THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



DEVOTED TO ALL PHASES OF NATURE-STUDY IN SCHOOLS 



Vol. 2 MAY, 1906 No. 5 



THE WORK OF A CHILDREN'S MUSEUM 



BY ANNA BILLINGS GALLUP, B.S. 

 Curator of Children's Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



A museum for children is the natural outgrowth of the need, long 

 recognized by parents and educators, of opening to children attrac- 

 tive fields of interest, and through that interest leading them to 

 wholesome activity. 



Although small loan collections are doing excellent service in many 

 public schools, and teachers with classes of children are no longer 

 unfamiliar visitors in the public museums of European and American 

 cities, a museum whose aim is to appeal directly to the child's 

 mind, in its collections and methods of imparting knowledge, is a 

 development of recent date, and one of the new departures of 

 the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. 



The origin and early history of the Children's Museum properly 

 belongs with an account of its later work, in partial explanation of 

 its methods of development. 



The city had taken for a public park the beautiful grounds of a fine 

 old residence in the Bedford section of Brooklyn, and was going to 

 remove the dwelling when a group of public-spirited citizens saved it. 

 Arrangements were soon made for the Brooklyn Institute to occupy 

 and use the building, the city providing, by an annual appropriation, 

 for its maintenance and operation/ The immediate need of the 

 Institute was temporary storeroom and exhibition space for its books, 

 apparatus and exhibition material saved from a fire. Upon the open- 

 ing of the new Museum Building on the Eastern Parkway, however, 

 the more valuable property was tranferred to the new quarters, while 

 enough of miscellaneous material remained to form the beginnings of 

 a smaller museum. The combination of an attractive building and a 

 picturesque park suggested the practicability of a museum centre in 



