The Long Way Around - Fall 1990
By Sally Osberg

…and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T.S. Eliot

Several times a day, I walk through the new Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. For me, this walk-about is a chance to absorb and reflect upon what we have built here. Even more, it's a kind of intentional wandering. I set out not with a specific purpose, but on purpose, trusting the process through which I'll find something, learn something, experience something-how the shaft of sun from the great skylight angles across the wall, what a toddler and her engineer-parent are figuring out in the "Rhythms of Traffic" exhibit, who's here today.

Something more than exhibits or the facility that contains them, this museum and the process of putting it together are probably best described by a metaphor: the act of venturing forth, setting out from the place that's familiar, even comfortable. In my case, of course, I set out from my office on the second floor, insulated to some degree from the hubbub of children interacting with exhibits, knowing that along the way, revelations may or may not come. What is important, however, is that the process of wandering itself sparks curiosity-where was that shaft of sun at the solstice on June 21? What is the cognitive distance between the experiences of toddler and engineer at the same exhibit? Are the children form Washington school here today?

And so, in venturing to tell the story of this children's museum, I will adopt the structure of intentional wandering, emphasizing not just the discoveries along the way, the things we figure out, but the whys and hows bound up in process, experience and journey.

Fundamentally, it's the story of change: the evolutionary kind that you live and grow with, the kind, like the hormones of adolescence that lengthen your bones and sharpen your features almost imperceptibly, and the more dramatic kind, those paradigm shifts that forced you to decide who you will become.

In fact, looking back over the seven years of start-up for the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose is a humbling experience; for a children's museum, ours had a relatively long gestation. But before attempting to reconstruct the account of how one institution developed, grew, changed, and finally arrived at opening day, I'll begin these itinerant thoughts with some reflections on our philosophy, which evolved into our mission statement as we worked through the development process.

Some Thoughts About Mission

Like children's museums everywhere, we have from the beginning considered ourselves a client centered institution. Our purpose is to provide children with opportunities to learn about themselves, other people, and the world. In this endeavor, we are guided by respect for youngsters, particularly for their distinctive ways of learning and for their curiosity about the world around them.

Because of this posture, we resist the impulse to "talk down" to children. We include in this category not just the typical cartoon mascot mode of reaching the younger age group but even various attempts at modeling and simulation. Appreciating children's intense need to apprehend and make sense of things through concrete interaction, we are wary of most electronic simulations, striving instead of to offer genuine experiences with real objects, materials and equipment. You'll find the wet sort of water coursing through our "Waterworks" exhibit, real people and faces on our picture phone screen sand real acorns to grind in our "Around the World" exhibit. It's a personal conviction of mine that the child's great question is not "Why is the sky blue?" but "Is it real?" With so much in our lives that is artificial, vicarious, or unabashedly false and misleading, we have a responsibility to offer genuine interactions in our exhibitory and in our programs.

Driven and guided by this core concept of respect for the client, we found it had ramifications for everything we undertook: exhibits, organizational structures, even architecture. It's been revealing that so many of the people who visit us comment that the museum is bigger than they expected, more than they imagined. The bias toward trivialization is obvious: the implication is that a children's museum must be a lesser kind of place-smaller, less complex, less intriguing or worth visiting than a museum for adults. We like to think that with everything we do we can make at least some headway against such pervasive attitudes.

Let me give you an example. In approaching the architectural program, we decided early on that the facility could be something more than an envelope, that it could itself play a formative role in shaping the child's aesthetic awareness; in short, every aspect of the structure-its relation to its environment, its proportion, its quality of light, patterns of circulation, and spatial relationships-became consequential. The argument was compelling enough to win us a Design Arts grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which then enabled us to look carefully at the relationships struck between exhibitory and environments at other children's museums, and to appreciate our singular opportunity to bring both together in some meaningful way.

When the first schematic came back from our architect, Ricardo Legorreta, we knew that it was not right. It depicted a cube-like reflective glass structure with exhibits packed into a central core; access was via a peripheral artery that was wrapped around the entire structure. Once we had rejected this proposal, real conversation began, and the plans changed. The peripheral circulation path became a central crossroads; exhibits at the center scattered throughout the building; a shell of reflective glass became a pair of monumental window walls at the northern and eastern exposures and two wonderful skylights overhead. Thus, the building itself came to incorporate not just the trappings of our program-spaces for exhibits and a circulation route that was to double as a city streets exhibit-but, more importantly, its essence as well. Striking tensions emerged between outside and inside, volumes and planes, shadow and light, the obvious and the secret. Through this process of give and take between the architect and ourselves, the design came at last to capture the spirit of discover, and in that optimal way to fulfill its potential as a formative environment for children.

Even more important, the way we think about children undergirds our approach to exhibit development. As a result, we are particularly wary of anything that smacks of condescension. At one time, I included in my presentation kit an example of what I mean by this: a slide showing a chick hatchery exhibit-wonderful stuff, those bedraggled hatchlings chipping their way out-housed in a large fiberglass Humpty Dumpty head.

Needless to say, we resist such blatant patronizing, but we also keep a weather eye out for the more insidious tendency to frame exhibits around specific questions, the three-dimensional learning unit approach. Rather, we work hard to create exhibits that elicit curiosity, invite exploration, and reveal ideas that children can discover for themselves.

Our theme, which is included a part of our mission, is connection; our context is the idea of community-the myriad relationships within and between the natural and man-made worlds, and the way those relationships are expressed here in our own backyard, the South Bay community of San Jose, California. We begin our quest to understand the universe through reference in our exhibits to this place where most of our visitors live.

For example, youngsters can track planes on their final approach to San Jose's airport through our great skylight. Moments later, in our communications exhibit, these same children can make contact via picture phone to the airport control tower. Thus, the two experiences converge. The world outside and the museum experience come together, and the child's casual observation of the commonplace plane above becomes significant, triggering any number of associations: points of origin and departure; distance and time; navigation and communication. Rooted in the familiar and verifiable world of the child's own community, such an exhibit experience leads naturally to further questions and explorations, both in the museum and beyond.

We're interdisciplinary as well, believing that we do children a disservice by describing parameters around the experiences we offer in the arts, sciences, technology and the humanities. In an exhibit such as "Step into the Past," for example, we look at the history of a region once dubbed "The Valley of Heart's Delight," a place renowned for its apricots, prunes and cherries, through a set of exhibits that includes a 20-foot-high tank house (indigenous Valley architecture, an elegant structure which supported an elevated water tank), a treadle-operated grinding wheel, a working bee hive, and a wall-size photograph of an apricot orchard in full flower. Through these elements and others, the exhibit draws not only upon the humanities but also on the arts and the social, natural, and physical sciences. We strive, in short, to tell the story of another way of life, another time, and a different place in as inclusive and evocative a way as possible.

Getting Started

In some ways, we have been a classic Silicon Valley start-up, an entrepreneurial venture conceived not in the garage of Hewlett-Packard and Apple mythology, but in the children's museum equivalent: a kitchen in Santa Clara, California, where two mothers, concerned about the dearth of local resources for their youngsters, decided to create a children's museum.

From 1982-1983, the two co founders, Reba Wehrly and Carolyn Nelson, did the usual things: visited other museums (from Boston and Los Angeles they brought back tropical areas for exhibits; from Denver, they brought back the idea that museums could earn their keep with marketing ventures rather than through fund raising); developed a case statement (which quoted Piaget, describe d some familiar ideas for exhibits, envisioned a donated facility, and claimed financial self-sufficiency within three years); recruited people for the board (about eight people, including two accountants, the then-treasurer for Apple, the publicist of the County Office of Education, a pedodontist, a human resources professional, and themselves); filed for nonprofit status (it took the usual hounding over the course of a year to get this done); hosted some wine and cheese fund-raisers (people were promised Original Founder status for their initial contributions); held their first board meeting (Reba was elected president and Carolyn vice-president); and launched a program during the city of San Jose's week-long celebration of the arts for children.

Years later, I still think it was a fine start. We all wince a bit at the innocence of some of those early calls, but we were underway and that's what counts. Would I have done anything differently? Probably not. If anything is clear it's that the process of developing and children's museum is very much in the spirit of learning by doing. There's no script, no right way or wrong way; creative energy, resourcefulness, a tolerance for risk (our director of development, Marilee Jennings, says it's more than tolerance-it's in fact a celebration of risk!) and plain old tenacity turn out to be more important than getting the square footage right.

To be perfectly honest, I would have to tell you that we didn't even have a written mission statement until 1985-that the fulsome version described above came only as result of process. Thinking, talking, developing and trying out programs and exhibits, recruiting people for the board and the program committee, working with the schools-only after two full years of becoming what we were about could we begin to capture it.

With this admission, the turns in the road widen, and I shift from observations on the effects of organic change to those volitional decisions that affect everything.

Changing

In the beginning, as the above makes clear, we were callow, innocent, optimistic. Surely the world-the City of San Jose, corporations, individuals-would clamor to helped get this wonderful idea going. Someone would give us a building. Lots of folks would contribute money. People of power and influence would welcome the chance to serve on the board, and splendidly qualified people would volunteer their time and expertise. We would be up and going in two years right? Well…yes, and no.

People were intrigued by the idea. Wonderful people did volunteer. The city of San Jose listened, but no buildings were available, nor did any real estate moguls come forth with great deals. People were willing to give at modest levels, but only one couple made a contribution of any magnitude-and that check had high-risk investment written all over it. People of power and influence had to be mightily persuaded to serve on the board, but one at a time, they were persuaded.

Our biggest break came hewn Apple Computer cofounder Steve Wozniak got behind the museum. I had invited him to participate in a round-table discussion on the role of computers in informal learning environments, and his interest was sparked. Less than two months later, he wrote out a pledge for $800,000, an amount he identified after a quick scan at our proposed capital campaign scale of gifts. Needles to say, this was the "leadership gift" that made all the difference. That it came about not as a result of any grand strategy of cultivation, but because of one man's resonance with the museum's value and vision is the kind of story that makes professional fund raisers shake their heads in disbelief-but it most certainly did come about in this way and set the tone for the rest of our campaign. At its best, fund raising for CDM became a process of connecting people to the project and its mission, creating opportunities for them to enrich the learning and lives of the community's children.

Even with this Rubicon crossed and a clearly viable capital campaign underway, it was apparent this new museum was not going to happen overnight. Our first paradigm shift, catalyzed by Steve's generosity, came when we decided to get going anyway: if the community could not come to children's Discovery Museum, then Children's Discover Museum would go to the community. And so the program we'd tried out during Arts Education Week (to which I alluded to earlier), "Stage Door Stories," a language and dramatic arts workshop, was refined, a proposal crafted, and foundation funding secured. We were operational.

As it happened, this decision to begin with outreach affected everything: it put us on the path to learning what we were about through doing what we were about, and it made the business of identifying a building, developing exhibits, and structuring the organization an outgrowth of the process rather than the other way around.

It meant that when the plan for a donated facility didn't work out, we moved nimbly on to another option-buy and renovate. And that when the building we'd selected, an unpretentious but well-situated Merry Oldsmobile car dealership, turned out to be structurally unsound (in earthquake country, there's no fudging on such a determination), we forged ahead with plan three: lobby the city of san Jose (which at that time was in the first phase of massive redevelopment) to identify a parcel of land upon which we could jointly build a new structure.

Now all this maneuvering took place over about a two-year period, and each change had its ripples of consequence. In terms of size, we went form 20,000 square feet to more than 40,000 (final plans penciled out at 42,000); the budget grew from an original forecast of $2.2 to $8 million (by 1987, when the first approved schematic was costed, we had increased to $9.75 million); and the time frame for "opening the doors" stretched form two year sot four (ultimately, we wound up at just over seven).

Had we not gone ahead with outreach we would doubtless have felt more urgency about getting into a place. As it was, we were able to draw from the experience of outreach-first a program then a traveling exhibit-to appreciate our opportunity to create a children's museum that was at once of and for a unique community. The intertwined relationship of connections and community, articulated in our mission, began to make its presence felt as we evolved.

The decision to proceed with outreach also had a substantive impact on our process of exhibit development. Within a year of launching the "Stage Door Stories" program, we decided to tackle a traveling exhibit on the topic of disability, Familiar with Janet Kamien's work on "What If you Couldn't?," The Boston children's Museum's pioneering exhibit on the subject, I brought her in as a consultant, convened two roundtable discussions, and hired a developer to begin a thoughtful and thorough process of research and development. The impetus of this was twofold: to understand children's questions, fears and misapprehensions about the topic, and to investigate the experiences and perspectives of the disabled community. Design was decidedly secondary to this process, which was, in effect, an open-ended foray into issues related to client needs and to the topic.

For the exhibits which would go into the museum itself, we took a different tack. Once we'd determined that we were going to build a building, it seemed wise to begin serious work on exhibits; from the beginning, we had wanted the exhibits program to shape the building program and not vice versa. And serious work on exhibits meant a serious relationship with professionals so we interviewed three exhibit design firms, finally selecting Hamilton Kramer Design of San Francisco. The relationship was to be fairly straightforward: HKD would work with us to develop a concept for the museum, one which could become the basis for our building program and out of which individual exhibits in the content areas we'd identified could emerge. We proceeded.

I draw the comparison between these two approaches not invidiously, but to illustrate the guileless facility with which we handled the daunting proposition of building a whole museum, trying out simultaneously two developmental processes, and thereby discovering strengths and failings in both. I wish I could say that I tumbled quickly to the relative merits of each method, one controlled by the professional designer and the other by the generalist developer, that we created the perfect hybrid. In fact, we were experimenting, unwittingly parlaying the opportunity of the startup to try out different methods.

Eventually, we settled on what we thought was an inspired means of integrating our client-centered, content0respectful mode of development with the practical exigencies of getting a building and exhibits whose challenge it would be to dovetail exhibits and building development. He would oversee a complex and rich process that would draw form our experience with outreach and enroll legions of able and interested community volunteers to assist in research and development. That phase done, we would prototype exhibit ideas before proceeding with both outside fabrication contracts and internal production of final iterations. Simultaneously, we would mix and match building plans to exhibit concepts. It was a grand scheme but an impossible task.

Here's what I learned, the hard way. That doing a building from scratch, even with a reasonable program (which we had, thanks to thoughtful and able work on the concept plan from Hamilton Kramer Design, and to the assistance of a group of volunteer architects) is a formidable undertaking; by dint of its scope and the inflexible progression of its architectural phases, it can subsume all other aspects of institutional development, co-opt resources and seduce everyone's interest. This happened to us, even with a conscientious decision to let our experience with outreach lead the way, even with a mission we all felt deeply, even with a staff who tried valiantly to make it all work. Tellingly, more time energy and thought went into our construction of a 1'' model of the building than into 5,000 square feet of exhibit prototypes which we installed as part of the debut of San Jose's new convention center.

With this growing realization, we were headlong into the second paradigm shift. With the help of a management consultant, the persistent chiding and encouragement of colleagues I respected, especially Signe Hanson and Mary Worthington, and, blessedly, the full support of our board, we realigned priorities, bringing on staff someone to ensure not only that exhibits got built, but that they evolved out of our core values. And that meant, even though we'd broken ground on the facility and time was collapsing in around us, reviving the iterative development process with which we had started.

Call it what you will-exploration, mucking about, inquiry-the process begets curiosity and dumps you unceremoniously on the path of learning. Set out knowing exactly what you want to do, and why and how, and you'll miss it: the wandering way that leads to discovery you make for yourself.

Robert Frost wrote that all really intelligent people live by tentatives, not by tenets…and for new children's museums this seems apt advice. It's risky business, developing a children's museum and all that goes with it, especially when you figure out that exhibits, organizational structures, operating policies, even (especially!) fund raising, must come form your raison d'etre: respect for the child and passion for the process of learning.

Indeed, that there is no alternative to this way fraught with pitfalls and pratfalls came home resoundingly to me about halfway through the intense time during which we were building the facility and exhibit prototypes simultaneously. I had toured a group of elementary school children through the museum while it was under construction, thinking this would be an unusual and exciting experience, and then taken them on to our fabrication shop where they could actually try out some of he prototypes. The tahnk0you notes were revealing; to a child, they were perfunctory on the visit to the construction site, but wildly enthusiastic over the shop. One child put it perfectly: "I really liked the place where you build what you do there."

How right! No jargon, no references even to "exhibits" or "museums," just a straight shot to the heart of what we are: an institution whose job it is to speak frankly and honestly to children, "to build what you do there," and to cherish in that charge all that we as human beings hunger to understand.