Please Touch

The Innovation and influence of the first childrens museums in the US When it opened in 1899, the Brooklyn Childrens Museum greeted visitors with a new experience. Rather than carefully ensconcing artifacts and curios behind protective glass, the staff took the unusual step of moving the objects out of their cases and into the hands of the children, inviting them to please touch. Born out of the reformist spirit of the Progressive Era, the museum represented a new kind of institution, one whose primary purpose was not to collect, preserve, and display objects but rather to educate a specific audience. Over the next twenty-five years, three other childrens museums opened with a similar mission and approach: the Boston Childrens Museum (1913), the Detroit Childrens Museum (1917), and The Childrens Museum of Indianapolis (1925). At a time when most museums were led by men, women played a critical role in overseeing this first wave of childrens museums. As the number of childrens museums grew, women rose to prominence in the museum profession at large, advocating for new ways for institutions to interact with and serve their audiences. By 1965, the childrens museum movement had succeeded in demonstrating rich rewards and had influenced all types of museums and continues to do so to this day. Drawing on archival materials, newspaper accounts, and the writings of museum workers and professionals, Please Touch carefully chronicles the early histories of these four seminal childrens museums. Jessie Swigger provides thorough institutional histories of each and connects them to broader currents in education, such as the Progressive education movement, and to key events in early- to mid-twentieth-century US history, including immigration, the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War. She also demonstrates how these institutions were fundamentally shaped by womens leadership, and how they challenged and expanded the definition of museums and pressed museum practices in new directions.