A Jewish Museum for Children, designed by a young designer, 2025
As we brainstormed ideas for a summer program for children, we quickly thought of Pippi Longstocking and her cool song about her colorful house, the little monkey, and the horse. Astrid Lindgren’s most famous story was published in 1945, so in 2025, Pippi Longstocking celebrated her 80th birthday. Nevertheless, Pippi is still 9 years old, has kept her braids, and makes the world the way she likes it - and we assume she would certainly want children to enjoy the museum world too. But what does this museum world actually look like?
Are museums even places for children if they don’t have dinosaurs, technical gadgets to try out, or aren’t the Zoom Children’s Museum? All over the world and in almost all museums today, there are programs for children. Every curator and museum director knows they must exist, even if this “children’s level” often falls to museum educators who, once the exhibition has been installed, have to come up with ways to present content and themes in an age-appropriate manner.
In 2016, the National Museum in Warsaw presented the exhibition The “Anything Goes” Museum. Exhibition curated by children, which was organized without adult curators. The themes, objects, architecture, texts, and even the opening were all placed in children’s hands.
As impressed as we were by this idea, we unfortunately could not replicate it at the same level as the National Museum Warsaw. Instead, we tried something similar on a much smaller scale with our first collaboration with the Summer City Camps, which offer children and teens sports and creative activities during the summer holidays. We would like to sincerely thank our colleagues for their excellent cooperation in creative and administrative matters.
