As a children’s museum, we care about the safety and well-being of children and their families, as well as the community we are raising these children to inherit. We owe it to our children to work toward a world where racism, gun violence, and police brutality are unacceptable.
As our community processes the results of this trial, we as parents and caregivers need to look to the immediate needs of our children. In the short term, you can limit children’s access to news and discussion of frightening events. Young children often can’t contextualize events the way adults and adolescents can, meaning that distant dangers can feel immediate and one event reported repeatedly can feel like many instances of violence. For more information, NPR’s Parenting: Difficult Conversations series has a useful podcast/article: What To Say To Kids When The News Is Scary.
In the long term, ignoring racism and violence will not protect our children from their effects. Caregivers should talk to children in age-appropriate ways about these tough topics.
In 2020 we put together a selection of resources on teaching children about racism. Tragically, these are as relevant now as they were then:
To that list, we’ll add the picture book Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice (Marianne Celano, PhD, ABPP, Marietta Collins, PhD, and Ann Hazzard, PhD, ABPP, illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin and published by the American Psychological Association’s Magination Press.) As per the publisher “Something Happened in Our Town follows two families — one White, one Black — as they discuss a police shooting of a Black man in their community. The story aims to answer children’s questions about such traumatic events, and to help children identify and counter racial injustice in their own lives. Includes an extensive Note to Parents and Caregivers with guidelines for discussing race and racism with children, child-friendly definitions, and sample dialogues.”
There’s much work to be done. As an organization deeply invested in creating a society where all children and families can play and learn together, and as a cornerstone of our downtown, we will stay active in the conversation and the work.
Scenario 1: The kid bounced up and down in her seat. Beside her in the darkened theater, her mother tensed. Mom had moved mountains to get tickets to this theatrical adaptation of the kid’s #1 favorite animated movie. Act one was only halfway through. Finally, her daughter looked over and asked, in a whisper that carried for two rows in either direction, “Is it time to go yet?”
Scenario 2: It had taken serious cat-herding, but the whole family finally piled into the car. Two pit-stops and one attempted-fratricide later they finally arrived at the trailhead the guidebooks gushed about as “must-hike” for families in Wisconsin. Thirty-five minutes and a light drizzle later, the choruses of “I’m tired, let’s go home!” began.
As parents and caregivers, we’ve all been there. We want to limit their screen time. We want to get the kids out of the house and doing something “enriching,” but does it have to be so darn hard?
Exhausted and exasperated parents and caregivers: we see you!
At Madison Children’s Museum, we offer a wealth of activities to fit your child’s attention span right this very minute. One day they’re so focused that they park themselves at the light table and build a miniature version of the Louvre Pyramid out of Magna-Tiles. The next day they’re so squirrelly that they do a dab of paint here, a couple of legos there, go down the slide once, and then are off to throw together a felt pizza. And the next day they just want to cuddle up in your lap in a Wildernest pod and read a picture book. Our whole museum is built so that they can follow their bliss, wherever it might lead: inside and out.
Trying to get a toddler into cold-weather gear can feel like prepping an astronaut for a spacewalk. Want them to get some fresh air without the whole nine yards? Take them up to our rooftop to glide around on our skating patch or to run around in the garden and then scoot them inside to visit the critters in the Clubhouse when they start to feel chilly.
A major family expedition is worth attempting every now and then, if only for the stories you can tell later. But for every other day of the year, when you know they need to get out of the house but you “just can’t even” with all the hassle, come to the museum. We’ve got you covered.
At Madison Children’s Museum, children are the center of our work. We encourage their fullest potential as artists, scientists, inventors, naturalists, explorers, and, above all, empathetic global citizens. As adults and community leaders, regardless of our individual political beliefs, we have a responsibility to live our institutional values and model them for children by demanding humane treatment of ALL children.
We denounce the violation of children’s human rights at U.S. border facilities and the separation of children from their families. Decades of scientific research clearly demonstrate that traumatic living conditions and the separation of children from their families cause irrevocable harm to children’s physical, emotional, and mental health.
We urge everyone to take action. Contact your legislators to demand reunification of families and humane treatment of asylum seekers. Write, call, or email your government representatives. You can find yours here: https://legis.wisconsin.gov/, https://whoismyrepresentative.com/
Comments Off on Deb Gilpin, President & CEO of Madison Children’s Museum, Announces Retirement
Board begins national search for new leader
After 11 years at the helm of Madison Children’s Museum, and 36 years total in children’s and science museums, Deb Gilpin, MCM’s President and CEO, will retire this summer. The museum’s board of directors has begun a national search for her replacement.
“Deb leaves the museum in great shape, giving plenty of notice for the daunting task of replacing her,” says Matt Premo, president of the MCM board. “We’re in the admirable position of looking for a leader who can continue to make great things happen.”
Like so many of the museum’s best features, Gilpin is locally grown, born and raised in the Madison area. She began her museum career in 1987, when she helped open the Discovery Museum, a new hands-on museum in Acton, Mass. After serving as CEO for ten years, she moved to the Arizona Science Center, and then opened another museum—the Children’s Museum of Phoenix, growing it for nine years from infancy to one of the top children’s museums in the country.
Deb brought her talent, experience, and passion for the field to MCM. Under her oversight, MCM continued to flourish as an industry leader, setting the standard for other museums in sustainability and breaking down barriers to access.
Gilpin took the job in 2013, three years after MCM moved from State Street to its larger current home on Capitol Square. Under her leadership the museum grew and thrived, building several new exhibits; improving its financial position through donations, grants, and earned revenue; increasing employee pay and retention; growing community partnerships; and continuing the museum’s history of innovation and leadership in the children’s museum field.
She led the museum through 15 months of pandemic-forced closure and the long, slow process of reopening and recovery. Like many leaders of businesses and nonprofits, she made hard decisions about layoffs, terminations, and cutting positions. Within months of reopening the museum, the Wonderground opened—a 10,000-square-foot, sustainably built playground for active, imaginative play, constructed on the museum’s former parking lot. In place of an unusable, structurally compromised eyesore, the community now had a safe place for healthy outdoor play just as families were cautiously venturing back out. By that time, many staff forced to leave in the crisis had been rehired.
Since reopening, the museum is stronger and more successful by all significant measures.
During her time, Gilpin oversaw the launch of several innovative programs. In response to the first Race to Equity report in 2014, the Teen Workforce program was launched to improve the job opportunity gap between teens of color and their peers. That program continues with new teens joining the staff team each summer, while many graduates of the program have been promoted into other positions at the museum.
In 2017, the museum launched the First-Time Parent Membership, giving a free membership to every family with a new child, until the child turns 18 months old—2,000 families signed up before the end of the first year. That program is also still running, and at least a half dozen other children’s museums have consulted with MCM staff and launched their own similar programs.
In 2022 MCM opened the first pay-what-you-can restaurant in a museum, Little John’s Lunchbox. The cafe served nearly 16,000 meals last year, many to food insecure families. The Lunchbox was recently listed by the American Association of Museums as one of twelve noteworthy innovations in 2023.
The Access for Everyone program, reducing barriers to museum admission, was in place when Gilpin arrived. Under her leadership, usage increased from 17 to 30%, a healthy indication that MCM is serving families who might not otherwise be able to afford to visit. In 2018, MCM further reduced barriers by removing documentation requirements from Access for Everyone membership and admission programs. This simple change has likely contributed to the increased usage—and decreased stigma.
Gilpin has timed her departure to go out on a high note: Early this summer, MCM will open a major new exhibit, The Nice Age Trail. That exhibit grows from the Caretakers of Wonder initiative, funded through a national leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. MCM is leading a cohort of eight children’s museums and science centers on a two-year project supporting young children and their families in the face of climate change. Here in the Madison area, the exhibit will be the most visible product of Caretakers of Wonder. But later in the summer of 2024, the influence of Caretakers of Wonder will grow well beyond Madison—and the other eight partner sites—as the project shares learning and resources with the national museum field and other organizations that serve young children and families.
Gilpin has made her mark here and in the national museum field, leaving programs, exhibits, and ideas that will benefit children for many years to come. She plans to take three months off after her retirement to rest, recharge, and travel. Then she expects to find new ways to serve.
“I see every child who comes through the front door like a glowing ball of potential. I’ve always been curious about drawing out those gifts—for their own good as well as for the benefit of others with whom they will interact,” says Gilpin. “I think it’s those kids with their nearly limitless potential who I’ll miss most.”
The board has retained the services of the Arts Consulting Group, a national full-service consulting firm specializing in executive search for arts and culture organizations.
If you’re looking forward to a trip to MCM, there’s lots you can do before and after to get the most out of your time here. Our staff has compiled some tips to help make sure you and your children are ready for an amazing visit—and important information on how to keep making connections through discovery learning and creative play after.
Things to Do Before Your Visit
Go over the Five Rules for Safe Fun with your group of children:
Stay and play with your chaperone
Use your walking feet
Share the space
Help clean up
Eat only in the café area.
Review the floor plan to decide which exhibits you would like to attend and in what order
If you are visiting Madison, be sure to explore nearby attractions and family-friendly restaurants
Ways to Continue Learning after Your Visit
Practice Sustainability: Teach your group of children about the importance of recycling and composting. Keep your own recycle or compost bins, and tell kids which items go in each bin, how they are reused, and why it is necessary. Reading children’s books like The Lorax and watching movies like Wall-E are easy and educational ways adults can help spark children’s interests in saving the environment at an early age.
Do It Yourself: Encourage your group of kids to be creative through various DIY projects. Use recycled materials or natural products to make your very own piece of artwork. Take a look at our Pinterestaccount for tons of amazing craft ideas that your kids will love.
Make Chores Fun: Let children know their help is genuinely needed and appreciated. Include them in cooking meals; they will be excited to try new foods, especially if they helped prepare it. Other tedious chores such as cleaning and doing laundry can seem more entertaining to kids if adults can turn them into a game or sing a song while doing so. If they think their work is necessary, they will be much happier doing it.
Gardening: Help kids tend to a small garden or even just one or two plants this summer. One beneficial way to ignite an interest in children is to teach them how to take care of a small container garden. In doing so, they will learn about the life cycles and the production of food. This also fosters children’s sense of responsibility when they have spent time helping their plants grow.
Active Play: Make sure your kids enjoy the beautiful summer weather by going outside to play. There are hundreds of sports, games and various other activities to do outdoors, and kids love to go on walks or go to the playground as well. By moving and playing outside, children are able to exercise, learn, and enjoy the fresh air.
By Sandra Bonnici Hoecherl
Associate Director of Education
Equity. Achievement gaps. Record-high teen unemployment. These are common phrases heard in our community and they are deep and multifaceted challenges we face. We all have a stake and a role to play in making sure that our youth are growing, learning, and reaching their full potentials. Sometimes the challenges can seem so large that solutions can feel almost out of reach or too large for any one agency to make an impact. But every action counts and sometime you must start small. It is with that in mind that the MCM Education Department has launched a pilot program focusing on teen workforce development.
This past semester MCM has been piloting and partnering with an alternative high school program run through Goodman Community Center and MMSD called “Seed to Table.” The nine students enrolled in this program are working toward graduation and learning about urban agriculture and culinary arts. Weekly collaborations with these students looks to transfer what they are learning in the classroom onto our rooftop garden and other outdoor environments. They also push to enhance additional job skills. This pilot program has been made possible through a grant from JP Morgan Chase.
A Seed to Table student with a turtle that lives on MCM’s Rooftop Ramble.
Every week students work with MCM rooftop manager, Julie King, to learn about different aspects of non-traditional urban garden spaces. Students have learned about green roof systems, animal care and handling in public settings, visitor engagement, and planting and growing in rooftop and patio environments. Plus they had great fun along the way. These experiences will help prepare them to apply for seasonal employment here at MCM and also build career skills in an emerging sector, urban agriculture. We are looking forward to welcoming our newest employees into MCM this summer!
Also during this first semester, Seed to Table students—including those most in need of support and resources to graduate and to envision a career path—worked with MCM staff to develop best practices for their unique learning experience. And, in addition to helping fund this project, JP Morgan Chase volunteers will be meeting with the students in the near future to coach them on interview skills and financial literacy.
Our first semester of working in-depth with a small group of students in helping them attain graduation and work force skills has proven to be invaluable learning and development for MCM. The next step is to continue to grow a program that will be part of a larger community solution toward decreasing the achievement gap and building youth workforce skill. We will continue to partner and collaborate with local businesses and agencies and keep our members up to date and involved in our progress.
We’re looking forward into 2014 and predicting you may have a kid’s birthday party or two–or three, or four!–to plan in the next 12 months. Just a reminder that Madison Children’s Museum can help you throw a great celebration. Our staff offers stress-free solutions that make birthday parties a piece of cake! Visit our website party page to reserve a date and learn more about planning an MCM party.
Since you’re online, check out our Pinterest party board. Even if you don’t celebrate in our learning playground, you’ll find lots of fun ideas as you wait for baby New Year 2014 to arrive!
We’ve got custom Carl’s Cakes or you can bring in your own.
Décor that fits in great with our “Lavish Lego” activity theme.
A beautiful, handmade birch bark canoe is on display now through December at Madison Children’s Museum. Walk through the MCM doors and look up to see this Ojibwe masterpiece. The creation of the canoe was lead by Wayne Valliere (Mino-giizhig in Ojibwe), of the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
Click through to this UW blog to learn more, read the WSJ article on the canoe, and be sure to watch the YouTube video detailing how it was carefully crafted based on Ojibwe traditions. Then be sure to come to the children’s museum to see it first-hand!
Our new arts coordinator, Laurie Rossbach is an artist with a passion for making giant puppets. Since her first visit to MCM 20 years ago, she has dreamed of working for the museum. In the years building up to taking on her new art studio role at MCM, she has volunteered with museum programs, served as a visiting artist, and even built the puppet theater in Possible-opolis™.
As the parent of a seven-year-old son, she especially appreciates the museum’s commitment to free exploration, creativity, and collaboration.
“This is an exciting place to make art with kids – for parents, artists, and teachers.”
Originally from New Orleans, Laurie brings a love of festivals and colorful pageantry. She is the driving force behind Madison’s Procession of the Species. She envisions the Art Studio as a place where people come from across the community to collaborate on large projects – perhaps tied to seasonal festivals or other events.
It takes a reliable, quality team to implement those kinds of projects. So Laurie is thrilled by the chance to work the Art Studio’s assistants, volunteers, and interns.
Coming soon is the Art and Culture Festival. On October 5 and 6 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., it is free and for all ages.
Wisconsin artists will demonstrate everything from book binding to hot glass sculpture
Visitors can combine this with the Hmong Fall Harvest on the Rooftop Ramble
Getting ready to harvest some of your garden crops? Not sure what veggies are in season and found cheaper at the grocery store this month? Try consulting this nifty site we just found here. It shows you exactly what foods are in season in the Midwest and when.
But, just for kicks, here’s a list of what is in season this month in Wisconsin:
Kale
Chard
Beets