Children's Museums Get a New Look

By J.D. Reed

Future doctors in Birmingham get a leg up by studying a bicycling skeleton. Aspiring engineers in Oak Ridge, Tenn., explore a model coal mine. In New York City, make-believe media moguls produce their own sitcoms in a TV studio. A decade ago, it would have been hard to find such innovative exhibits in children's museums. For the most part, those museums were pint-size versions of adult institutions, where kids were expected to keep their mouths shut and their hands in their pockets.

These days, however, children's museums have been dusted off, jazzed up and wired for action. Young visitors are increasingly encouraged to explore a host of interactive exhibits. Raised on mornings with Big Bird and vacations at Disney World, today's kids are sophisticated "infotainment" consumers. Birmingham sixth-grader Tracy Brunson speaks for many of her peers when she says, "Walking and looking is boring. Touching is funner."

That kind of enthusiasm helps account for an upsurge in such facilities. There are currently some 300 U.S. museums devoted to children -- twice as many as a decade ago -- and visitors are flocking to them in record numbers. One spur to growth has been concerned parents, who are clamoring for more and better early-learning experiences. "Families are looking for good family activities," says Peter Sterling, president of the Indianapolis Children's Museum. "There's an intuition that what's happening in the public schools isn't enough."

Although they often rely on high-tech electronic displays, the museums are more than entertaining video-game galleries; many treat important social issues such as AIDS, homelessness and pollution. But whether the subject is light or serious, exposure to interactive exhibits is giving youngsters new ideas about what museums should be like. Says Jane Jerry, director of the Children's Museum of Houston: "We want children to develop a lifelong passion for learning."

With reporting by Janice C. Simpson/New York