Museums and Children

Abstract

THE revival of museum efforts which in Great Britain has followed upon the Miers report, has fortunately included in its sweep attempts to increase facilities for the interest and education of the young. But in this aspect of museum work America undoubtedly leads the way, and everyone interested in juvenile education must be grateful to Miss Ruth Weston for her impressions of American methods which appear as a supplement in the Museums Journal (39, 93, May 1939). Her first impression is one of the bold conception, enterprise, and general ‘aliveness’ which have produced such museums. Some are special children's museums housed in their own special buildings, in several instances right away from any other museum. Others form sections of larger museums, with special exhibition and other rooms for juveniles, either as an isolated wing or included within the main building. Sometimes the show galleries are supplemented by club rooms, library rooms, reading rooms, and a lecture theatre, which in Boston Children's Museum can seat more than 500. Loan collections of natural history objects for schools and even for individual child borrowers (as at Brooklyn), loan art collections, recording in colour and in black and white the development of art in different periods and countries (like the 2,000 reproductions at Toronto Art Gallery), have become the order of the day in these progressive museums. Much has been done in some British museums, but much more must be accomplished if museums are to play their part in the educational system; and there should be the less hesitation in transforming some of the now existing severe and aridly didactic galleries into simplified children's galleries, since our observation is that adults enjoy and benefit from the children's exhibits as much as the children themselves.