This week I received my new membership card from The Strong National Museum of Play. This is one of my favorite spots to spend with my kids. I could and perhaps will, do an entire post about what they are doing right in their membership department. I always come away feeling valued, and the value in membership is always made up three fold as I take my membership from there to Boston, to Philadelphia, to Binghamton. But again this is not a post about membership, it’s about exhibit design.
We go to The Strong A LOT. We drive 4 hours, stay at our favorite hotel and play play play. My kids go back time and time again, not repeating the same activities, but diversifying and going deeper into the exhibits each time. They test their world. As children in a certain age group they are concrete thinkers. So manipulating the physical universe through play is providing them endless opportunities for self-discovery and learning. My Friend Paul Orselli in recent months bemoaned the obligatory “Grocery store Exhibit” and I tend to agree with him, but my kids love to cook in the deli, and ring up the other children who come through the line, and they know everyone has a job. They interact with children they have never met before, but it is intuitive play that almost always goes well.
So are you pickin up what I’m layin down. Awwww Yeahhhhh. Big people museums! What is our play? What would drive us to return and return again? I love Edward Hopper. I could stare at his work endlessly. It is art that reaches into me and speaks to who I am. This is awesome and a great museum activity, but I don’t drive to New York City to see his work 6 times a year. I don’t have memberships at museums designed for staring at stuff.
Humans love to learn. Not in the formal school kinda way but in the authentic designed and exploratory ways that museums all too often are not. The Museum I work at, I visit with my family almost every weekend for the same reason I go to The Strong. The local Art Museum a scant 30 minutes away with an amazing collection of modern art, I never have gone to with my family or outside of work. Exhibit designers must think about play. They must think about learning through play. In a time where learning has been relegated to a certain agreed upon facts that are tested in standardized formats, museums represent hope to a nation that is being under challenged. The question is are we up to meeting it?
We go to The Strong A LOT. We drive 4 hours, stay at our favorite hotel and play play play. My kids go back time and time again, not repeating the same activities, but diversifying and going deeper into the exhibits each time. They test their world. As children in a certain age group they are concrete thinkers. So manipulating the physical universe through play is providing them endless opportunities for self-discovery and learning. My Friend Paul Orselli in recent months bemoaned the obligatory “Grocery store Exhibit” and I tend to agree with him, but my kids love to cook in the deli, and ring up the other children who come through the line, and they know everyone has a job. They interact with children they have never met before, but it is intuitive play that almost always goes well.
So are you pickin up what I’m layin down. Awwww Yeahhhhh. Big people museums! What is our play? What would drive us to return and return again? I love Edward Hopper. I could stare at his work endlessly. It is art that reaches into me and speaks to who I am. This is awesome and a great museum activity, but I don’t drive to New York City to see his work 6 times a year. I don’t have memberships at museums designed for staring at stuff.
Humans love to learn. Not in the formal school kinda way but in the authentic designed and exploratory ways that museums all too often are not. The Museum I work at, I visit with my family almost every weekend for the same reason I go to The Strong. The local Art Museum a scant 30 minutes away with an amazing collection of modern art, I never have gone to with my family or outside of work. Exhibit designers must think about play. They must think about learning through play. In a time where learning has been relegated to a certain agreed upon facts that are tested in standardized formats, museums represent hope to a nation that is being under challenged. The question is are we up to meeting it?
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