History
The museum was founded in 1983. It opened its first exhibit in a 4,000 square feet (370 m2) warehouse in 21 June 1986. The museum boasted three permanent galleries: the Grain Elevator and Train, Making Sense and The Big Top, and drew 65,000 visitors the first year. The museum expanded at the location in 1988, doubling its space.
In 1989 plans were initiated to move the museum to a new space. In 1994, after a $4 million capital campaign, the museum moved to its permanent home at the former Kinsmen Building (also known as the Northern Pacific and Manitoba Railway Repair Shop or the CNR Bridges and Structures Building) in The Forks. The building at the Forks location is the oldest surviving train repair facility in Manitoba. Constructed in 1889 by the Northern Pacific and Manitoba Railway Company, the building originally included a machine and blacksmith shop, engine house and a ten-stall roundhouse and turntable. Designed by John Woodman, it was typical example of a late nineteenth-century industrial building and was formally recognized as a Provincial Heritage Site on 22 March 1995.
Following a $10M capital campaign in 2010 and 2011 which included the development of 12 new permanent galleries, a renovated Arts & Exhibition Centre, and the Buhler Welcome Centre addition, the Children's Museum reopened to the public in celebration of its 25th birthday on 4 June 2011. The 12 galleries were designed as separate structures so that if one is under repair or construction, it does not affect the other galleries. The galleries were designed by Montreal's Toboggan Design. The 2011 renovation included the addition of a new 3,500 square feet (330 m2) Welcome Centre, that includes a new admissions desk, museum shop and lunch room.
The majority of the funding for the renovations came from the federal government ($2.5 million under Canadian Heritage’s Canada Cultural Spaces Fund and $1.25 million under Infrastructure Canada’s Infrastructure Stimulus Fund), the provincial government ($1.25 million) and the City of Winnipeg ($446,000). The rest of the funding came from private donors, including philanthropists John and Bonnie Buhler ($800,000), as well as other fundraising activities.
Read more about this topic: Manitoba Children's Museum
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)