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The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Children's museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, US

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Founded in 1925 by Mary Stewart Carey with the help of Indianapolis civic leaders and organizations, it is the fourth-oldest such institution in the world. The current site became home for the museum in 1946; the current building was constructed in 1976 and has had four major expansions since then. The museum hosts thousands of activities annually, including plays at the Lilly Theater, classes and workshops for school children, traveling exhibits, and fund-raising events. With a 2008 budget of $28.7 million, it has 400 employees and 1,500 volunteers. Its financial stability is ensured by a large endowment that was first established in the 1960s and is governed by a board of trustees. In May 2021, the museum announced Jennifer Pace Robinson, a 29-year veteran of the museum, as its new president and CEO.

History

The Children's Museum of Indianapolis was founded in 1925 by Mary Stewart Carey, a wealthy civic patron who owned the Stewart-Carey Glass Company. She was inspired to create the museum after a 1924 visit to the Brooklyn Children's Museum. Carey began a campaign to start a children's museum in Indianapolis and enlisted the aid of other local civic leaders and the Progressive Teacher's Association. With their support, the museum opened in the carriage house of The Propylaeum, a local civic club. A board of trustees was established to manage the museum and Carey was elected its first president. The early exhibits were created and donated by school children. Carey sought a larger facility and after two moves, she finally located the museum in her own mansion on Meridian Street in 1926. The same year the first curator, Arthur Carr was hired. Carr arranged Carey's specimens into exhibits and managed the museum. The first permanent exhibits were marine, Japanese, pioneer, archeology, and nature. By the 1940s, a larger staff was hired and Carr became director after Carey's 1938 death. The museum began offering guided tours to school children, organized traveling exhibits that were moved around to area schools, and began hosting events for fundraising. Early members were given a Seahorse pin to identify them as Youth members.

In 1942, Carr retired from the museum and Grace Golden became the new director. Golden sought to further expand the museum and successfully solicited grants from the Indianapolis Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and members of the Lilly family. She also secured several important corporate sponsorships. The new revenue allowed the museum to purchase its own building, a former mansion on North Meridian Street. Golden also began diversification of the museum's exhibits, rather than relying on local donations. She successfully created partnerships with other museums who loaned exhibits of Native American artifacts in 1947 and a gallery of dinosaur skeletons in 1949. The mummy Wenuhotep was given on permanent loan from the University of Chicago in 1959, a nineteenth-century log cabin was donated in 1961, and the Hall of Man was added in 1962. Several new permanent exhibits were created during her tenure, focusing on pioneer life, natural science, and ethnography. Golden also established a Junior Docent program, created two weekly television shows for local broadcast, and began a program of interpretive activities.

In 1964, Golden resigned and was succeeded as director by Mildred Sartor Compton. Compton remained director until 1982. She created the first long-term financial plans for the museum by establishing an endowment and began advertising campaigns for donations and to increase attendance. The museum was enhanced to help it earn accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums by standardizing and cataloging its exhibits and archives and implementing conservation techniques. New permanent exhibits were obtained during Compton's tenure including the Physical Science Gallery in 1967, the Reuben Wells Steam Engine in 1968, and the Model Train Gallery in 1970.

A fundraising drive held in 1973 raised $8.7 million and allowed construction of the current museum building. The old museum was demolished and the new one built on its site. Finished in 1976, the new museum had modern conservation and storage facilities, classrooms, the 350-seat Ruth Allison Lilly Theater, and a much larger five-floor exhibit area. New exhibits and attractions were added for the grand opening, including a carousel, a simulated cavern, and a mastodon skeleton.

Peter Sterling became director in 1982 and continued to pursue a growth policy for the museum. A restaurant and outdoor garden gallery were added in 1983, and in 1984, the Caplan folk art collection of 50,000 items was donated by Frank and Theresa Caplan, nearly doubling the number of items owned by the museum. The museum also undertook a $14 million, multi-phase expansion that included construction of a welcome center and atrium entrance (completed in 1983), a planetarium, and an additional exhibit hall, completed in 1988. Indianapolis architect Evans Woollen III designed the four-story atrium addition. A grant from Lilly Endowment funded the construction of the Eli Lilly Center for Exploration in 1990.

By 1992, the museum was hosting 4,000 programs and activities annually and had an annual attendance of 835,000 patrons. It employed 165 full-time employees, 227 part-time employees, and 850 volunteers. Revenue in 1992 was $12.4 million.

In 1996, a 310-seat large-format theater called the CineDome was constructed adjacent to the museum. In 2004, the museum added a 950-space parking garage and the CineDome was converted to Dinosphere, which is built within and around the former CineDome. The Welcome Center was expanded again in 2009 increasing the total size of the museum to 472,900 square feet (43,930 m2).

The museum's current president and CEO, Jennifer Pace Robinson, was hired in 2021, replacing Jeffrey H. Patchen, who had been hired in 1999, after serving as a Senior Program Officer at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

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