Long Island Children's Museum is free on Friday
Avery Creary, 3, of Roosevelt, is helped by her grandmother Eleanor Edwards, of Roosevelt, while making puppets at the Long Island Childrens Museum in Garden City, Wednesday, Auf. 16, 2017. Credit: Steve Pfost
Admission to the Long Island Children’s Museum will be free all day on Friday, March 25, to celebrate it becoming the only children’s museum in New York State accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
Strolling clown performers and costumed characters including Pete the Cat and Daniel Tiger will be on hand from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and at 12:30 p.m., the museum will unveil a plaque installed outdoors on the museum’s facade. Children will be invited to help create a 5-foot tall “Ultimate Trophy,” adding iconic childhood items including Slinky toys, pinwheels, rubber ducks and stickers.
“It’s very, very exciting,” Maureen Mangan, director of communications, says of the designation. She calls the accreditation process “pretty rigorous” and says it took nearly three years of submitting long-range planning documents, hosting a site visit, and arranging interviews with about 30 staff, board members and other museum stakeholders.
Accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums testifies to a museum’s quality; other accredited museums include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
“What it does is put you at the table for national partnerships and grants,” Mangan says of the designation. “From a funding point of view, it’s pretty significant.”
The museum, at 11 Davis Ave., Garden City, serves 275,000 children annually. For more information, call 516-224-5800 or visit licm.org.
Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.
