By: Stephen Wisniewski
Collaborations between small, often under-resourced, children’s museums and much larger institutions can often challenge the way we think about resources, practices, and about what and who we value, both in terms of institutions and audience. One major gulf in experience that I noticed was our understanding of immersion, a key concept in children’s museums that reflects our values and assumptions.
“Immersion” is, in many ways, taken for granted as the goal of an exhibit experience. The term seems to permeate both the internal and public-facing language of institutions, as well as promotional pitches for every designer and product aimed at children’s museums. Of course, “immersion” can have a variety of meanings, but one could argue that, more often than not, it means resources—and lots of them.
Because of its ubiquity, and its squishy but commonly understood meaning, the concept of “immersion” can offer a window on multiple important discussions in the children’s museum field: it can be an illustration of the many ways that resources are structurally inaccessible to small museums; it can illuminate the ways we exemplify larger museums as a standard for all institutions; and it can be a practical challenge and an opportunity to inspire engagement no matter what resources you happen to have access to.
This came up frequently as I designed exhibits with colleagues from large museums: full structures, walls, complex narratives, electronic screens, predetermined visitor paths, sounds, and smells were all proposed as elements that could produce immersion. Of course, all of those things can be powerful elements of an exhibit experience, but they also require significant resources to envision, implement, and maintain. It also always helps to have high ceilings and nice, big doors. From the unspoken need for an empty, dedicated gallery space to house an environment to staff, maintenance, and material resources, this immersive ideal is realistically only available to a very limited number of institutions. Structural barriers, as well as unspoken assumptions about what achieving “immersion” might look like, often serve to functionally exclude small and under-resourced museums from conversations about impactful, high-quality exhibits. This is just one of the ways our field can forget about resource disparities.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that small museums can’t and don’t already do innovative, engaging, and immersive exhibits on par with the most expensive traveling experiences. It just means we do them differently.
One of the most unexpected successes of the FFACES exhibits was an element that seemed almost too simple to be noticed: a small, freestanding wooden bridge with a slight arch in the middle and a graphic koi pond underneath. It didn’t do anything, and it wasn’t necessarily part of any larger built environment, but every visitor under five years old seemed to gravitate to it, and often stayed there. This, to me, is an example of a small museum approach in practice. This simple element actually re-centers the exhibit experience on children, instead of competing with adult sensory preferences and perceptions of value. We found that children were compelled by the suggestion of a larger world outside of the bridge: how do we re-center the experience on allowing children to imaginatively fill in those spaces rather than on a resource-intensive built environment? The bridge can physically exist in any museum space, no matter how small or temporary, but the experience remains powerful for children and accessible for small museums.
It might seem obvious, but also bears remembering: children are small. It doesn’t always take a lot to nudge their perspective into new and exciting territory, or immerse them in an experience, no matter how mundane that experience might seem to an adult. Sometimes, it just takes a walk from point A to point B with a tiny hill in the middle, or a unique textural experience, or the invitation to fill a blank canvas. Remembering that fact as adults and as designers—and valuing it as highly as multi-million-dollar environments, without considering it a compromise—can be very difficult. But I believe that embracing those immersive possibilities can produce better exhibits, as well as expand what kind of institutions and experiences we value as a field.
5 Key Takeaways:
Challenging Assumptions About Immersion: Collaborations between small and large children’s museums highlight differing understandings of “immersion,” often assumed to require significant resources, yet achievable through simple, child-focused elements.
Resource Disparities: The pervasive concept of “immersion” underscores the structural barriers and resource disparities faced by small museums, making high-quality exhibits seem attainable only by larger institutions.
Redefining Exhibit Standards: The field often exemplifies larger museums as the standard for all institutions, which can marginalize smaller museums and their innovative approaches to engaging children with fewer resources. Instead, when prioritizing the outcome of the immersive experience, small museums offer innovative and attainable solutions.
Child-Centric Design: Successful exhibits, like the simple freestanding wooden bridge, demonstrate that immersive experiences can be achieved by re-centering the exhibit on children’s perspectives and imaginative engagement rather than on expensive, resource-intensive environments.
Valuing Simplicity and Imagination: Embracing simple,
imaginative elements as valid and impactful forms of immersion can produce better exhibits and expand the appreciation of diverse museum experiences, regardless of the institution’s size or resources.
About the Contributor:
Stephen Wisniewski has worked with and in small children’s museums for 20+ years primarily designing and building exhibits. He is currently an independent consultant specializing in small museum operations, exhibit design, and content. Stephen has a PhD in American Culture with expertise in Museum Studies and Cultural Studies, as well as an extensive background in visual art, DIY design and building projects, and independent art and education spaces—but mostly likes to make cool things for kids to play with.
This blog post is the second in a series of small museum perspectives that emerged from the ACM Freeman Foundation Asian Culture Exhibits Series (FFACES). Introduced as a traveling exhibit model, FFACES has been effective, with a total of twelve impactful exhibits created for two national tours. Each tour reached 3.4 million people—or 6.8 million visitors—total. The latest new round of the FFACES features modular exhibits about East Asian cultures for museums, which can be used in galleries and in outreach events. These new exhibits have a smaller footprint (500–1,000 square feet), and museums can rearrange them to fit in smaller or larger spaces. By remaining at the museum and in the community, the modular exhibit’s content becomes a part of children’s long-term memories, and can create a deeper experience than the temporary attraction of a traveling exhibit.
Arlington, Va.—The Association of Children’s Museum (ACM), the world’s foremost professional society supporting and advocating on behalf of children’s museums, and those who work at and otherwise sustain them, is pleased to name its new and returning Board of Directors for 2024. The new members were elected as a slate by the ACM Membership and revealed during its annual conference, InterActivity 2024: Flourish!, held from May 15-17 in Madison, Wisconsin.
Newly joining the ACM Board as At-Large Members for three-year terms are:
· Stewart L. Burgess, PhD, Executive Director, The Children’s Museum of Memphis
· Kelly McKinley, CEO, Bay Area Discovery Museum
· Charlayne Murrell-Smith, VP External Relations & Corporate Development, Boston Children’s Museum
· Caroline Payson, Executive Director, Providence Children’s Museum
Joe Cox, President & CEO at Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was welcomed as Board President for the 2024–2026 term, succeeding Joe Hastings, Co-Executive Director, Explora! The Science Center and Children’s Museum of Albuquerque.
“The ACM Board of Directors represents the ACM membership as leaders in the children’s museum field,” said ACM Executive Director Arthur G. Affleck, III. “This governing body of volunteers guides and advises the association and our strategic work to elevate the children’s museum community, lift up children and families, advance the field through advocacy, policy, and research, and strengthen the organization.”
ACM’s work is guided by its strategic plan—approved by the Board and introduced in January 2023—and evaluated through the two overarching lenses of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI), and environmental resiliency and regeneration.
More about the ACM Board leadership:
New Board President:
Joe Cox has served as the President and CEO of the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, since February 2018. Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Museum connects more than 450,000 visitors to inspiring science annually. He has worked in the museum field for more than 20 years having previously served as the President of the EcoTarium Museum of Science and Nature in Worcester, Massachusetts (2012–2018) and as Founding Executive Director of the Golisano Children’s Museum of Naples, Florida (2004–2012) where he led a campaign to raise more than $25million to build the Museum. Joe has a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Science from St. Mary’s University in London with a focus on environmental law and paleoquaternary biogeography and completed his Masters in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester. Joe was the recipient of a
Smithsonian Fellowship in Museum Practice based at the National Zoo and National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. He completed the Getty Museum Leadership Institute at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Joe is past Chair of the Florida Association of Museums Foundation.
New At-Large Board Members:
Stewart L. Burgess, Ph.D is a developmental psychologist specializing in early learning who has spent the last two-plus decades designing and implementing child-centered curriculum, creating innovative educational spaces, and leading parent and teacher education workshops.
While completing his master’s degree in Experimental Psychology he conducted original research on the problem-solving abilities of young children and was a member of the team responsible for creating and norming the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (MacArthur CDI), the first and foremost assessment of early language development and the largest-scale longitudinal study of infant and toddler language acquisition that has ever been undertaken. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, where he was named a UC Board of Regents Dissertation Fellow for his research on the effects of emotion on memory in young children. While at UCI, he served as a graduate student researcher in support of the prominent large-scale longitudinal study of cross-cultural achievement led by Stevenson and Chen. Dr. Burgess went on to become the Lead Researcher and Managing Editor of Brilliant Beginnings in Long Beach, California, where he co-authored Toddler Next StepsTM, a book for parents and educators which earned the National Parenting Seal of Approval and two Director’s Choice awards for outstanding quality in parenting and professional development materials (Early Childhood News).
After serving on the board of trustees for the Children’s Museum of Memphis for four years, Dr. Burgess now serves as its Executive Director where he is spearheading educational updates to exhibits and programing, working to position the museum as a meaningful educational anchor for the community, and launching educational outreach for children and families in need of educational access. These efforts include significant partnerships with large-scale non-profits with access to families from lower income neighborhoods and significant marketing in the form of newspaper columns, news interviews, and online articles promoting the importance of early learning that have been accessed by millions.
Kelly McKinley is the CEO of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, a children’s museum at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito, California. She previously served as Deputy Director of the Oakland Museum of California where she oversaw collections, conservation, curatorial, interpretation, exhibition design and production, and evaluation and visitor research. Other professional roles have included Executive Director of Education and Public Programming at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada, and senior roles at Bruce Mau Design in Toronto and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Kelly has lectured internationally on museum leadership and taught in the graduate museum studies programs at the University Toronto, Bank Street College in New York, the University of San Francisco, and the graduate curatorial studies and criticism program at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto. She has served on the board of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the Museum Education Roundtable and EdCom (the AAM professional network for museum educators) and the editorial board of Curator: The Museum Journal. Her writing and work has been featured in recent publications including What is a Museum: Perspectives from National and International Museum Leaders (eds. Quinn and Peña Gutiérrez for ICOM-US); The Inclusive Museum Leader (eds. Catlin-Legutko and Taylor, 2021) and Museums Involving Communities: Authentic Connections (Kadoyama, 2018).
Charlayne Murrell-Smith is the Vice-President of External Relations & Corporate Development at Boston Children’s Museum. She joined the Museum in 1996 to oversee communications and development and is currently responsible for the corporate, civic, government, and community work to advance its mission, programs, public profile, and financial health. She also manages the Museum’s community engagement staff and initiatives befitting the children and families of Boston and beyond.
Prior to joining the Museum, Charlayne was Director of Client Services and Strategic Planning for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, where she was responsible for the coordination and delivery of programs and services to Chamber members and served as Chief Operating Officer. She has also served as Project Vice President and General Manager of the Wishnow Group, Inc., a public affairs consulting company specializing in local and national social issues campaigns; Community Affairs Director of WHDH-AM and WZOU-FM; and was a guidance counselor in the Cambridge and Newton Public Schools.
A native of Denver, Colorado, Charlayne holds degrees from Wellesley College and Northeastern University. Her current affiliations include the Boards of Directors of Boston Children’s Chorus, Friends of Martin’s Park, Inc, Meet Boston, Seaport TMA, The American City Coalition, Third Sector Holdings, and the YMCA of Greater Boston. She is also on the advisory boards of Boston Harbor Now and the Greater Boston Chamber’s Women’s Network and Hospitality and Tourism Leadership Council.
Charlayne and has been recognized for her civic involvement and leadership including a Pinnacle Award for achievement in non-profit management from the Women’s Network of the Greater Boston Chamber, EXTRAordinary Women of Boston by the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement, and Leading Women by the Girl Scouts of Eastern MA.
Caroline Payson previously served as the Director of Education of the Smithsonian CooperHewitt National Design Museum for 11 years. In that role, she was responsible for conveying the importance of design and design thinking in everyday life education programs for audiences including teachers, students, professional designers, scholars and the general public. Major initiatives included the website’s Educator’s Resource Center (400 standards-based lessons in all curriculum subject areas and videos modeling best practices); Design-in-the-Classroom, the Harlem Design Center; and National Design Week. The Museum’s annual outreach and impact included 25,000 students, family events for 5,000, after school programs for 1000 students, public programs attended by 1,200 people and a school tour program for 6,000 students.
Additionally, Caroline Payson has a long history of community-based work and other programs that extend beyond museum walls including workshops across the US. Current projects include a mental health initiative that includes children of incarcerated parents and a 5G project funded by Verizon that includes AR/VR.
A complete list of the ACM Board of Directors can be found on the ACM website.
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By: Stephen Wisniewski
Recognizing the depth and usefulness of a small museum approach, and centering it in our field, can allow us to see much more expansive possibilities by thinking and practicing from the bottom up, rather than seeing compromise and limitation from the top down.
When I joined the FFACES project as a small museum advisor, I didn’t know what to expect. Of course, I understood the basic contours and goals of the project—to adapt a traveling exhibit series that had previously visited mostly very large, well-resourced institutions so it could be permanently installed in smaller children’s museums and underserved areas—but it also seemed like I was entering an entirely different world.
Like many of us in small museums, I had never considered hosting a traveling exhibit. As the sole member of our exhibits team, I occasionally saw promotional materials or received email offers for them. However, the rental fees were often triple our annual budget. Additionally, the reality of our facilities made it clear that traveling exhibits were not designed to be accessible to us in the first place—with no loading dock, small doorways, and limited exhibit and storage space, most traveling exhibits were both financially and logistically impossible.
Moreover, I doubted whether the large exhibits I encountered would align with our audience and mission.
Conversations with colleagues from larger institutions revealed stark differences in our perspectives and terminologies. We lacked shared understandings of terms like “immersion” and “consumables,” highlighting the communication gap between our worlds. It became evident that adapting large exhibits for small museums required more than just scaling them down. This project offered an opportunity to completely reimagine the design and fabrication process, placing small museums at its core.
I believe that this reframing is part of a larger conversation that should be happening across the field; one that encourages us to think critically about resources, practices, and about what and who we value, both in terms of institutions and audience. Most importantly, this reframing recognizes small museums as not simply a limited version of a larger museum, but as fully formed, sophisticated, innovative institutions that can serve as models for any museum.
So what does it mean to think from a small museum perspective? It’s tempting to answer this question with a clear set of practical guidelines, since from the outside, it might seem that much of what defines a small museum is resource or facility limitations.
How do you accommodate weird, repurposed spaces?
Limited electrical outlets?
No tech support or regular maintenance?
In fact, designing to a set of “rules” for small museums is perhaps not even useful, because the diversity of small museums is so wildly broad—it’s difficult to apply standardized design principles to a 1,000 square-foot strip mall storefront and also a barely renovated Victorian house. Rather, it is far more useful to holistically reframe our thinking about exhibits and operations to be expansive and from the ground-up, using broadly inclusive principles and resource-conscious creativity.
One common small museum consideration that seems to consistently surprise larger museum colleagues is that most small children’s museums don’t have the staff resources to facilitate activities, or even restage them regularly. On a busy day, most exhibits on my museum’s floor might not have any staff attention for hours, or even until after closing. This represents one of the most illuminating examples of something that might seem like a practical limitation, but actually reveals a core strength of small museums, which is the embrace of a truly self-guided, discovery-based approach. Small museums by necessity need to provide experiences that work for a wide range of ages, that are intuitive with minimal instructions and signage, can work without being reset or maintained for long periods of time, and can maintain engagement with repeat visitors over multiple visits and many years. That’s not just difficult, that’s almost magical. And we’re able to do that magic because we are small, not in spite of it.
Designing for low/no technology, no facilitation, and low maintenance is not a constraint or a compromise, but an opportunity for museums of any size. Choosing materials that can safely remain on an exhibit floor without daily laundering benefits both those who do—and don’t—have an on-site washing machine. Consciously using exhibit pieces that have the lowest possible replacement rate and cost benefits the staff at any museum. Recognizing that “special exhibit fees” make our institutions exclusionary benefits all visitors. A small museum perspective is accessibility in practice.
Advocating for the importance of a small museum perspective, and not just for consideration of small museums per se, is important beyond a single phase of this project. And that perspective can ultimately give us more inclusive models for building experiences and building relationships to the communities we serve.
5 Key Takeaways:
Reframing Perspectives: Recognize the depth and usefulness of a small museum approach by reframing perspectives from the bottom up, rather than seeing compromise and limitation from the top down. This shift allows for more expansive possibilities in thinking and practicing within the field.
Adapting to Challenges:
Small museums often face unique challenges such as limited resources, space constraints, and minimal staff support. However, these challenges can be opportunities for creativity and innovation in designing exhibits and operations.
Embracing Self-Guided Exploration:
Small museums excel in providing self-guided, discovery-based experiences due to limited staff resources. This approach fosters engagement across a wide range of ages and encourages intuitive exploration with minimal instructions or facilitation.
Opportunities for Accessibility: Designing for low/no technology, minimal facilitation, and low maintenance isn’t a constraint but an opportunity for museums of any size. Prioritizing materials with low replacement rates and inclusive pricing structures promotes accessibility for all visitors.
Advocating for Inclusivity: Advocating for the importance of a small museum perspective extends beyond individual institutions. It promotes more inclusive models for building experiences and relationships with the communities served, benefiting the broader museum field.
About the Contributor:
Stephen Wisniewski has worked with and in small children’s museums for 20+ years primarily designing and building exhibits. He is currently an independent consultant specializing in small museum operations, exhibit design, and content. Stephen has a PhD in American Culture with expertise in Museum Studies and Cultural Studies, as well as an extensive background in visual art, DIY design and building projects, and independent art and education spaces—but mostly likes to make cool things for kids to play with.
This blog post is the first in a series of small museum perspectives that emerged from the ACM Freeman Foundation Asian Culture Exhibits Series (FFACES). Introduced as a traveling exhibit model, FFACES has been effective, with a total of twelve impactful exhibits created for two national tours. Each tour reached 3.4 million people—or 6.8 million visitors—total.The latest new round of the FFACES features modular exhibits about East Asian cultures for museums, which can be used in galleries and in outreach events. These new exhibits have a smaller footprint (500–1,000 square feet), and museums can rearrange them to fit in smaller or larger spaces. By remaining at the museum and in the community, the modular exhibit’s content becomes a part of children’s long-term memories, and can create a deeper experience than the temporary attraction of a traveling exhibit.
The Association of Children’s Museums recently worked with The New York Times on an article highlighting the emphasis and importance of children’s programs in museums in the United States! The article dives into the trends within non-children’s museums and discusses the work of various children’s museums across the country, highlighting quotes from Arthur Affleck and ACM member museums. You can read the full article in The New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/arts/design/museums-childrens-programs.html
ACM is pleased to share that the association’s executive director, Arthur G. Affleck, III, has been honored by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) with a 2024 Advocacy Leadership Award.
The award, which was presented during AAM’s Museums Advocacy Day on February 26, 2024, is presented annually to advocates who demonstrate exemplary leadership in their advocacy for the museum field.
“As Executive Director of ACM, Arthur brings a passion for education and equity as well as a proven record of accomplishment in the nonprofit sector,” says Brooke Leonard, Interim CEO/chief of staff at AAM, of the recognition. “Arthur’s commitment to elevating children’s museums and enriching the lives of children and families has led ACM to new levels of activity, visibility, and impact.”
Arthur joined ACM as Executive Director in January 2022, to lead the association which serves more than 470 members in 50 states and 11 countries. Under his vision and leadership, ACM has expanded programs, established new partnerships, and prioritized advocacy at all levels of government and across the museum field as critical for not only children’s museums, but for museums of all types. This work is guided by ACM’s new strategic plan, introduced in January 2023. The plan includes four aligned priorities which include elevating the children’s museum community, lifting up children and families, advancing the field through advocacy, policy, and research, and strengthening the organization. ACM’s participation in AAM’s annual Museums Advocacy Day, as well as the concentrated strategic initiatives, research, and professional development, reflect the importance of amplifying the field and championing issues that effect it.
Upon receiving the award, Arthur shared the recognition with the ACM Board of Directors, professional staff, and members of the field, and emphasized, “this award belongs not just to me, but to my colleagues at ACM and the countless individuals and organizations dedicated to advocating for museums and their essential role in our society so that we may all better support children and families.”
“This award belongs not just to me, but to my colleagues at ACM and the countless individuals and organizations dedicated to advocating for museums and their essential role in our society so that we may all better support children and families.”
Arthur Affleck, upon receiving the award, shared the recognition with the ACM Board of Directors, professional staff, and members of the field.
With approximately 40 emerging museum ACM Members, we are thrilled to see more intentional and meaningful spaces for children’s museums coming together across the globe!
This week, ACM Executive Director Arthur Affleck represents the association at the Grand Opening of Young V&A in Bethnal Green, London. After seven intensive years of dedicated planning and design, the free, national museum will showcase the power of creativity in children’s lives as they build new skills and develop the creative confidence needed to thrive in our fast-changing world.
Co-designed with children, Young V&A demonstrates what it means to be a children’s museum by serving as a local destination that encourages positive child development and adult/child interactions through naturalistic and child-centered learning.
Emerging museums are an important part of the children’s museum community. Representing those institutions that are not-yet-opened, emerging museums bring new vision, new perspectives, ideas, and talents.
In recent years, many of our emerging museums represent the international growth of children’s museums. We are pleased to have welcomed attendees from across the globe at our recent InterActivity 2023: Leveraging Our Voice conference in New Orleans. This included attendees from Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Israel, Germany, Curaçao, China, and Poland, as well as the U.K.
“Children’s museums are the fastest growing sector of the museum community because there is an increased recognition of the power of the hands-on, interactive, and playful learning exhibits and experiences they provide…
– ACM Executive Director, Arthur G. Affleck, III via The Financial Times
We have found children’s museums and targeted programming serving as extension of the home and school environments. This ‘third space’ allows for stronger communities, safe spaces for growth and discovery, and a world of opportunity.”
