For 100 years, Boston Children’s Museum has given the children of Boston- and the world - a very powerful gift: playful learning. Often underestimated, play is the complex and vital work of childhood. Young learners discover the world in which they live through experiences defined by exploration, curiosity, and creative possibility.

Since the beginning, the mission of Boston Children’s Museum has focused on forming habits of the mind needed for learning. In the Museum’s early years, this meant guiding children and youth through high school age to look closely at natural history specimens and cultural objects, using their experiences to form their understanding of things. That same self-direction inspires children today as they negotiate the climbing sculpture, create a monster-sized bubble, or learn Japanese crafts in the Kyo no Machiya (Japanese house). Through self-directed experiences and play, children can discover their interests, explore the unknown, develop new skills, link outcomes with choices, master their fears, and learn to play with others.

This centennial photo album celebrates the ways Boston Children’s Museum has encouraged children to think critically about the world and their place in it. By creating opportunities for playful exploration, the Museum has endeavored to instill a deep curiosity and a lifelong love of learning in its young visitors.

Boston Children's Museum has redefined both what a museum is and how children of all ages and their parents and caregivers may experience that space together. Boston Children’s Museum has redefined both what a museum is and how children of all ages and their parents and caregivers may experience that space together. When Boston Children’s Museum was founded in 1913, most museums were mainly devoted to caring for their collections.

Beginning in 1909, the Science Teachers’ Bureau, a group of Boston educators, gathered a collection of natural history objects for classroom use. Combining a Progressive Era desire for experiential learning, inquiry, and social justice with the popularity of the nature study movement, they created a collection that could serve Boston-area science teachers. In 1913, the Museum opened its doors at Pine Bank in Jamaica Plain. Its purpose was the “Pleasure and Education of Children”, not just instruction in natural science.

By 1913, the Museum’s collections included ethnographic, natural history, and historical collections. Through Museum Games, clubs, and field trips, curators and docents helped children and youth make sense of and even contribute to the growing collections. In the 1920 annual report, Curator Delia Griffin explained that the museum’s goal was not just interpreting objects but “training the plastic minds of children to observe accurately and think logically.” This focus on skill development, as opposed to content acquisition, has been central to the museum’s history.

In 1962, Michael Spock became director of Boston Children’s Museum and famously removed the do not touch signs from the display cases. The Boston Globe praised the new approach in an editorial: “It is the first [museum] in the world to have been pretested by children themselves to see what attracts their interest and participation, and what does not. And that which does not has been eliminated. There are no collections behind glass, no bored guards and no dusty corners. Instead there will be children learning how to do all sorts of interesting things.” (Oct 19, 1969)

Over the next several decades, the museum employed innovative techniques that museums across the country would later adopt. The work of Boston Children’s Museum put education and client-centered learning at the core of the visitor’s experience. Hands-on exhibitions that used familiar materials to explore science topics, such as bubbles and motion, illustrated the new approach. Some exhibits addressed topics often considered too sensitive for children, such as Endings: An Exhibit about Death and Loss (1984). With an increased focus on the changing audience, educators and exhibit designers developed PlaySpace for children under the age of 3, a population previously ignored by museums.

Boston Children’s Museum created the first public access to collections in the United States through Study Storage, which enabled visitors to handle some objects. As museum scholar Stephen Weil explained, the new visitor focus influenced the American Association of Museums to change its accreditation standards to include explicit educational goals and not simply collections care. Boston Children’s Museum has earned AAM accreditation since 1972.

Boston Children’s Museum has been a leader in envisioning new relationships between museums and their communities, working to blur the lines between inside and outside the museum walls. In the publication “Opening the Museum: History and Strategies Toward a More Inclusive Museum” (1993), the Museum challenged itself and other museums to reflect the communities they serve.

One hundred years after its founding, Boston Children’s Museum continues to evolve and remains a model emulated around the world.

Over the past 100 years, Boston Children’s Museum has grown from a museum rooted in a single neighborhood to an urban museum serving the entire city of Boston and beyond. In 1913, with the support of the Boston Parks Department and, eventually, Mayor Curley, the Museum’s founders made Pine Bank, a stately residence next to Jamaica Pond, its first home. The proximity to the pond was ideal for young budding naturalists, who gathered wildflowers and other specimens for the Museum. These frequent visitors developed relationships with staff, created displays, led museum clubs, and became junior docents.

From the outset, children came multiple times each week, often on their own, by foot and by streetcar from neighborhoods throughout Boston. For children unable to make it to Jamaica Plain, the Museum ran the Barnard Annex in Boston’s South End.

Boston Children’s Museum served over 150,000 children annually by 1930. The Museum’s lease on Pine Bank was up in 1936. Needing more space, Curator Mildred Manter (Jackson) and the Board, with the help of many generous friends, purchased a fine 28-room mansion near Pine Bank. The 60 Burroughs Street location offered expanded exhibition space with new, brightly lit cases and a theater, making it possible to serve as many as 200,000 visitors a year by 1941. After a catastrophic fire in 1942, the Museum rebuilt and continued to welcome Boston’s children through clubs, programs, and new exhibitions.

Though 60 Burroughs Street was large for a home, its configuration limited the size and scope of the exhibitions it could hold. In the early 1960s, Boston Children’s Museum director Michael Spock started to experiment with a more child-centered model of visitor engagement that required open spaces. In pursuit of that goal, the Museum opened an expanded Visitor Center that could host hands-on exhibitions, such as The Giant’s Desktop and Grandmother’s Attic. The new Resource Center, stocked with materials and kits, offered vital services to educators.

In 1975, the Museum began its most dramatic move, to Fort Point Channel. Boston Children’s Museum partnered with the Museum of Transportation to purchase, renovate, and move into a 90-year-old wool warehouse. At the time, the Fort Point Channel area was on the cusp of transition, with artists moving in and creating studios in its factories and warehouses. In 1977, Boston Children’s Museum purchased the Sankey Milk Bottle and moved it to Museum Wharf. It quickly became a Boston icon, signaling the playful possibilities of the new museum and neighborhood.

In its new home, Boston Children’s Museum not only doubled in size but also became more accessible by public transportation, allowing it to better serve Boston’s diverse population. The Museum transformed from a neighborhood museum to a major cultural organization for the entire city. The new building could hold spectacular exhibitions, like a two-story Japanese silk merchant’s house and a Victorian house. In the first year, attendance approached half a million.

In 2007, the museum expanded again, this time building a 23,000-square-foot glass-and-steel addition, new exhibit and public spaces, and a landscaped waterfront park. The Museum became Boston’s first “green” museum, earning LEED Gold certification for the new construction.

Boston Children’s Museum’s move to a new part of Boston was a leap of faith that proved prescient. In 1999 the Federal Courthouse opened, followed by the Institute of Contemporary Art, the MBTA’s Silver Line, dozens of restaurants, offices, a new convention center, shops, and hotels. Boston Children’s Museum was the first anchor in this now-vibrant neighborhood of Boston.

Among the earliest collections at Boston Children’s Museum were objects from the Philippines and Japan that were used to teach about “people in far-away lands.” (Sayles, 1937). In keeping with the ways of the times, unfamiliar cultures were sometimes portrayed as exotic and foreign. Later, Boston Children’s Museum gave voice to the diverse populations of Boston and the peoples of the world, inviting them to share and celebrate their cultures with others through Museum exhibitions and programs.

Starting with Delia Griffin, curators encouraged the close study of cultural objects to help children develop critical thinking skills. In 1927, the Japanese Committee for World Friendship among Children sent Ms. Kyoto, a Japanese friendship doll, to Boston, and a year later, it was given to Boston Children’s Museum to promote cultural understanding. Complete with her own trunk of accessories, Miss Kyoto remains an enduring material symbol of Boston’s long connection to Japan.

In the 1960s, exhibitions and kits offered compelling firsthand experiences with other cultures. A pair of wooden Netsilik snow goggles became a powerful metaphor for the museum’s transformation, inviting children to look through the goggles, not at them. The experience helped visitors grasp the difficulty of seeing during a blinding snowstorm and appreciate the maker’s clever design. The installation of the Kyo no Machiya in 1979 took this idea further. Children could experience how Japanese kids and families lived within the context of an entire home. This hands-on and immersive learning collapses the distance between museum visitors and the cultures they explore.

Direct interaction with real people and first-person narratives became central to learning about cultures. Like other museums, Boston Children’s Museum used its large collection of more than 5,000 Native American objects in exhibits and programs. In the early 1970s, Museum staff invited Native American tribal representatives to collaborate, resulting in the exhibition We’re Still Here (1979), which documented and shared the contemporary cultural vitality of Northeast Native Americans.

In the 1980s, Boston Children’s Museum made a new commitment to diversify its audience, staff, and board in order to work more effectively with Boston’s changing populations. This initiative led to publications, teacher professional development institutes, cultural festivals, and staff training. In 1991, the Boston Globe described Boston Children’s Museum as a “beacon of diversity.” At the same time, Boston Children’s Museum worked to increase its staff diversity to better collaborate with the city’s multicultural communities. Today the Museum strives to offer materials for children and their families in the main languages used in the Boston Public Schools.

In recent years, Boston Children’s Museum has used real stories of real children to help visitors make a personal connection across cultures. Exhibitions like Teen Tokyo: Youth and Popular Culture in Japan Today (1992), Five Friends from Japan (2004), Children of Hangzhou: Connecting with China (2008), and Native Voices: New England Tribal Families (2012) introduce visitors to specific individuals and their stories, allowing children to appreciate cultural similarities.

Keeping pace with changing times and a shrinking world, Boston Children’s Museum has shifted its approach to teaching and learning about cultures, from studying “foreign” peoples to addressing the skills children need to live in a multicultural society. With technology increasingly blurring international boundaries, the 21st century demands a new set of skills for a global society.

From the start, Boston Children’s Museum has inspired children to be active, aware citizens through learning and play. Today, Boston Children’s Museum seeks to help children and their families make smart, healthy choices; respect others; and prepare for the diverse, complex world in which they live.

In the 1920s, the Museum’s ideas of citizenship focused on equity and social justice. The Museum’s mission was to reach marginalized children, to help them become better thinkers and take active roles in American society. Boston Children’s Museum staff worked closely with children from settlement houses and local schools, inviting them to participate in outdoor summer clubs and explore the museum’s collections. To foster cultural appreciation and understanding, the Museum’s annual Recognition Day festivities listed names of children from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and from every corner of Boston.

The Women’s Education Association, which supported the early Museum (as well as Radcliffe College), believed that the Museum could contribute to “the better education of women.” At the Museum, science was not just for boys: boys and girls studied the world together and learned social lessons about equality even as they identified plants, animals, or distant stars.

Within the Museum, representations of home have been key sites for educational play. Early on, the Museum’s historic dollhouses presented models of American life that helped children learn through observation. Starting in the 1960s, immersive domestic spaces invited children to learn about daily life in the past through role-play. The popular Grandparent’s House exhibition allowed children to try out old furnishings and household equipment, and learn from familiar and unfamiliar material things. These experiences were also designed to trigger meaningful conversations with parents and grandparents about “the old days.”

Beginning in the 1970s, children’s museums offered exhibits that helped children understand adult roles. In the Congress Street Superette (1979), children could take on the roles of shopper and cashier. Exhibits like Factory (1979) and Construction Zone (1998) introduced children to work and working people.

The Museum provides children and parents with experiential tools for making good life choices. The TV and Me (1994) exhibit offered interactive lessons in media literacy. KidPower (2007) encourages children to have fun while engaging in challenging physical activities. Nutritional information connects energy input and output to health. Our Green Trail (2010) explains how the Museum building was designed to protect the environment, and encourages children and families to adapt energy-saving practices at home.

Even as the world changes and Boston Children’s Museum adjusts its mission to focus on the challenges children are likely to face in the future, the bedrock remains play.

For centuries, educators and academics have linked sensory engagement to intellectual development. Since 1913, Boston Children’s Museum has provided children with unique opportunities to connect with material things, from exquisite dolls and finely preserved turtle shells to the outsize sneakers of basketball legends, the insides of toasters, and the water world under the Museum Wharf dock. Museum Curator Delia Griffin explained in 1925, “Observation is the natural foundation of education ... every act of curiosity is a movement toward intellectual freedom.”

In the first half of the Museum’s existence, children came into contact with collections through Museum clubs held at Pine Bank and later at 60 Burroughs Street. Young visitors pursued specific interests, such as the “Sons of Nature,” who collected specimens from outside the Museum for display in prominent places. For several years, club members published their own magazine, Our Hobbies, based on their experiences. So powerful are memories of these clubs that several participants, now elderly, credit Boston Children’s Museum with launching their lifelong vocations and avocations.

Collections were important to the early Museum, but, as a Boston Herald reporter observed in 1929, “Each costumed doll, each bright bird or each gay butterfly [is] not an end in itself, [but] a means of giving young visitors a livelier appreciation and a keener knowledge of the world.” Children could try a spinning wheel, look through a telescope, and handle live animals. They could create their own displays of museum objects, study rare artifacts from around the world, or present plays as a way to teach younger children. More than enjoyable natural or social history lessons, these activities developed skills in how to discover information and learn about the world.

Starting in the 1960s, the new hands-on approach led to full-body experiences. The Estimating Game (1987) allowed young visitors to use their bodies as measuring sticks, sparking thoughts about size and scale. The first-ever climbing exhibit designed by an artist was installed in Boston Children’s Museum in the 1980s. In it, children find their way through a 3D maze with an added interpersonal and social challenge - and the joy of mastery is apparent.

The Recycle Shop (1972), a pioneering environmental education and art-making program, gave young people cool industrial castoffs for making original pieces. Through multisensory hands-on activity, as in Waterplay (1979), complex science concepts like the properties of water become concrete and manageable. Through these experiences, children naturally experiment, observe, and question, and along the way build capacity for understanding physical science as well as self-confidence in how they learn.

At Boston Children’s Museum, children also experience the visual and performing arts. The Art Studio (1994) encourages creativity with materials, supplies, and suggestions available. In KidStage (1996), children and families experience and are invited to take part in live theater.

At Boston Children’s Museum, investigating, climbing, creating and getting messy are all part of the play and learning.

Boston Children’s Museum has always been committed to serving the needs of all children and finding innovative ways to do so, with play as the great equalizer. Early in its history, the Museum primarily served school-aged children from the neighborhood, who walked there on their own while their parents were working. On Saturday afternoons, the Museum offered special programs such as a talk by an astronomer from MIT or a naturalist from the Harvard Peabody Museum or, in later years, a film. For children who could not make it to the Museum, collections on loan brought interesting objects to them. Even as early as the 1920s, museum educators extended an invitation to children who were considered “homebound” to visit the museum with caregivers, and created special tactile programs for students from the Perkins School for the Blind.

In the 1960s, Boston Children’s Museum revolutionized exhibitions by making them more dynamic, interactive, and process-based. Children and parents tested new exhibits to make sure they were effective and fun. Talk Back Boards offered opportunities for parents and caregivers to share their impressions of the spaces and activities. This new approach made exhibitions more experiential and accessible to people of varying ages and abilities. A series of science exhibits, such as Bubbles, Wheels, and Tops and Yoyos, encouraged children to play with familiar materials and observe natural phenomena.

The memorable What If I Couldn’t ...? exhibit (1976) broke new ground by involving visitors in experiencing the challenges of daily life for those living with a disability. In doing so, the exhibit built awareness and empathy. Visitors tried to navigate a wheelchair over uneven surfaces, negotiate a maze while wearing a blindfold, and communicate with others while wearing masks that did not match their feelings. With advice from disability experts, Boston Children’s Museum was ahead of the curve in incorporating universal design into the renovation of the Fort Point Channel building. Through the process, the Museum strengthened relationships with disability specialists, shared what it had learned with other organizations, and became an advocate for nondiscrimination. The Museum circulated the What If I Couldn’t ...? curriculum kit to schools to help with the classroom inclusion movement. In 2004, Boston Children’s Museum produced a new exhibit on disability awareness called access/Ability, which has traveled to museums across the country.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Boston Children’s Museum responded to the needs of its changing audiences. More and more parents began bringing young children to the museum to accompany their older siblings. This created a new audience for museum programming. After several iterations, PlaySpace, a “Place to Play,” was born in 1978. It provided the youngest children with a safe environment to explore a castle and to play independently, while their parents had access to resources about child development and the companionship of other caregivers. For the past 35 years, PlaySpace, through many transformations, has remained focused on serving the specific developmental needs of young children and their caregivers.

In the 1980s, as the average age of museum visitors began to skew younger, the Museum responded by creating programs to attract older children, sometimes through programs like the Teen Work program, Club 1015,and YouthALIVE. After many thoughtful experiments, Boston Children’s Museum founded the Teen Ambassador Program, which offered talented, multilingual urban youth intensive work experiences in the Museum and the community. Visitors of 100 years ago were 5 to 18 years old, but “older” visitors now are kids aged 7 to 10. Friday night programs, such as KidsJam, attract families with siblings of different ages.

Beginning in the 1990s, Boston Children’s Museum responded to cuts in arts education with new exhibits. The Art Studio now offers children intriguing materials and inspiring suggestions for making their own creations, and KidStage exposes children and families to live theater-often for the first time-and even gives them the opportunity to participate. Through the visual and performing arts, children and families find new forms of expression.

In the 21st century, Boston Children’s Museum works closely with adults to address the achievement gap; to develop early science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills; and to help families connect healthy lifestyle choices with school success. Boston Children’s Museum is a committed player in adding value to the cultural life of the city.

Boston Children’s Museum was founded on the notion that giving Boston Public School science teachers natural history specimens and teaching aids would improve science learning. This quickly developed into an active collection loan program. In 1964, MATCh (Materials and Activities for Teachers and Children) Boxes combined objects with innovative curricula into traveling collections that dramatically extended the scope of the Museum’s reach. More than that, they deepened children’s engagement with Museum objects by contextualizing them within extended school curriculum programs, which sometimes spent weeks exploring topics such as Hawaii or bones.

To further equip teachers with new approaches and new content, the Museum offers professional development for educators. Teacher seminars, workshops, and institutes on physical and natural science, Japan, China, Native American life, and early childhood education expanded teachers’ knowledge base while also providing innovative teaching techniques. In order to reach a wider audience and provide greater impact with these programs, Boston Children’s Museum often collaborates with other organizations, such as the Harvard Asia Center, the Cultural Education Collaborative, the Museum Institute for Teaching Science (MITS), Primary Source, Boston Public School, United Way, Native American groups, and more.

Many of the earliest visitors to Boston Children’s Museum came alone or with groups of friends. Like supporters of many other Progressive Era institutions, museum advocates hoped that the urban children would carry their learning back to their families, many of whom lacked formal education. In the 1960s, parents began accompanying their kids to Boston Children’s Museum. This shift may have its roots in demographic changes, increased anxiety around parenting, and the desire to give kids a leg up through rich learning experiences. Museum clubs, which were for kids only and had little role for parents, became less desirable. Boston Children’s Museum moved its focus away from object-based projects toward hands-on experiences that attracted younger visitors-and their caregivers.

The Museum’s definition of educators expanded to encompass preschool and afterschool teachers whose role in children’s lives became increasingly important as more parents entered the workforce. Staff conducted workshops designed to make good use of the out-of-school hours. In 2010, the Museum published “Beyond the Chalkboard”, the first free online curriculum dedicated specifically to afterschool educators.

Boston Children’s Museum has published more than 140 books, some designed to extend the museum experience into the home or classroom, such as “Great Explorations: 100 Creative Play Ideas for Parents and Preschools from Playspace” (1997). “Original Shirley Temple Paper Dolls in Full Color from the Collection of the Children’s Museum, Boston” (1988) and “We’re Still Here: Art of Indian New England, The Children’s Museum Collection” (1987) were formal catalogs; other books were extensions of an exhibit, such as “Raceways: Having Fun with Balls and Tracks” (1979). The 18-volume “Multicultural Celebrations” series, which combined story and curriculum, targeted schools and libraries. Finally, Museum staff wrote books for the museum profession, such as “Is There Life After 504?” (1980) and “Growing Together: A Mutual Exchange between Adolescents and Museums” (1994). Through these publications, Boston Children’s Museum disseminated its audience-specific approaches to teaching and learning.

Over the past 40 years, Boston Children’s Museum has developed a strong reputation for tackling difficult topics and providing adults with tools for talking with children. Endings: An Exhibit about Death and Loss (1984) helped parents and children discuss the difficult subject of death. In Mind Your Own Business (1988), an interpretative panel asks parents, “How do you want your child to learn about AIDS?” Kids Bridge (1990) gave parents and children a common language for talking about racism.

By 2010, Boston Children’s Museum embarked on an ambitious relationship with parents in Countdown to Kindergarten, which helps parents practice with their children the social-emotional, cognitive, and motor skills needed to be ready for kindergarten.

In recognition of the fact that 49% of visitors are adults, Boston Children’s Museum is focusing greater attention on their learning needs and interests. Exhibitions and programs incorporate efforts to ensure that their experiences are fulfilling and productive.

Today, Boston Children’s Museum is a site for extensive research on how children learn. The MIT Cognitive Sciences Lab invites parents to allow their children into PlayLab, where researchers play simple games with infants to study how they make sense of different variables. All researchers talk with parents about what they are learning and why it is important to them. Other studies, conducted by Boston College and Harvard University faculty, investigate how children interpret differences, how they learn numeracy, and how art influences their learning.

Boston Children’s Museum helps to translate current research into useful information for parents. The key is for parents to understand what is now known about how children learn and the value of play. Current and future exhibit development incorporates this research.

Since its establishment, Boston Children’s Museum has earned a strong reputation for collaboration, starting with the Harvard museums and scientists at MIT. The purpose of the collaborations is to combine the partners’ resources and expertise in the development and implementation of programs that serve the needs of children and families.

From the beginning, Boston Children’s Museum has worked with the Boston Public Schools to improve teaching and learning. In the 1970s, the Museum, viewed as a neutral meeting ground, offered school-and Museum-based programs to help ameliorate tensions caused by desegregation. In the 1990s, Boston Children’s Museum helped the Boston Public Schools enrich full-day kindergarten programs. Starting in 1998, Boston Children’s Museum entered into a long-term partnership with Action for Boston Community Development’s Head Start, which ultimately led to a city-wide collaboration dedicated to enhancing school readiness. Countdown to Kindergarten programs, in partnership with the Boston Public Schools, work to reduce the achievement gap.

Because Boston Children’s Museum has a reputation for offering playful experiences that make audiences more receptive to difficult messages, medical and public health specialists seek partnerships that address family health needs. KidPower (2007) urges children to increase physical activity and make healthy lifestyle choices. Asthma management programs inform families about asthma triggers in the Arthur™ and Friends exhibit and in the traveling play “Buster has Asthma”. Taking humorous plays with serious health messages to public housing youth centers offers critical information in enjoyable ways.

Convening advisory boards for cultural programs and exhibits has become part of Boston Children’s Museum’s standard operating procedure. Every exhibition project engages an expert advisory board to give depth, breadth, and authority to the exhibit content and presentation. Boston Black: A City Connects (2004) was developed in collaboration with a distinguished and diverse advisory board. Boston Children’s Museum collaborates with WGBH on exhibits such as Arthur and Peep’s World, as well as programs for families with young children. Other exhibit partners include Boston Symphony Orchestra and Blue Man Group.

Cultural festivals showcase local talent and contribute authenticity to the celebrations. In partnership with community groups, Boston Children’s Museum creates new celebrations based on traditional holidays, such as the Boston Dragon Boat Festival, the first celebration of its kind in the US. Japanese New Year and Chinese New Year are often the first experience many families have with Asian cultures. The Martin Luther King Birthday celebration conveys the core of the reverend’s message.

From the start, Boston Children’s Museum has recognized the need to make permeable the divide created by the Museum walls. Today, Community Programs and Partnerships staff develops multifaceted relationships with neighborhood organizations, such as Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, to provide programming to raise awareness of Boston Children’s Museum as an accessible resource for family leisure and educational activities. The Museum broke new ground by instituting an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) discount, making it possible for families to visit anytime.

Boston Children’s Museum has worked in tandem with community organizations since 1913. In its most recent Strategic Plan, Boston Children’s Museum has once again explicitly committed itself to increasing its impact on the children and families of Boston in ways that are joyful, playful, and deeply meaningful for many generations to come.