The Strong National Museum of Play. G. ROLLIE ADAMS, president and chief executive; NIC RICKETTS, curator. JON-PAUL DYSON, director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games; LAUREN SOLDANO, Collections Manager; DEBBIE MCCOY, Director of Education; ELIZABETH LATHROP, Director of Libraries; CARRIE MCNEAL, Director of Conservation.
The Strong National Museum of Play is the only museum in the world completely dedicated to play. It is an interactive, collections-based educational institution in Rochester, New York, devoted to the history and exploration of play. It collects and preserves artifacts, documents, and other materials that illuminate the meaning and importance of play. The hundreds of thousands of objects in The Strong’s collections comprise the world’s most comprehensive assemblage of toys, games, dolls, electronic games, and other items related to play. It is founded in part by contributions and grants from individuals, corporations, foundations and state and federal entities.
The Strong was founded in 1968 by Margaret Woodbury Strong, a rich woman whose biggest interest was collecting things, especially dolls and toys. At the beginning of its history, the museum was known as “Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum of Fascination” and was housed in two gallery-like wings to Ms. Strong’s magnificent suburban Rochester residence. In 1982 the Museum opened to the public at One Manhattan Square in downtown Rochester. Over the last decades, the museum grew dramatically, expanding its collections, facilities, and resources. Nowadays it is a comprehensive institution that spans more than 282,000 square feet and serves global audiences on-site at the museum and online. It carries out this mission through five programmatic arms called “Play Partners” : the National Museum of Play; the International Center for the History of Electronic Games; the National Toy Hall of Fame; the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play and the American Journal of Play.
The Strong’s Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play, named by one of the foremost play scholars of the last 100 years, is a multidisciplinary research repository devoted to the intellectual, social, and cultural history of play, that also include significant holdings reflecting the work of leading American scholars and educators in the fields of play and early childhood education. The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) collects, studies, and interprets video games, other electronic games and related materials, produces a blog and e-newsletter, conducts and encourages research and writing about the historical and cultural significance of video games and other electronic games, maintains a timeline of key moments in video game history, and presents at video game and play-related conferences. The Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame recognizes toys that have inspired creative play and enjoyed popularity over a sustained period. Each year, the hall inducts new honorees and showcases both new and historic versions of classic toys beloved by generations.
Is the Strong a museum only for children? Of course not. But children are undoubtedly the primary focus of the Museum, they’re the ones who are going to the get the most fun out of it. Everything in the museum is designed to get children’s attention. The Strong Museum is not the typical museum, it is extremely active and engaging. When you go to the Strong you don’t just go around and observe objects of the past, you’re constantly called to be engaged in something: to touch, to hear, to dance, to play. In the Strong families can find a perfect place to play and learn new things while having fun. Adult people can feel as they are transported back to their infancy. They may find the games and toys they used to play when they were little and indulge in the memory of the past while learning about the history of that games and the way they influenced or were influence by the popular culture of that time. The museum is also a reference point for students, teachers, scholars and collectors around the world.
The Strong Museum’ mission is pretty clear: to collect and preserve objects of the American everyday culture of play. The Strong owns and cares for the world’s most comprehensive collection of toys, dolls, board games, video games, other electronic games, books, documents, and other historical materials related to play. But its purpose is primarily educational. It seeks to ensure that present and future generations understand the critical role of play in human physical, social, and intellectual development and the ways in which play reflects cultural history. The museum affirms its mission explicitly, its walls are full of quotations of distinguished intellectuals and psychologists about the role of play in our life: “Playing is our brain’s favorite way of learning” by Diane Ackerman; “Almost all creativity involves purposeful play” by Abraham Maslow. The educational purpose of the Museum is accomplished at its maximum with the Woodbury School preschool programs. The programs are Reggio Emilia-inspired, an approach that encourages teachers and students to work together to plan the curriculum and create projects. Children at Woodbury School learn and develop in playful activities set among the museum’s hands-on exhibits. Small and large group activities involve art, music, cooperative games, movement, pre-reading, math, and other age-appropriate experiences.
The Strong Museum develops in two floors. At the entrance there is a carousel, the food court and the toy shop to welcome the guests. In the atrium of the admission desk there is a wall dedicated to the history of the museum and the founder, Margaret Strong, and the bottom of the wall is decorated with tiles of handprints of young visitors. The first floor is completely dedicated to children, it looks more like a recreation ground than a museum. The design of the rooms is very colorful and creative, every corner of the rooms seems to call the children to do something and attract their curiosity. The labels with a big colorful title attract the attention and the body of the text is written in a simple language and an informal character style. The Field of Play is an area that includes cases with collection items and a play area. Children are called to play with lenses and weights, enter in a special room with a distorted perspective, play with special balls, grab some book from the shelf, read, draw and give free way to their imagination. By doing all these things they can learn about perspective, balance, gravity and many other things. Many other play areas are open in this floor:
the Kid to Kid area, with a plane, a theatre with costumes and many tables with games, books and computers;
the Sesame Street area, tribute to the history of Muppets;
the Wegmans Super Kid store, a mini Wegmans store where children can pretend to do the shopping or even being a cashier;
One Place History is an area that reproduces a typical early 20th century house, especially the parlor and the kitchen where children can see and touch one of the first telephones, explore a kitchen without current water and electricity, see how was doing the laundry in world without washing machines and many other things.
In accordance with the museum mission, the play stimulates children’s curiosity and learning process.
The second floor is designed for older visitors, it is home of the National Toy Hall of Fame, the Time Lab and the Arcade games areas. As soon as you reach the second floor we find yourself in the Time Machine, a room with a big screen surrounded by old radios and a post with different buttons to operate the machine. There is a bottom for each of the most significant decade of the 20th century. As you press the bottom a documentary about the most important history moments, cultural trends, music and life of that period starts. The travel through time continues as you explore changing American trends in toys, music, popular culture, and more in the adjacent area. This unique learning laboratory brims with objects from America’s past and present including historic toys, sports gear, video games, and television and movie clips. After that the visitors marvel at a display of historic dolls from The Strong’s renowned doll collection including a rare Alice in Wonderland character set, Thomas Edison’s talking doll, a G. I. Joe prototype and Mable, the doll that started the museum, Margaret Strong’s childhood companion.
And in the middle of this big room there is also an area of paly where children can play with dolls, wear costumes and in which many activities take place.
In the Dance Lab you can get into the groove and cast shadow patterns with your body as you dance to music from past decades and explore all the different types of shoes for every kind of dance. Then walking through a gallery of wedding dolls, we arrive in the Game Time! Section, where we can play the Toy Trivia games while discovering the origins of the most popular games like chess, the game of the goose, battleship games and many others. Going ahead we find ourselves in the Arcade area, with many types of arcade games where you can test out your skills at Pac-Man on the original Atari 2600 video game system and challenge your friends with the most recent e-games.
The Strong explores play and the ways in which it encourages learning, creativity, and discovery and illuminates cultural history. It does it in splendid way, mixing the typical museum’s observation and interpretative function with the active and practical function. It lets the visitors get in touch with the games and toys, giving them the opportunity to be the protagonists in the many game areas and at the same time exposing the collections in that same space, in coherence with the paradigm “play and learn”. The Strong is accessible to everyone, especially to children with special needs. It has many special programs that include Foster Family Admissions, Play Therapy Access for Children with Disabilities and a Pediatric Residency Play Observation Program for physicians who work with children.
The Strong also houses hundreds of thousands of historical materials related to play. These enable a multifaceted array of research, exhibition, and other interpretive activities that serve a diverse audience of adults, families, children, students, teachers, scholars, collectors, and others around the globe. Its exhibitions provide a unique blend of artifacts and interactivity, and its collections provide unparalleled resources for study. The Strong develops and offers exhibitions, public programs, publications, online content (blogs, searchable collections, and other features), research opportunities, and other mission-driven experiences and services that engage, entertain, and enlighten through the exploration and interpretation of play.
All in all, the Strong Museum of Play plays perfectly its role. It is a big structure that continues to expand and with its many branches works consistently in the promotion of play as the best way to learn about the world and its history.
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