acid that my seventh grade science teacher gave me. And I did the experiments (with some near catastrophes!) from their booklet of floor chemistry demonstrations. I wish I had saved that letter!
M: Growing up in Cleveland, my family never went to museums, and Catholic schools didn’t take field trips. But my dad had a boat and we used to sail around Lake Erie. On one trip with him and my two friends when I was about eleven, we docked in a little marina in Vermilion, Ohio. He handed me $10 and told us to go find some dinner. So, we walked downtown, found a hot dog stand and then a museum, the Vermilion Nautical Museum. It was in an old Victorian house. The front door was wide open, no one there. We walked in, wandered around, and saw a display of jars of an invasive species, lamprey eels, with those big sucker mouths, all sizes. These looked like green beans in a jar, grey green beans by then. My friends dared me to steal one, so I grabbed one, and we ran out, I took it back to the boat. I carried it around for years. Later, I majored in art history major, spending a lot of time in the Cleveland Museum of Art. But I didn’t lift anything.
O: I just learned something about you! Great Lakes lamprey eel stealer! Holy Mackerel! No, Holy Lamprey!
M: On to exhibits. Basic question: What is an exhibit anymore?
O: Like that old question of what is a museum anymore, an exhibit can be anything. I’m averse to coming up with a dogmatic definition because the boundaries keep shifting, which is good.
Olafur Eliasson, one of my favorite living artists, does a lot of phenomenological art, playing with light, art, and motion. Some of his pieces look like high-end, very aesthetically-pleasing science center exhibits. Someone described the experience of seeing his work as a “wow” followed by an “aha.” There is my definition of the exhibit.
Eliasson had a show called Look Again at the Museum of Modern Art. Riding the escalator, making this stately museum ascendancy to the second floor, you noticed something weird. Everybody moving where you were headed looked like a black and white movie. It was like a reverse Wizard of Oz. That was the “wow”: what’s going on? Then the “aha” when you realized a set of yellow sodium lights, perfectly aligned to the floor landing, took out the color and made everything look monochromatic. A lot of the best exhibit experiences—and they don’t have to be interactive—are wows and then ahas. Seeing the Diego Rivera frescoes at the Detroit Institute of Art is a very transcendent experience. I’ve probably been in that space dozens of times. But it’s still very, very impressive.
M: You’ve taught exhibit design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Bank Street, the University of the Arts, and in places around the world. How do you begin to teach people to initiate a design process that leads to a wow-aha exhibit?
O: That’s easy. It’s the same process I use for myself: fall in love with what you’re working on. I have to get so excited that I am just bursting to share what I’ve learned with other people. For example, recently, I’ve been working on the D&H Canal Museum in Upstate New York. I didn’t know a thing about canals, much less the Delaware & Hudson Canal, which opened in 1828 and stretched from the Hudson River to Upstate New York. The exhibit development process started with a very fundamental question: why would anyone go to the trouble of digging something like this? There were no steam shovels, bulldozers, or dynamite at the time. It was all done with picks and shovels by Irish and German immigrants. They essentially created a huge watery highway, a gigantic trench, with locks—for what? Coal!
A canal was the most efficient way to move coal from Pennsylvania mines to east coast shipping ports! Basically, what I think about and what I tell students, is if you can’t be genuinely excited about an exhibit, why in the world do you think a visitor would?
When I see what I consider a “bad” exhibit, it’s not the idea that was bad, but the implementation. You could do a cool exhibit about anything if you can find something in the idea that is legitimately exciting for you. I once met the president of the International Sand Collectors Society. He had samples of sand from every country in the world, from locations like the Great Pyramids to Gettysburg. He even had some trinitite, a fused glass radioactive sand from the White Sands nuclear testing grounds, which was technically, probably dangerous or illegal to obtain. But nevertheless, his knowledge and enthusiasm were so contagious, that interaction got me excited about sand.
M: What important changes have you seen in exhibits in the last five years, and why do you think they are happening?
O: One of the biggest changes is the increased interaction with our audience. Museums are no longer “Moses coming down from the mount” with tablets of wisdom for visitors, who are merely the vessels to receive it. That sort of curator über alles approach has shifted, and I think for the better. Because if we really want to make our experiences as accessible to as many people as possible, we have to meet them where they are and treat them with respect, engage them to think about a topic and make them part of the process.
M: Do you know if this shift has increased attendance at museums that now work this way?
O: Speaking with Randi Korn recently on this subject, it turns out that even though the United States population is growing, museum attendance relative to that population and also across demographic strata is not growing. How do you crack that? It’s a challenge to balance audience interests and needs with what a museum can offer. If a museum decided to hold a pie-eating contest and give everyone free ice cream, a lot of people would come. But is that what a museum wants to do? Would visitors attracted to this kind of activity come back? Museums are rightly saying they want to be responsive to the communities and audiences they serve, but where is the line? How do you stay true to your institution at the same time you stay true to the people you want to engage with?
That word “true” leads into a related word, which is “trust.” Because if somebody feels like they are a token or you’re just engaging with them to check a box or get a grant, you’ve broken trust. That’s not how you continue any relationship, let alone a relationship between an institution and its communities. It’s a tricky. But you know it when you see it. How do museums measure success? The blunt force instrument of admissions numbers are relatively easy number to come by. But what do they really mean? If your admissions numbers went up 5 percent from last year, does that mean you’re a 5 percent better museum?
M: Well, admissions numbers are a measure, but they aren’t the sole measure. You can’t totally throw them out.
O: Well, I’ll accept that you can’t throw them out completely, but we over rely on them. How can we measure not just quantity but also quality of visits?
Another way to measure a museum’s value relates to the stories we told each other at the beginning of this call. Some museum visits are not just one-time experiences but inspire life-changing stories. Kids visit a natural history museum, see the dinosaurs and become paleontologists. Or go to the Air & Space Museum and became an astronaut or a pilot. There are plenty of these stories, but how do you harvest them? I’m not minimizing the difficulty of this endeavor, but I am saying that what you measure and how you measure it matters. As a visitor, you can tell when a museum clicks. You go there and it feels welcoming and interesting. You’re not thinking about yourself as the one millionth visitor there that day. You’re just thinking, “This is an awesome place.”
M: How does a museum get this way? How is this “awesome” experience created?
O: That goes back to the authentic feelings and efforts of the people who created the museum experiences. In one of my museum FAQ video interviews with museum educator Leslie Bedford, she talks about an experience she had in a Japanese museum connected with Zen Buddhism. Sitting quietly near a placid lake on the museum grounds, she heard a plop in the lake. She didn’t know if this was a natural plop or a water drop that was programmed to fall. Nevertheless, it was a very impactful moment that made her think of a haiku related to that kind of experience.
There are plenty of experiences in museums and other places where people have really sweated the details because they want to frame the possibility for something awesome to happen.
M: Children are very good at sensing a flat exhibit. They’re less inhibited by social expectations, “Oh, I’m in a museum, I’m supposed to like this.” They vote with their feet, or their attention span.
O: “This is boring. Let’s leave.”
M: In your work with museums and other exhibit designers, are you seeing any COVID-inspired changes in either the process or the product in terms of exhibit design? Are people adjusting their plans? Or, are they just waiting it out until things return to “normal”?
O: The negative, knee-jerk response is the notion of a touchless museum. I understand the motivation: we need to be mindful of our visitors’ reasonable concerns about their health and safety. But simply covering up all the touchscreens, warehousing all the interactive exhibits, and making sure you have more hand sanitizer stations and floor stickers for physical distancing may look safer, but it’s not a better experience. Why should I come to your museum if basically you’re taking away everything that makes it a great experience?
So what’s a positive response? I wrote a blog post, sort of tongue-in-check, but I suggested instead of hands-on museums we should have “feets on museums.”
Bad grammar, but my point was that there are other ways to allow for physical engagement and actually increase universal design and accessibility for visitors with all kinds of cognitive capacities. A high-tech example might be a projection experience where people could use their feet— or even wheelchairs or canes—to spark a process. Even if 500 people had stepped on that floor projection thing, the 501st visitor isn’t going to wig out by touching a spot with their feet. A low-tech example could involve installing a mat switch instead of a push button in an interactive exhibit. This is an opportunity to be more creative.
M: Some of the initial responses to remove the touchables came from museums trying to safely reopen as soon as they could, both to serve their audiences and for financial reasons.
O: The notion of the touchless museum hasn’t gone away. You can say, “Well, we can’t go back to how things were before March 2020.” But a lot of people haven’t internalized that verbiage. They really want to go back to how things were exactly before March 2020.
Most museums don’t have a large endowment to ride out COVID-19 with no changes. They should be thinking about what they can do to provide a better museum experience for more people. Forget COVID even happened.
M: Well, that’s impossible.
O: Okay, but let’s just say you acknowledge we are still in the midst of COVID, but your decisions going forward are still the same whether COVID happened or not. How can we provide the best, most interesting, entertaining, fun, engaging experience and still be mindful of people’s legitimate concerns—access, financial, physical, societal? That’s still going to be the move five weeks, five months or five years from now if you are a great museum.
M: Some children’s museums have decided not to re-open until they can offer the experience they want to, so they’re going to wait until the environment is safer.
O: I applaud those museums. New York Hall of Science, a large museum in a major metropolitan area, announced that, unlike a lot of other New York museums, they’re not re-opening until after 2021. That was a really tough decision. But difficult situations show you who people and institutions really are. Who are the people, the institutions, the directors, the boards, the museum workers, who made these tough decisions? Those are the museums and the leaders in the field who I want to pay attention to. Some museums are looking for creative ways to respond to immediate needs, such as a UK museum selling grocery items through its gift shop, because the local community needs them and they aren’t easily accessible otherwise. Other museums are using their parking lots for deployment of COVID testing. Some museums have stepped up in ways that don’t neatly fit into a pre COVID understanding of what their mission is, but they still felt compelled to respond in the ways they could.
M: But many children’s museums are reopening, fully or in some capacity, for good reasons. They provide important services to children and families in their communities.
O: The question of whether—or when—to reopen relates to the question of what happens after you reopen. Anybody making predictions further out than two weeks or so is just full of beans. Too many things are changing too quickly. The reopening decision requires you to acknowledge and internalize the notion that you have to be flexible with how you’re implementing any of these decisions. You can’t use January 2020 benchmarks.
M: When you’re working on exhibit plans in the situation we’re in now, it sounds like your approach really doesn’t change. You’re still interested in the long goal.
O: I’m interested in both long and short goals. I have made shifts in exhibit designs that don’t detract from the overall experience but clearly signify we are mindful of people’s short-term concerns. For example, the D&H Canal Museum project includes a visitors’ center with a big screen display. Initially, before COVID, we planned to use a standard touchscreen. But now we’re looking at how we could change that interface. Over the summer months, a comfort level with some sort of hybrid interface has developed.
Recently, I was talking with a developer of a traveling exhibit that included a tactile sea animal component made from a composite material. They changed the material to bronze because of its antimicrobial qualities, which met the standards of the organizations with whom they were engaged to create this exhibit. Sum total: they kept a tactile experience but made it accessible and safe. This is how I want to be thinking. I’m not losing things, but I’m scaffolding the design so that if reality or perceptions—and perceptions might as well be reality—change, exhibit aspects can easily shift in terms of their implementation. That’s just good design: creating exhibits that have various levels of implementation built into them. Like an A/B switch: things can be in this mode or that mode, but the experience is still a rich one.
If you care enough about your design, your museum, and your communities—the people you’re trying to engage with — you’re going to figure out how to do this within current constraints, whatever they may be, as well as can be done. Not everything can be designed that way, but the answer to the problem of designing powerful exhibit elements with enough flexibility to remain viable during a pandemic—or beyond—is NOT the touchless museum.
M: What are the key factors you see in place every time an exhibit design project is going really well?
O: Number one: robust conversations. Not everybody agrees all the time, but we can have passionate conversations conducted in a respectful way. With this “creative friction,” the project ends up in a better place than if everybody was wishy-washy in mealy-mouthed agreement just to get along. Too many projects are derailed by a starchitect or a top-down management situation, which can prevent the team from building the level of trust needed for everyone to feel comfortable enough to disagree with something that just doesn’t feel right or espouse ideas that aren’t fully formed. If everyone always agrees or looks to one person for The Right Answer, you don’t end up with the best possible product. Sometimes there are uncomfortable parts of this process, and human beings like to avoid uncomfortable situations. Sometimes one person simply speaks up and says, “this is just not good enough. I think we can do better.” And oftentimes, if you listen, the exhibit actually does turn out better because of that.
M: There’s a lot of talk about the learning value of failure. Many people right now are faced with situations that are not going at all the way they had planned. Have you ever worked on an exhibit that wasn’t going well? How do you respond or adjust?
O: I’ve been in a few of these situations. If you have too much of a predetermined endpoint in mind, you are bound to fail. Because inevitably things happen. Let’s say visitors are not engaging in an exhibit in ways you planned. Is that a fail, or are you going to be open enough to look at the original concept and figure out why they are doing X instead of Y? Maybe there’s something you can do with that information. A seasoned designer understands that initial concepts may have to change. It only becomes failure if you don’t let go of it. Unexpected turns of events can be positive.
I’ve spoken with a few people in my Museum FAQ interviews about management practices, including Christian Greer from the Michigan Science Center and Anne Ackerson. A common thread was the recognition that there are two types of people in every organization, including museums. The first group always wants to be on solid ground and know everything that’s happening. They need that institutional memory foundation and security, which is important for one part of the organizational structure. The second group, the yin to that yang, are the pioneers, always looking for the next thing, looking to move beyond a level of certainty. During COVID times, the latter group is now saying, “The world has pushed the pause button and we can really explore new possibilities now.” Meanwhile, the first group is saying, “Yeah, the world has pushed a pause button, and that means we need to pause. We need to gather our wits, retrench, and build on a strong foundation.” A really good organization needs to acknowledge and work with both groups. You can’t constantly be changing, you need a certain level of stability. But you also need to look at evolving and rethinking what you’re doing. Otherwise you just ossify. It’s instructive to think about and not just during COVID.
M: How do museums keep moving forward, and who do they need right now in the balance to keep going?
O: The pandemic has made a number of simmering issues more apparent. On top of the COVID-19-based health crisis is the concurrent economic crisis and a social justice and racial equality crisis. I don’t envy any director because these are very difficult times with lots of complicating factors.
And we haven’t mentioned the elephant in the room: the significant loss of museum jobs has fallen disproportionately on people of color and younger and emerging museum professionals. What does that mean for the future of the field?
Despite all the current difficulties and challenges, I am excited and optimistic about the future of museums and museum exhibits. Acknowledging two types of museum people, the yin-yang combo, trusting each other as they conduct robust conversations as they build enthusiasm for an exhibit—falling in love with the subjects—and engaging with their communities—jumping off from that base point is tremendously exciting to me. We have to change, the way we’ve been doing things, not just in exhibits but in the entire museum field, for all kinds of reasons that we’ve discussed.
If there’s one thing that museum people often complain about, it’s that they don’t have enough time to fully consider where to go next. This massive cosmic pause button is an opportunity that we can’t escape. One thing we have now is time. How do you want to use it?
| This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Melissa Pederson and Stephanie Eddleman, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
We want to be candid: this article may not be what you anticipated. We are not going to talk about cleaning practices, antiviral surface materials, or air purification systems. However, if you are interested in a story about a design team grappling with the messy, confusing implications of how the novel coronavirus could affect the future of interactives in exhibits, you have come to the right place. This story takes place at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and features a dedicated team of exhibit creators. Our mission: save exhibit interactives from a COVID-19-instigated extinction. But be warned, the story ends with a big “To Be Continued.”
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (TCMI) serves a core audience of children and families to fulfill its mission of creating extraordinary experiences across the arts, sciences, and humanities that have the power to transform the lives of children and learning families. Our facility sits on thirty acres and houses thirteen permanent exhibitions and four temporary galleries that draw on a collection of more than 130,000 artifacts. We also have a 7.5-acre outdoor experience called Riley Children’s Health Sports Legends Experience®. Permanent galleries are updated every five to twenty years, and temporary galleries change constantly, so the museum’s exhibit department includes teams of developers, designers, and fabricators who conceptualize and produce multiple experiences per year.
On March 13, 2020, most of us were sent home. Museum leadership, facilities, and production staff immediately began planning and implementing strategies to prepare our galleries for reopening. The focus of these changes was to create the safest environment possible for our staff and visitors by removing high-touch interactives, creating policies and infrastructure to encourage social distancing, and providing materials that empowered families to sanitize their hands and touchable surfaces.
By mid-April we had acclimated to the work-from-home life, and understood that COVID-19 was going to keep us there for some time. Exhibit development did not stop, but we became acutely aware that we were designing pre-COVID exhibits that would be launched in a world with the virus. The hope was that everything would return to normal by the time our newest exhibitions opened in a year or two. But there was, and still is, a nagging uncertainty. What if things never return to normal?
Anyone who works in a children’s museum knows that the sense of touch is our friend. Time and time again research has shown that children learn by hands-on, active exploration of their environment. Children’s museums have embraced this knowledge and created environments where touch is one of the primary ways to engage and learn. So in March when the world changed and touch suddenly became an undesired activity, we were left with an existential question: how do we continue to provide extraordinary learning experiences for children and families when the ability to touch is off the table?
While touchable interactives are the go-to method for our design teams, we know there is value in delivering content via other senses through which visitors perceive the world. For decades, exhibit creators have been enhancing learning environments by experimenting with techniques that encourage visitors to manipulate and immerse themselves in sounds, sights, and smells.
For example, people make meaning through gross motor, large body movement. The Move2Learn project, an international collaboration between informal science educators and learning scientists, focuses on “embodied learning,” in which children use representational hand gestures and body movement to better understand scientific concepts. The best part—they can do this without touching anything! An example of this type of learning interactive can be found in The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ Corteva Agriscience ScienceWorks, an exhibit that encourages children to explore careers in the sciences. Participants are prompted to imagine themselves as an entomologist by taking a sample of insects from a field of crops to study helpful and harmful insects. Children and families see the field projected on a screen in front of them, and Kinect technology allows them to sweep their arms back and forth to move a bug-catching net over the crops—completely touch free.
By reframing our thinking, we realized the coronavirus actually presented us with an opportunity to create exhibits in new ways. Interactivity is still possible if we challenge ourselves to innovate. Of course, we hope that one day soon we will be able to return to our tried-and-true hands-on learning methods, but no matter what the future holds, there is value in exploring alternatives.
When our exhibit team began thinking about creating low-touch interactive exhibits that still preserved the quality of the visitor experience, we knew we needed to bring order and clarity to a challenge that still felt nebulous. We convened a workgroup of exhibit developers, designers, and creative media staff to discuss and define our problem so we could begin to plan potential solutions. We mulled over questions including: What is it about high-touch interactives that makes them so effective? Are all touch interactives the same, or are there varieties that promote interactivity for unique reasons? Can we develop engaging interactives with low- or no-touch components? Had we already developed low-touch interactives for previous exhibits that could inspire interactives for new exhibits?
We started by creating a list of touchable interactives in the museum building and categorizing them into types. We articulated how each type delivered exhibit messaging or achieved learning goals and what made it appealing to visitors. We then brainstormed low- or no-touch alternatives with similar appeal and capacity to achieve learning goals.
TOUCHABLE INTERACTIVE TYPES AND THEIR ALTERNATIVES
Touchable objects or casts
Any item that is mounted within an exhibit component with the express purpose of providing the visitor the opportunity to touch an instructive object.
Before: Visitors touched items like fossil casts or accessible pieces of art.
Looking Ahead: Museum floor staff could exclusively facilitate opportunities to touch an object. 3D printing technology could create multiple copies of object casts, with each visitor receiving their own object to touch. Museum staff would immediately sanitize objects afterward.
TOUCHSCREENS
Digital interfaces that can be touched to reveal information, move through a process, create art, or participate in a game-like activity.
Before: Visitors touched a screen with their fingers to move through the interactive.
Looking Ahead: The exhibit workgroup proposed three alternatives to this touch interactive type. First, in lieu of touching screens with fingers, the museum could provide a stylus to each visitor to use with the touchscreen. Alternatively, this type of interactive could be designed with motion sensors that allow visitors to use movements like gestures to navigate through the activity. Finally, touchscreen interactives could be transferred to tablets, and only a staff member would touch the screen as they facilitate the activity with a visitor.
FLIP LABELS OR REVEALS
Visitors manipulate parts of the exhibit component that swing or slide away to reveal additional information.
Before: Visitors touched a hinged flap or similar device to reveal exhibit information like an image, fun fact, or answer to a question.
Looking Ahead: Instead of touching the component, visitors could be directed to wave their hand over a beam break sensor. When the sensor is triggered by movement, it could activate magic glass, LED glass, or scrim technology that disappears to reveal hidden information.
COSTUME DRESS UP
Special exhibit-related clothing and accessories that can be worn by visitors.
Before: Visitors were invited to wear costumes that fit an exhibit’s immersive environment or supported learning goals.
Looking Ahead: Visitors could see themselves in unique clothing pieces with the aid of technology. The interactive would capture an image of the visitor’s face and apply it to digital clothing. Interactives with Kinect or similar technology would map the visitor’s body, providing the illusion of control over the costume’s movement. A low-tech alternative could include photo opportunities such as graphic cutouts. Images of unique costumes could be applied to a life-size cutout of a person, and the area around the face could be replaced with a mirror so that visitors would see their own face on the graphic of the costume.
FEEDBACK WALLS
Visitors provide their personal thoughts and feedback on a question or topic.
Before: Visitors used shared pencils to write on sticky notes that were then placed on a large wall display. A shared keyboard was also used to type a response that then became a part of a digital display.
Looking Ahead: What if we capitalized on the overwhelming influence of social media? Visitors could share their thoughts using a particular hashtag and those responses would be gathered and curated by a museum staff member and posted in the exhibit on a monitor. The feedback prompt could be paired with a photo op to encourage further engagement.
PUZZLES AND CREATIVE BUILDING MATERIALS
Visitors manipulate pieces to complete a puzzle or build something.
Before: Visitors manipulated physical pieces while building or completing a puzzle. Usually these interactives involved numerous loose parts.
Looking Ahead: A high tech alternative would be to utilize technology like Kinect, a motion-tracking technology, or interactive projection where visitors would use large-body movements to manipulate pieces on a screen to complete the activity. Alternatively, a low-tech solution would involve using metal pieces housed in a case while visitors moved the pieces from outside the case using a magnetic stylus (much like magnetic maze board games). Each visitor could be given their own stylus or the stylus could be wiped between uses (much easier then cleaning a large number of loose pieces).
BUTTON-DRIVEN CAUSE AND EFFECT
Visitors press a button to make something happen.
Before: Visitors pressed physical buttons with their hand.
Looking Ahead: Visitors could activate feedback (turn on audio or video, make selections, trigger a reveal, etc.) using a piece of radio frequency identification or RFID-enabled technology. Visitors could pick up an item at the beginning of their visit containing this embedded RFID chip that would communicate with other sensors throughout the exhibit. Who doesn’t love the magic wands at Universal’s The Wizarding World of Harry Potter? A low-tech solution would be to change hand press buttons to foot buttons or foot pressure sensors. Bonus points if you activate feedback by jumping!
PLAY TABLES AND IMMERSIVE PLAY ENVIRONMENTS WITH MANIPULATIVES
Visitors engage in pretend play in an immersive environment.
Before: Visitors utilized props (like toy trains, plastic dinosaurs, etc.) on a themed play table or engaged in dress up for pretend play in a larger immersive environment.
Looking Ahead: The museum could create large-scale immersive environments that engage all of the senses. Ambient light, audio, and even scent could be utilized to help paint the picture. Visitors could take on a role in this environment that encouraged them to use body movements to play a part within the environment. Adding technology such as interactive projection could tie those body movements to specific outcomes.
The museum reopened at 25 percent capacity in July 2020. As Indiana moved to Stage 5 of reopening in September, our capacity increased to 50 percent. Prior to reopening, we removed interactives with lots of loose parts or pieces like puzzles and play tables, pretend play food, and dress up costumes. Our early childhood gallery (ages zero to five) has remained closed. We have slowly added some touchable items back on the floor in limited numbers, and we rotate out sets multiple times per day. Due to budget restraints, we are not retrofitting any existing interactives, just pulling high-touch items and augmenting these exhibits with more objects from our collection.
The only thing that is clear to us is that no one knows what the future holds, but this exercise helped us begin to embrace the unknown. We also know that each museum brings with them their own strengths and challenges, and what works for us might not work for all. If anything, we hope we have inspired you to be agile, think creatively, and not be afraid to try something new. As we forge ahead and continue to plan for new experiences, we know all of our thinking is still a work in progress and, as promised, is to be continued…
Melissa Pederson and Stephanie Eddleman are exhibit developers at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
| This article is part of the “Exhibits Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Megan Dickerson, with Panca, The New Children’s Museum
Sometimes, after a year like we’ve all had, you need to take a chunk of time to reflect.
On September 24, I did that with Panca, the artist creating a new installation at The New Children’s Museum in San Diego, California. In an alternate, COVID-less universe, on the day of this interview Panca would have been the 107th artist to open an art installation at The New Children’s Museum. Panca will also be the first artist commissioned by the museum who visited the museum as a child, having been brought by a neighbor in the mid-1990s for one memorable visit where she wore provided coveralls, painted an actual truck, and left thinking, hey, art might be something I can do.
Panca’s project, now called El Más Allá, will open in 2021. In keeping with the museum’s practice of commissioning artists to create each exhibit, it will be a space unlike most children’s museum exhibits. Vibrantly colored, twenty-foot-tall murals will cover the walls. Kids will explore inside and around fifteen-foot-diameter sculptures representing characters Panca developed in collaboration with families in the community (think: a unicorn who roller skates, followed by her pet balloon, or a constantly shape-changing creature named Pinky). And to enter the installation, visitors can choose to swoop down a forty-foot-long slide, or, alternatively, take the elevator to a beautifully lit corridor, both entries acting as portals into a world that—like the English translation of the title, El Más Allá—is “beyond” this one.
In what follows, Panca and I reflect on creative work as medicine, great ideas as a digestive process, and whether a giant slide can transform the way we view our ever-changing world.
Megan: We began developing your art installation in 2019. We had planned to prototype your project at seven community centers starting in spring 2020. But then COVID hit. Suddenly, we were doing Zoom drawing classes where you could work with families to develop characters and other ideas for your project. Today is the day that we had originally planned to open your project. How has the pandemic changed how you think about this installation? About the world?
Panca: I can only say that I’m glad that it’s being pushed back because, mentally and emotionally, I am not there. From Breonna Taylor to George Floyd to the wildfires here on the West Coast, it’s overwhelming. And in the middle of all that, you have to think: CHILDREN’S MUSEUM and… COVID! How can we teach kids to be good humans through art, but at the same time, how can we protect them from this virus? During our Zoom meetings, I see our faces and sometimes we are just like, “Uh, are we okay?”
M: We have spent a lot of time over the past seven months debriefing about whether we are okay.
P: The hardest thing for me, to be honest, were those [online] drawing classes with the kids, which we did right as the pandemic started. Those hit me hard. I’m used to being alone, living a hermit life. But the kids reminded me that I have to be strong, not only for myself, but because I have a job I need to do. Although I’m depressed—half the world is. But I’m the artist-in-residence in the freaking museum! After a drawing class, I would hear all these heartfelt thank yous from the kids and parents. It was like medicine for me. I would think, “Okay, everything sucks. The world is on fire, literally, but you have a job to do, and in the end, just think about the good influence that this can have on children.”
When you use art to process what is happening in the world, it comes out in a different way. It comes out as empathy. I didn’t want any of my bad vibes to go into this project. The museum project is a beautiful escape, but without ignoring what’s going on. Meditation and creativity can be an escape, but they’re also constructive for your mind.
M: So, the role of the artist, and maybe children’s museums too, is to help us digest everything that’s happening?
P: Yeah. It almost sounds like I’m going to say yep, chew it up, swallow it, and poop out something great, but it is!
M: [Laughing] How did working with the community in the spring change the art installation you had planned as of February 2020?
P: First, I thought about eliminating the slide because of COVID. But I started thinking, the whole museum is about touch. At some point, we will figure out safety measures that aren’t that difficult so you can use the slide. So, no, the slide stays because we all miss and need that safe adrenaline rush that flips you fast into thinking you’re in a new world. Leave everything else behind. You’re here, have fun. Explore and move around.
M: Tell me about the characters you developed for the imaginary world of El Más Allá.
P: There are these characters in the world—Maslow, Pinky, Mimo, Chelo—that are expressions of everything that we’ve all felt during this time—a little bit of fear, anxiety. Normally, kids would experience these emotions at very low levels. But now they’re fairly high for kids and for adults. I started out wanting this to be a kick-a** exhibition for kids. And now I want it to be a soothing escape for adults AND kids that have been in the same boat—confined and stressed.
M: The character name “Maslow” is an homage to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a model for thinking about how our needs (physiological, safety, love, self-actualization, etc.) interact with each other. You were talking about the hierarchy of needs even pre-COVID.
P: The hierarchy of needs is the backbone of this whole project. That hasn’t changed, but with the pandemic, and what has been happening socially, it has been enhanced. It has been difficult but constructive to emphasize security, home, and love and try to represent it through Maslow’s system.
M: The installation is called El Más Allá. What does the title mean to you?
P: In my family, when we say, “whoa, El Más Allá,” it’s like saying “we’re in The Twilight Zone.” How was that described on the TV show—“…that middle ground between light and shadow?” The phrase can also mean death, like, “No, ya se fue al más allá,” or, “he’s gone.” Or it can mean “in another time,” like way over yonder. For me it’s the same feeling as the movie The Neverending Story, you know? I always liked the basis of that movie, that creativity was ending and their world was dying, and in order for the world to stay alive, kids had to keep believing and using their imagination. El Más Allá has a lot of that.
M: It’s like saying “We don’t know,” and it’s okay to not know.
P: Yes, it feels like we are in this weird limbo, from the project to life. El Más Allá is a place in between all of that.
M: There are some children’s museums that focus on emotions, and how the way you are feeling when you are creating something affects the thing you are creating. And then there are others who might say, “Maslow’s great, but what exactly are kids going to learn from that? Can you make a list of what they are going to learn?” Sure, we can, but the main point is we don’t know. We can only say this is how we hope they will feel.
P: All this emotion, all of this processing of what has happened over the past year, is going to be represented through visual language. I don’t want to go all the way and say, “this is therapy art.” No, it’s not therapy art.
M: You’re very emphatic about that. Why?
P: I’m not qualified to give therapy!
M: Ha, you’ve been my therapist over the past months!
P: [Laughs] Yeah, inadvertently! But you know what I mean… I think a lot of it will rely on the visual language. I want to split up the areas and the art is going to give you a feeling. All of that is going to happen with the paintbrush. I can’t explain it. It happens with my hands. [She holds out her hands to the camera].
M: I put myself in your hands, and you put yourself in my hands! Trust. I would say that’s what children’s museums can learn from working with artists. I don’t need you to create an exact diagram of what the painting is going to be on this wall, and this wall and this wall. There are walls, and there is paint, and there’s you. I trust it’s going to be fine. It always works out. And it gives you and us the ability to be flexible if a new idea comes up. Or, for example, if… A GLOBAL PANDEMIC EMERGES in the middle of developing the project. With trust and flexibility, we can do what needs to be done. Not just stick to the original script because that makes us feel more in control.
P: Yeah, someone might wonder, “What is she going to do? Draw a giant police car on fire?” No, context people, context! That’s what’s in my brain, but not what I am going to show the children who visit. I’m using shapes and color. There’s no hidden message except to be free. And if that’s a problem, then I don’t know, that’s your problem!
M: That brings me to my final thoughts. I know we have also talked about how you came to this museum as a kid, and you have often wondered: if I came back here as a kid now, what would I need from it, especially after what we have experienced and continue to experience?
P: I go back to my first visit at the museum. I remember wearing my little suit, and painting, and feeling really free, and just thinking, “I can’t believe I can do this! I can do this! And they’re actually giving me paper, and they’re giving me a car to paint…” And when I came home, I realized that drawing wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t exactly told it was stupid, but my parents were immigrants and they told me, “you’re going to die if you don’t get a normal job.” Well, I knew what they meant, but visits to museums were very helpful because I was able to see like, whoa, there are some wacky people out there making some cool stuff for kids. It just blew my mind, to the point that I can still describe that realization and I’m thirty-five years old and obviously this is what I do now.
I’m super excited about creating this world for kids. I think at first, when everything was happening with COVID, I got really depressed thinking, “man, am I up for this?” But now, even though everything is still happening, and often seems even worse, I feel like almost more of a sense of responsibility to make my work even better. There was a point where I was like, “Oh, maybe I should pull back, maybe I should just minimalize all of it, the structure.” But then you think, “No, this is going to work out, and it needs to be 100% great.” Whoever does see the final installation, it needs to be great for them. It’s motivating. In the time I’ve already spent at the museum, and everyone who I’ve seen work there, and the kids, and I’ve seen how it affects them. And it’s really needed right now.
The latest issue of ACM’s quarterly journal, Hand to Hand, “Exhibit Planning in 2020: Thinking Now about Where We Hope to Be in the Future” is now available! Read each article on the ACM blog. ACM members can find the full issue PDF in the Hand to Hand Community on ACM Groupsite.
Every aspect of children’s museum operations has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue takes a closer look at how leaders and innovators in the field are planning for an uncertain future as they develop joyful, playful, and interactive museum exhibits.
Read the issue!
Exhibit Planning in 2020: Thinking Now about Where We Hope to Be in the Future
Creating a World beyond This One
Megan Dickerson, with Panca, The New Children’s Museum
In conversation with Megan Dickerson, the visual artist Panca talks about her upcoming exhibit at The New Children’s Museum, El Más Allá, touching on everything from creative work as medicine to whether a giant slide can transform how we see the world.
A Novel Approach to Exhibit Interactives amid the Pandemic
Melissa Pederson and Stephanie Eddleman, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Exhibit developers at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis examine how the museum is approaching the challenge of adapting exhibit interactives for a post-COVID world.
Creating the ‘Wow-Aha!’ Exhibit: An Interview with Paul Orselli, POW!
Interviewer: Mary Maher, Hand to Hand
Paul Orselli shares what led him to a career in museums, how exhibits have changed in the past five years, and why falling in love with what you’re working on is key to creating a great exhibit.
Two Museums and a Design Firm: Thinking about How We Design Exhibits Now
Developed by Kate Marciniec, Boston Children’s Museum, with Karima Grant, ImagiNation Afrika; Maeryta Medrano, AIA, Gyroscope Inc.; Stephen Wisniewski, PhD, Flint Children’s Museum
Three museum colleagues assess how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced their design and development practices, including new challenges and strategies that have emerged.
Back to Basics: Shutdown Offers Time for Exhibit Upgrades and Reaffirmation
Beth Whisman, Children’s Discovery Museum
With their doors still closed to visitors due to state-level restrictions, Children’s Discovery Museum is working behind-the-scenes to repair and update exhibits as well as plan for the future.
Staying Out Front (While Behind-the-Scenes Exhibit Work Goes on)
Sharon Vegh Williams, North Country Children’s Museum
During the museum’s closure to visitors, North Country Children’s Museum pivoted their focus to online, lending, and outdoor programming to continue serving their audiences.
Climate Action Heroes: New Museum Uses Small Exhibit to Create Broad Digital Experiences
Langley Lease, National Children’s Museum
Open for just eighteen days before the museum was forced to close to the public due to COVID-19, National Children’s Museum leveraged their Climate Action Heroes exhibit to generate online programming that helps fulfill their mission.
Exhibit Fabrication and Installation Challenges during COVID
Cathlin Bradley, Kubik Maltbie, Inc.
This piece takes a look at how the COVID-19 pandemic affects exhibit planning, prototyping and testing, available materials, installation labor, and more.
What’s Different about This Picture: Laying the (New) Groundwork for Design
Alissa Rupp, FAIA, Frame | Integrative Design Strategies
By designing for the future, museums can hold resilience as a core value that sustainably guides everything the organization does.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.5, the fifth report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
We have conducted two surveys since May 2020 to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting children’s museums. The most recent survey of ACM member institutions took place from September 24 to October 18, 2020. Overall, 96 US-based children’s museums were represented in the survey. Below are initial findings; future reports will provide more detail.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
By Kayla Bowman, M.S., M.A.Ed.
Fall celebrations might look different this year, but there are still plenty of fun ways to celebrate safely. If you need some tricks to add to your treat bag this Halloween, try these tips for a spook-tacular celebration with family and friends.
Coordinate a virtual celebration with your family’s “scream team”—AKA, your friends. Children can dress up in their costumes and take turns reading their favorite scary story. After story time, have a pumpkin decorating contest. If older children prefer to carve their pumpkin, take advantage of the ‘haunt’ mess by roasting the pumpkin seeds for a healthy snack! Check out more Halloween-themed snacks to have for your next virtual party, here.
Get the whole family involved by dressing up in costumes for family mealtime. Let everyone share a story about their costume and explain why they chose it. Monster Pizza and Boo-Berry Blast are fun food ideas that children can help prepare for your next mealtime.
After dinner, gather up any craft materials you have around the house to decorate face masks together. You could also participate in playful learning from home by finding your local children’s museum’s activities on Children’s Museums at Home, a searchable database from the Association of Children’s Museums. Playful learning a great way to learn more about your children’s interests and how they gather information.
Check out Healthier Generation’s 20 Family Bonding Activities, for more ideas on what you can do together as a family.
Celebrate from the comfort of your couch by having a movie night at home. There are a lot of options for movies, such as Coco, which highlights the celebration of Día de Los Muertos. Tie in social-emotional learning by pulling up Healthier Generation’s Feelings Chart during the movie. During different scenes of the movie, pause to talk about the emotion a character may be feeling. For example, if you notice the character Miguel is feeling scared, talk about it with your child by showing the feelings chart and asking, “Which feeling do you think Miguel is feeling right now?” This helps to develop social emotional skills because identifying your own emotions is important for learning how to manage them. Recognizing those emotions in other people also helps develop empathy. Continue discussions throughout the movie by asking, “Why do you think he is feeling that way?” or “What is going on in the movie that makes you think he feels this way?”
Children are used to decorating and making crafts at school this time of year. To continue that holiday spirit and fun at home, let them use supplies around the house to decorate the space in which they do their schoolwork—perfect for a virtual backdrop. They can show it off to their class and feel a sense of creativity every time they complete homework or participate in their virtual classes. It’s just one way to create a supportive at-home learning environment.
Take it a step further and decorate your front door, a window, or your mailbox! It’s a great way to share your enthusiasm with your neighbors and community.
Turn on a Halloween soundtrack and boogie down. Dancing to ‘Thriller’ or ‘Monster Mash’ is sure to be a bloody good time. Make it a dance party with the whole family as a part of your prescription to play. It’s a no-brainer way to have fun—even if you’re not a zombie.
If you plan to engage in traditional trick-or-treating, consult the latest COVID-19 data in your community using this map or check the latest safety protocols from the CDC before you go. These resources can help your family decide on your comfort level for celebrations and provide activity recommendations based on your location.
Don’t forget: Daylights Savings Time falls on Halloween this year! Keep your routine on track by following these helpful sleep tips.
For more family-friendly resources, visit KohlsHealthyatHome.org to discover Healthier Generation’s latest tips for eating well, moving more, and feeling your best.
Kayla Bowman is a Family Engagement Manager for the Kohl’s Healthy at Home initiative at Alliance for a Healthier Generation.
By Bob Harvey
NOTE: I recently received a request to comment about fundraising during the COVID-19 experience, specifically around the topics of donor communication and cultivation strategies. I decided to use this request as an opportunity to speak with several of my current and former colleagues and then I created the following summary. (By the way, this group has about 300 years of experience in fundraising circles.)
Relationship building is the very foundation and core of nonprofit development. Both donor communication and cultivation strategies fit nicely under the relationship building umbrella.
First, let me assure you that people, foundations, and corporations are giving. Two of my firm’s clients have received $500,000 contributions in the last two months, one of real estate and one in cash. A third (a developing children’s science museum) just received notice of a $6.1 million federal grant that was submitted two years ago!
Remember, nearly 70 percent of all giving is from private individuals, not foundations, grants, and corporations. Why are they still giving? First and foremost, “People give to people more than they give to causes.”
The most productive solicitation is, “The right two people, calling on the right prospect with the right story and the right ask.”
You might be tempted to say the economy is so disrupted that people aren’t going to give and if they do, they will give less and be reluctant to make a pledge.
There is no indication that is true. If you look at individual giving, much of the money is in the form of “discretionary funds” that are most often generated by invested wealth. Even today, the stock market continues to reach record highs.
If you consider corporate giving, many U.S. firms have received “bail-out money” in the form of emergency funds. Others are formally committed to 5 percent giving levels. There are also have divisions of national and international corporations. They are giving.
When you consider private foundations, most have a legal and moral obligation to continue with funding deserving projects. They are giving.
The fact is that funders and donors are looking for progress and new programs. They are urgently seeking you.
So how do you go about developing a solid “relationship building” program?
First, review and evaluate your existing donor records. This is true no matter what system you are using to develop a list of bona fide prospective donors.
What does your analysis tell you? In relatively recent history, have any of your prospective donors indicated interest in your mission? Have you had meaningful communication lately? If not, why? What are you going to do to make them your friend or renew the relationship?
How accessible are these prospects? Remember the “right person” requirement? That person might not be on your board or immediately available to you. You must contact them, inform them and educate them, and then ask for their assistance in setting up a meeting with the prospective donor. But don’t make that call until you have already solicited your new friend, donor and volunteer.
The fact is that the public, in general, wants to learn more about children’s museums. They want to know what STEAM is all about. After all, it’s relatively new. It’s exciting. It’s science, AND KIDS, for Pete’s sake!
Children’s museums are most often thought of as being in the education industry, but I believe we more correctly belong in what is collectively called the hospitality industry. Why? We are providing goods, services, and experiences to the public. We are competing for the discretionary dollars that are generated when the consumer makes a decision to do “this” rather than “that.” We must provide a positive experience for those who choose us. We are competing with all of the other diversions, appeals, and activities. We are competing for the public’s attention, participation and funding, and we’re only going to be successful if we are better at what we do.
Children’s museums should form relationships with many different networks to remain fresh and fascinating. We are vital components in economic development. We impact tourism and lodging. We should network more closely with the educational systems in our market area. We should also talk frequently with local manufacturing concerns about what we need and ask for their help for in-kind donations. Plus, there is an ongoing need to be on the lookout for new opportunities for sponsorships of programs and exhibits.
Relationship-building can lead to some unexpected—but successful—partnerships. Recently, my firm encouraged a developing client to make a presentation to the leadership of a huge military airbase in their market area. Most of the board members said “Why?” The answer was easy. You see, there were several thousand air force personnel on that base and most of them were looking for something new and rewarding to get involved in.
We contacted the base and explained what we were doing. Since there was a huge contingent of technology-based personnel there, we told them we would welcome their participation in brainstorming, designing, and building new exhibits.
The word went out and, guess what? More than 300 people responded “yes, I’ll help.” The base commander said they would be willing to help financially.
There is never an end to relationship building. You can get new people and energy involved simply by asking for their short-term assistance. Sometimes you have a need for a particular skillset for a particular task. Sometime it’s as simple as needing someone who lives in a distant location to help with conducting an outreach program.
In these peculiar times, it is sometimes wise to consider reevaluating your development strategy. One of our clients recently agreed to take their big, relatively clumsy project and break it down into “phases.” These bite-sized phases were more easily understood. Hitting a series of smaller goals demonstrated success and progress. Ultimately, they hit their $2.9 million goal in the same amount of time it would have taken to labor through the larger strategy that required individual giving at a much higher level. Remember, your future requires you to continually seek out the smaller gifts too. It is those gifts that grow up to become major gifts later on in your relationship with the donor.
Exhibit sponsorships are related to fundraising—though they are not always considered as such. For those children’s museums working with exhibit or display sponsorships, we are learning that it is not a good idea to give “lifetime” sponsorships. It appears that the right amount of time is about five years for sponsorships, particularly for those of $500,000 or more. Why? Every display has a lifetime. They will eventually need to be renovated or retired. Five years seems to be the right number. Donors don’t seem to consider that five year term to be too short or otherwise inappropriate, particularly if your signage and recognition programs allow for long-term recognition, even after the exhibit is retired.
At some appropriate time in your development curve, it would be wise to conduct three studies:
In many cases, the Community Attitude and Fundraising Feasibility Studies can be accomplished with a single effort.
For best results, these studies should be conducted in that order, and each should be done by a professional firm. Why? There is no validity to the outcome of any of these studies if it isn’t conducted in such a manner as to ensure honesty, confidentiality, or objectivity. Your community leadership will not speak frankly about your programs, services, and leadership when they are concerned about “who is going to hear what I am saying?” Responses need to be solicited, recorded and reported without compromising confidentiality and that is best accomplished through an “outsider.”
Now, go out and build a new relationship or resurrect an old one.
Bob Harvey is CEO and President of Bob Harvey Associates and vice president and COO of Harvey Nonprofit Development. An industry leader in fundraising since 1974, his string of successful campaigns include clients in healthcare, environmental causes, animal organizations, education, history and arts. He can be reached at bob.harveyassoc@gmail.com.
The following is an excerpt from “Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center … The gathering place – where East meets West” by Loretta Yajima. It is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in International Thinking on Children in Museums: A Sociocultural View of Practice by Sharon E. Shaffer on October 12, 2020, available online.
Incorporated in 1985, the Hawaii Children’s Museum was the first and only museum in Hawaii designed especially for children. Its mission: to bring information and experiences about the world beyond our Island shores to the children of Hawaii and to instill in our keiki a pride in themselves and their ethnic and cultural heritage. By offering audiences of all ages a wide variety of experiences in a world-class participatory learning environment, it was our hope that this would be a place that inspires and educates both the young and the “young at heart.”
In 1988, the organization, led primarily by a small group of volunteers, raised the funds to construct an initial temporary facility in the Dole Cannery Square, space donated by Castle & Cooke Properties. The museum celebrated its grand opening at its 5,000-square-foot site on January 24, 1990. It immediately proved to be a popular gathering place for Hawaii’s families. Where else in Hawaii could children learn about science, the human body, culture, and communications while having fun? Where else in Hawaii could parents participate in self-discovery activities with their children in a creative yet nurturing environment?
The demand for services by school and community groups was so great that the facility was obviously not suitable for the long-term development and growth of the museum. Relocation to a larger, permanent site was deemed a priority. After considering many options, then Governor John D. Waihee offered a site in the State’s newly developing Kaka’ako Waterfront Park with the idea that the museum would serve as the anchor tenant for the area. The plan was that the park would become a gathering place for Hawaii’s families as well as for tourists who came to visit Oahu.
So, out of the “ashes” of an old city incinerator was born a dream – literally. To say that the story of the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center is a unique one would be an understatement. In 1998, the newly developed Children’s Discovery Center rose from the renovated and expanded shell of an old incinerator next to a city landfill near downtown Honolulu. With the support of government officials, major corporations, and the community at large, millions of dollars were raised for the construction of a permanent facility. The 38,000-square-foot incinerator was renovated and transformed into a world-class children’s museum – a remarkable feat considering Hawaii’s economy was in a prolonged slump at the time and funding was scarce.
The former Kaka’ako landfill was transformed into a gem of a waterfront park, and the former city incinerator became a beehive of activity for children from across the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center, the first and only museum of its kind in Hawaii, was known largely through word of mouth and its growing reputation as a world-class children’s museum. Local families, school groups, and tourists flocked to the museum, which quickly grew to serve over 125,000 visitors a year. While many children’s museums typically start out in donated space, Hawaii’s children’s museum has the unique distinction of being the only one in the world that started out in a pineapple cannery and ended up in a city incinerator.
The first and only children’s museum in Hawaii dedicated to serving the children and families of the state, the Center’s mission remains to provide an interactive learning environment that will motivate and inspire children to new heights of learning and discovery. Through galleries of hands-on, interactive exhibits and educational programs, the Center helps children develop positive self-concept in a nurturing environment where children can learn through play. Here they can develop an understanding of themselves and others in Hawaii’s multicultural community and have a “window to the world” beyond the beauty of the island shores.
The Center serves children of all ages, abilities, and origins. It hosts a culturally and economically diverse audience throughout the island state, as well as a broader audience throughout the country and world. An educational resource for young children, the Center enhances and extends learning opportunities that children have at home or in the classroom.
While there are many outstanding children’s museums across the nation, the Discovery Center in Hawaii is unique in its focus on Hawaii’s history and rich cultural diversity. Its hands-on, child-oriented, carefully designed exhibits say to the communities’ keiki o ka aina (children of the land), this is a place about them and the people of Hawaii, about what they share in common, about who they are and where they came from.
The Center’s cultural galleries are, first and foremost, about the experience of discovery, about Hawaii’s immigrant population, and about the one common denominator that is shared by all, whether one lives in the middle of the Pacific or along the stormy shores of New England: It is about the immigrant’s need and search for community and hope. Theirs were voyages of discovery and wonder, similar in many ways to the daily experiences of the thousands of young children from throughout Hawaii and from all over the world, who visit the Discovery Center every day.
What makes the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center unique is its focus on the cultural mosaic that is Hawaii: the history of its people, the challenges they faced as newcomers to a strange land, and the successes they achieved despite overwhelming odds; the celebration of their music, dance, food, ceremony, and commitment to each other; and the unique overarching community they created in spite of language, cultural, and prejudicial barriers. The Center and Hawaii’s children are indeed Hawaii’s “rainbow connection to the world.”
The Children’s Discovery Center has matured and fulfills its mission of being Hawaii’s “rainbow connection” to the world, each and every day. As the inspiration and model for the early childhood education movement that is taking place in China today, Hawaii’s very own children’s museum continues to be respected and admired by children’s museum colleagues both nationally and internationally. In 2017 the Center hosted the Asia Pacific Children’s Museum Conference, an international gathering of children’s museum professionals, in Honolulu. Most importantly, early education in the Islands has no stronger advocate and ally than the Children’s Discovery Center, and we are proud of the learning opportunities it provides to our young children and their families.
Loretta Yajima is Chair of the Board of Directors of Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center.
Sharon E. Shaffer is a museum consultant specializing in providing programming to younger children and works with museum professionals around the world. She is a former Executive Director of the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center, USA, and is the only educator ever to receive the Smithsonian Institution Secretary’s Gold Medal for Exceptional Service. She has a PhD in Social Foundations of Education and is an adjunct faculty member with the University of Virginia.
The latest issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field” is now available! You can read individual articles here on the ACM blog. ACM members can also find the full issue PDF in the Hand to Hand Community on ACM Groupsite.
With articles written primarily in June and July of this year, this issue of Hand to Hand captures a critical moment in time as the children’s museum field began adjusting to a post-COVID reality. It shares perspectives from all levels of children’s museum staff as well as museums of all sizes and emerging museums. Read “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.”
Read the issue!
COVID-19: Stories from the Field
Children’s Museums Surviving the Pandemic: Insights from Three Leaders
Interviewer: Peter Olson, Region 5 Children’s Museum
Peter Olson interviewed Stephanie Hill Wilchfort of Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Tanya Durand of Greentrike, and Tammie Kahn of Children’s Museum Houston, about their museums’ strategies for surviving closure, preparing to reopen, and reimagining missions and adapted operations.
After I Hung Up…
What are your thoughts after the Zoom call ends and the virtual hangout disperses? Read short reflections on the first few months of the pandemic from Suzanne LeBlanc, Long Island Children’s Museum; Traci Buckner, Akron Children’s Museum; Sunnee O’Rork, i.d.e.a. Museum; Carol Scott, Children’s Discovery Museum of the Desert; Charlie Walter, Mayborn Museum Complex; Roxane Hill, Wonderscope Children’s Museum; Deb Gilpin, Madison Children’s Museum; Beth Ann Balalaos, Long Island Children’s Museum; and Hannah Hausman, Santa Fe Children’s Museum.
Nothing Yet to Close: Emerging Museums Pause and Regroup
Tres Ross, Children’s Museum of the Mid-Ohio Valley; Audie Dennis, Creative Learning Alliance; Corrie Holloway, Glacier Children’s Museum; Dr. Kirsti Abbott, The University of New England Boilerhouse Discovery Space; Michael Shanklin, kidSTREAM, Ventura County’s Children’s Museum
Leaders from five emerging museums discuss how their organizations are responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, from altering timelines and fundraising sources, to planning with new best practices in mind.
Building Relationships through a Pandemic
Alix Tonsgard and Laura Diaz, DuPage Children’s Museum
DuPage Children’s Museum staff share how they adapted their Partners in Play program serving caregivers with young children in the wake of COVID-19. While originally planned as a series of monthly in-person sessions at the museum, the program pivoted to physically-distanced support, using texting as an accessible entry point.
The National Struggle with Unknowingness: Thoughts from a Facilities Director on Reopening
Luke Schultz, Madison Children’s Museum
The facilities director of Madison Children’s Museum shares insights into the museum’s decision to not yet pursue reopening, with a focus on practices related to the physical plants, operations, and facilities side of museums.
Working from Home for a Museum with No Visitors: Front-Line Staff Stories
Mary Maher, Hand to Hand
This piece shares the perspective of front-line and visitor-facing staff at DISCOVERY Children’s Museum in Las Vegas, NV, after the museum closed its doors to visitors.
—Association of Children’s Museums and STEM Research Center at Oregon State University Partner on Four-Year National Science Foundation-Funded Project—
ARLINGTON, VA (August 14, 2020)—The Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) and the STEM Research Center at Oregon State University (OSU) are collaborating on “interPLAY: Developing STEM Skills through Play and Exhibit Design for Early Learners in Children’s Museums and Science Centers.” This four-year research project focuses on better understanding playful engagement with STEM exhibits for children ages three to eight.
“Children’s museums know that play supports learning, and that the designed, interactive experiences we facilitate can help scaffold this learning,” said Laura Huerta Migus, Executive Director, ACM. “The interPLAY project builds upon ACM’s long-standing work in generating research and establishing quality standards for designing exhibits for early learners.”
The interPLAY project will include a literature review as well as the creation of a STEM for Play framework. Research to test and revise this framework will be conducted at children’s museum and science center sites. Further information about the project will be shared in the coming months.
“This project provides the opportunity for a much-needed expansion of the existing research on play and STEM learning for early learners,” said Martin Storksdieck, PhD, Director of the STEM Research Center. “This is an important area for the STEM Research Center, aligning with our goals to advance our understanding of—and broaden participation in—early STEM engagement.”
This “Research in Service to Practice” study has received funding from the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning program.
About Association of Children’s Museums (ACM)
The Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. With more than 460 members in 50 states and 19 countries, ACM leverages the collective knowledge of children’s museums through convening, sharing, and dissemination. Learn more at www.ChildrensMuseums.org.
About STEM Research Center at Oregon State University (OSU)
The STEM Research Center consists of a team of dedicated professionals of various disciplinary backgrounds who conduct applied research on STEM education and science engagement at the intersection of research, policy and practice, with a strong focus on equity and social justice. Learn more at https://stem.oregonstate.edu/.
