Life-size fiberglass horses are fairly easy to locate. What's harder to find, actually, are realistic ears of fake corn.
When you plan exhibits for a children's museum, you learn such details, says exhibit director Alan Hansen. What seems so simple and obvious isn't necessarily.This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Children's Museum of Utah. The museum is sustaining itself, even growing and expanding. Yet, it didn't happen as simply as everyone expected it would.
Former Utah first lady Norma Matheson has been on the museum's advisory board since the early days. "The reason I became involved was because I could see what a children's museum did in other communities. Here in Utah we have more children per capita than any other state - and yet nothing had been done on that front. . . ."
It seemed so obvious. Utah has lots of children. Utahns care about children. Ergo, a children's museum would be, if not a gold mine, at least a financially viable idea.
In reality, the Children's Museum of Utah nearly had to close its doors twice during the first 10 years - due to lack of funding.
Today, the museum is a solid part of the community. Fund raising is becoming easier. The museum has a staff of nine, annual visitations run at about 75,000 and an annual operating budget of $350,000 - 49 percent raised by admissions, 32 percent by donations, and the rest by fund-raising events.
By way of comparison, the Denver Children's Museum - now 20 years old with a $2.5 million budget and 300,000 visitors annually - was a bit farther along when it reached its 10th birthday. In 1983, admissions accounted for about 75 percent of the annual $600,000 budget. There were 120,000 visitors.
Looking back on the past 10 years - realizing the work and money it's taken to get where they are today - the board and staff members of the Children's Museum speak with cautious optimism.
Treasurer Carolyn Roll wants to see admissions grow. With dozens of exhibits for children to play with, she says the museum is underutilized. Stacey Clark, the guild president, sees the need for more volunteers, both for fund-raising efforts and to help children with the hands-on learning.
Matheson values the building, with its convenient location, ample parking and yet undeveloped space. "It still has a lot of potential. Every time I walk in the big pool area I have visions of a submarine, or a a hot-air balloon - something the children could ride in or operate - a way to have an experience, to demonstrate certain scientific principles, not just by looking at them or reading about them.
"It's exciting, but it takes time for the concept of a children's museum to build and grow."
At first the Children's Museum of Utah was just a newsletter and a post office box - and a community dream. In 1979 there were 40 children's museums throughout the country. "Why not in Utah?" people asked each other. "Why can't our children have what children in Brooklyn, Boston and Seattle have - a chance to learn by playing with water wheels and dental chairs and computers and lights and levers and fulcrums?"
Civic leaders formed an advisory board, with Barbara Petty as chairwoman. Local television news director Spencer Kinard was the spokesman.
Salt Lake Mayor Ted Wilson was supportive, too. Salt Lake City came up with $2,000 for a geological study on the city-owned Wasatch Springs swimming pool building at 840 N. 300 West. The building was found to be located somewhere near but not exactly on top of a fault - making it about as safe as any other building in northern Utah.
So the city agreed to a $1-a-year, 50-year lease and helped the museum board obtain a $350,000 community block grant to remodel the building. Joseph Linton was the architect. The work began in the summer of 1981.
Within a year, Phase I was completed and the exterior and 4,000 feet of floor space had been restored. Western Airlines donated a 727 cockpit. Evans & Sutherland donated a computer exhibit.
Mohammed Kashoggi donated a collection of old films and offered to store them until the museum's theater was completed in Phase III of the construction. President Reagan wrote a letter of congratulations.
The grand opening was scheduled and rescheduled during 1982, while the board of directors tried to raise just a little more money and just a few more exhibits. Finally, in October 1983, it opened - complete with cockpit, computers, some optical boxes, a saber-tooth tiger excavation table, a KSL-TV display and a Jarvik-7 artificial heart operating table.
During the decade, some programs became synonymous with TCMU: the Cookie Lovers Festival; the Pinwheel Press (a child-produced newspaper); Hug-A-Tree; the No Ball At All (a unique New Year's Eve celebration wherein the guests got to stay at home in their pajamas and send the money they would have spent celebrating to the museum).
In 1990, oceanographer Robert Ballard helped the Children's Museum bring the Jason Project to Utah. For a week the museum was linked by satellite with Ballard's command ship as he used a robot to explore the wreckage of two warships. "It was a huge leap for the museum, and one we almost broke even on," says Margaret Godfrey, former chairwoman of the board of trustees.
When you work for a children's museum you aren't afraid to take some leaps. You learn both how to dream big and how to be realistic. You find comfort in the fact that the Children's Museum of Utah hasn't almost gone broke for more than five years.
You don't let it bother you too much that the theater that was going to be part of Phase III hasn't been built, and that the Kashoggi film collection never materialized.
There's always hope in the children's museum business. That next big grant could open more space for the Lallapalooza art project, bring in an elevator for the basement - making the Golden Spike train exhibit available to everyone. Heck, the next big grant could build that theater and even put a submarine in the swimming pool.
The community has been generous. One recent grant opened the upstairs gallery. An exhibit on ranch life - complete with a fiberglass horse that children can saddle - will open in November.
If it has been more difficult than the founders ever envisioned to fund and maintain TCMU, museum director Richard Morris is beginning to understand why. It's like he told the Irish government officials who are in the process of building a children's museum in Dublin. "Children are rambunctious." The exhibits cost more to maintain and refurbish than anyone ever plans on.
When the Kenworth company installed a truck cab at TCMU a few years ago, officials told Morris it was indestructable. He smiled. Three days later, the gas pedal was ripped from the floor. "We repaired it and it stayed repaired," says Morris. The point is, if a company ever wants to test its products for sturdiness, Morris will volunteer the museum as a test site.
Another thing Morris told the Dublin officials: Don't just take an exhibit because someone offers it. Make sure it fits the needs and enthusiasms of children. And as for sheer numbers of children being any predictor of the financial feasibility of a museum, long-time TCMU board member Pam Joklik points up the problem with this.
"The difficulty is keeping the admission costs down so the parents who need it the most can afford to bring their children," she says.
Today admission is $2.50 per child, $3 for adults, with family passes available for $35 a year. The museum doesn't want to raise admissions and has come to count heavily on corporate sponsors to help pay for school groups that otherwise couldn't afford the fees.
It's easy to get enthusiastic about a brand-hands-on, educational museum. Joklik hears that enthusiasm again, as people talk about the new board that has just been formed to bring a state science center to Utah. Joklik - along with fellow TCMU board members Matheson, Jan Bennett and Frank Child - has been working with the Children's Museum for 10 years. "We've nursed it through all kinds of problems and headaches.
"I think the concept of a science center is dynamic and marvelous. I just don't think people realize how costly a science center will be. . . . I would love to see it, but I don't know where the money is going to come from. The sad thing would be to lose the Children's Museum when you've had something going for 10 years and are 98 percent there."
The next 10 years will be easier for TCMU, Matheson predicts. By the time the Children's Museum of Utah is 20 years old, it will have the support of people who came to it first when they were 8 or 9 years old, and who are coming back again, with their own children, to see the exhibits they used to love, and to check out what's new.