Historical Society to Open a Children’s Museum
The DiMenna Children’s History Museum, as it will be known, is part of the $60 million renovation of the historical society building on Central Park West, Louise Mirrer, the president and chief economic officer of the museum, said this week. The roughly 4,000-square-foot museum has been designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture & Design Partnership with a $5 million donation from Joseph A. and Diana DiMenna.
The new museum will focus on the stories of children, from famous figures like Alexander Hamilton, who came to New York as a teenage orphan to attend college, to the boys and girls who hawked newspapers on city streets 100 years ago.
The mini-museum’s artifacts, some of them never exhibited before, will be drawn from the historical society’s vast collections, said Valerie Paley, the society’s historian for special projects. Aimed at roughly a fourth-grade level, the information in the exhibits will nevertheless be intended to appeal to all ages, she said, adding that educators helped select a diverse group of historical figures to illuminate different aspects of history.
Though the number of children’s museums around the country has grown tremendously in recent decades — there were 243 of them in 2007, with another 78 in the planning stages, according to one study, compared with 38 in 1975 — the DiMenna museum will be one of very few history museums for children. Since becoming president in 2004, Ms. Mirrer has sought a new prominence for the historical society, and the children’s museum is part of that effort.
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The new museum will focus on the stories of children, from famous figures like Alexander Hamilton, who came to New York as a teenage orphan to attend college, to the boys and girls who hawked newspapers on city streets 100 years ago.
The mini-museum’s artifacts, some of them never exhibited before, will be drawn from the historical society’s vast collections, said Valerie Paley, the society’s historian for special projects. Aimed at roughly a fourth-grade level, the information in the exhibits will nevertheless be intended to appeal to all ages, she said, adding that educators helped select a diverse group of historical figures to illuminate different aspects of history.
Though the number of children’s museums around the country has grown tremendously in recent decades — there were 243 of them in 2007, with another 78 in the planning stages, according to one study, compared with 38 in 1975 — the DiMenna museum will be one of very few history museums for children. Since becoming president in 2004, Ms. Mirrer has sought a new prominence for the historical society, and the children’s museum is part of that effort.