Children’s Museum of Manhattan

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan was founded, under the name GAME (Growth Through Art and Museum Education), in 1973. With New York City in a deep fiscal crisis, and school art, music, and cultural programs eliminated, a loosely organized, highly creative group of artists and educators set up a basement storefront to serve Harlem and the Upper West Side. With a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a city-owned courthouse was renovated into a small exhibition, studio, and workshop and renamed the Manhattan Laboratory Museum. The museum became the Children’s Museum of Manhattan in the 1980’s and moved to its current location in 1989.

The museum expanded exhibit and programming space adding a media center, an outdoor environmental center and an early childhood center. CMOM’s visibility and audience grew with the World of Pooh exhibit, created through a partnership with Disney. Wordplay, the first exhibit designed specifically for children 4 and younger opened. CMOM’s Executive Director, Andy Ackerman, served as president of the Association of Children’s Museum’s and hosted the 1999 ACM annual conference. In 2000, CMOM completed construction to add a new entrance, lobby, and supplement exhibit space.

Recent popular exhibits include Body Odyssey, Seuss, Where the Wild Things Are, Art Inside Out, The Magic School Bus, Charlie Brown, The Art of Marc Chagall, and Monkey King: Journey to China. In the fall of 2005, CMOM featured a bilingual exhibit featuring Dora the Explorer and an Alice in Wonderland exhibit, and a new exhibit introducing children to the art of Andy Warhol in November, 2005. In May of 2006, they introduced a Clifford the Big Red Dog exhibit and will debut the state of the art PlayWorks exhibit in September.

The mission of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan is to inspire children and families to learn about themselves and our culturally diverse world through a unique environment of interactive exhibitions and programs.

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan helps children learn in varied ways and at an individual pace, stimulates their imagination, and encourages exploration, creativity and application of knowledge in fun and challenging ways.

CMOM features an active education program that performs workshops, classes, school trips, and outreach programs. CMOM offers programming for young children through graduate students. Each year, over 50,000 school children visit the museum. Noted visual artist David Rios is the current supervisor of public programs.