ABOUT BROOKLYN CHILDREN'S MUSEUM
"The children's museum idea is Brooklyn's gift to the world." - Anna Billings Gallup, director, 1926
A pioneer in education, the Brooklyn Children's Museum was the first museum created expressly for children when it was founded in 1899. Its success has sparked the creation of 300 children's museums around the world. With award-winning, hands-on exhibits and innovative use of its collections, the Museum engages children from pre-school to high school in learning adventures. It is the only children's museum in New York State to be accredited by the American Association of Museums.
BROOKLYN CHILDREN'S MUSEUM'S MISSION
The mission of Brooklyn Children's Museum is to actively engage children in educational and entertaining experiences through innovation and excellence in exhibitions, programs, and use of its collection. The Museum encourages children to develop an understanding of and respect for themselves, others, and the world around them by exploring cultures, the arts, science, and the environment. The Museum is recognized among cultural institutions for its leadership in addressing the educational, cultural, and social concerns of youth and families in our dynamic urban environment.
SERVING A DIVERSE AUDIENCE
Brooklyn Children's Museum was founded in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, over a century ago, and has been proud to call that community its home ever since. As the neighborhood has changed and grown, so has the Museum - embracing the rich diversity of its surroundings. Brooklyn Children’s Museum has an ongoing commitment to presenting programs, exhibits, and performances that welcome everyone and build understanding of the many cultures in New York City and around the world.
EXPANDING SPACE = EXPANDING MINDS
Brooklyn Children’s Museum is expanding! The expanded Museum will be well equipped to provide 21st century learning adventures for growing numbers of children from the neighborhoods of Brooklyn, from the greater New York metropolitan region, and beyond. The Museum will nearly double its current space and will incorporate the latest innovations in high performance architecture. It is slated to be the first "green" museum in New York City.
MORE ROOM TO LEARN
The new design includes more than 15,000 square feet for exhibition space, doubling the area available for the Museum's award-winning science and cultural exhibits. The Museum will have the capacity to host several groups of schoolchildren and the general public at the same time. The new design also relocates and expands the Museum's library and creates much-needed rooms dedicated to educational programs. With the expansion, the innovative Totally Tots program, part of the Museum's Early Learner Initiative for children five and younger, will have a new and larger home - a 2,700-square-foot gallery for hands-on play, scientific exploration, educational programming, and parent resources.
INCREASING PUBLIC ACCESS TO OUR COLLECTION
Brooklyn Children's Museum is one of the few children's museums in the world with a permanent collection, including more than 30,000 cultural objects and natural history specimens. The cultural collection contains both ancient and present-day objects, including musical instruments, sculpture, masks, body adornments, and dolls, as well as everyday household and personal items. The natural history collection contains rocks, minerals, and fossils, as well as mounted birds, mammals, insects, and skeletons (highlights include the complete skeleton of an Asian elephant, dinosaur footprints, and a whale rib).
For years, much of the collection has been inaccessible to the public simply because of space limitations. An expanded collection study area will allow the Museum to display more of the collection and to offer more hands-on activities - so children learn by interacting with objects as well as by looking.
Now, technology will enable visitors to access objects from the Museum's collection. Using a child-friendly computer database with terminals located in the new Collections Central gallery, visitors can easily call up images and information on the collections. www.brooklynkids.org/emuseum
HOW CAN A YELLOW BUILDING BE GREEN?
The outside of the Museum's new building will be daffodil-yellow, but its inner workings will be "green." In keeping with the Museum's commitment to preserve and protect the world's natural resources, it will use environmentally advanced, sustainable, renewable and/or recyclable materials and systems in the building’s design and construction.
Students become scientists when they visit Brooklyn Children's Museum - and the new, ”green” features in the Museum will give them a first-hand lesson in energy efficiency and environmental conservation. The Museum will educate its growing audience about the building’s environmentally friendly components through programming and interactive exhibitions.
HEART OF BROOKLYN
Brooklyn Children's Museum is a founding member of Heart of Brooklyn, a unique partnership among six of Brooklyn's most treasured cultural institutions: Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Children's Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Public Library, Prospect Park, and Prospect Park Zoo. To utilize their collective resources and better serve a diverse and multi-cultural community as well as the greater public, these organizations formed Heart of Brooklyn as a non-profit organization in July 2001. Heart of Brooklyn builds on the many years of success of its six established partners while providing a forum for collaboration to achieve a shared vision of increased access to and awareness of our vast educational and cultural resources. www.heartofbrooklyn.org
MUSEUM LEADERSHIP
Carol Enseki, President of Brooklyn Children's Museum since 1997, heads a distinguished staff of more than 100 full- and part-time staff and teen interns. Working closely with the Board of Trustees and its Chair, Ms. Enseki has built a strong, nationally recognized exhibition and education program and forged partnerships to increase the Museum's educational impact and broaden its base of support. Ms. Enseki is active in and has served on the boards of: the Cultural Institutions Group of New York City, Brooklyn Arts Council, Heart of Brooklyn Cultural Partnership, American Association of Museums, Association of Children’s Museums, and the Arts& Business Council, Inc
