Lutz Children's Museum

Lutz Children's Museum
Established	1953
Location	Manchester, Connecticut, USA
Type	Children's
Director	Bob Eckert
Curator	Sarah Wilby
Website	http://www.lutzmuseum.org/

The Lutz Children's Museum is a small non-profit children's museum located in Manchester, Connecticut, USA. It was founded in 1953 by the Manchester PTA in honor of the late Hazel Lutz. It is included in the Association of Children's Museums Reciprocal Program.^[1]

Mission

The museum is designed for children have both an entertaining and educational experience; the activities and exhibits promote "self-discovery and exploration."^[2]

The mission of the Lutz Children's Museum is "to provide a multi-faceted museum for children to explore culture, history, and the natural sciences through internal and external exhibits, programs, and experiences".^[2]

Education and events

The museum offers classes taught by its own curators to teach about museum artifacts and live animals, both of which are included in almost every program developed by the museum. Events such as trips, parties, or concerts also provide education to children by exposing them to the performing arts, wildlife, and other similar aspects of both American and International culture.

In addition, the Lutz also offers In-School Resource Lessons, in which the museum's curators travel to schools to deliver educational programming. "They travel with museum artifacts or live animals and sometimes appear in costume."^[2]

The Lutz Children's museum curators "typically have undergraduate degrees in their area of expertise, archaeology or biology for example, plus advanced degrees in education and/or teaching certification."^[2]

Exhibits

Main Street 1943

The Lutz opened up the Main Street 1943 exhibit in the autumn of 2010. Main Street 1943 is an exhibit/walking/playing area built as a replica of Main Street in Manchester in the year 1943. There are hometown staples such as Marlow's department store, the typical Main Street apartment, and nods to World War II such as an old-fashioned radio, newspapers, and other similar artifacts. This exhibit explores the history and culture of Manchester, CT as well as the nation (and the world) in this period.^{[citation needed]}

Farm Room

It can be argued that the Lutz Museum's most popular current exhibit is their "farm room," which houses a farm-related play exhibit, information and displays pertaining to working and living on a farm, and a statue of a cow that can actually be milked.^{[citation needed]}

Animal Room

One of the staples of the museum is their Animal Room, which currently houses snakes, chinchillas, turtles, rabbits, various birds, and, most famously, Chuckles the woodchuck, who presides over the museum's annual Groundhog Day celebration.^[3]

Oak Grove Nature Center

In conjunction with the Town of Manchester, the museum operates the Oak Grove Nature Center at 269 Oak Grove Street. Located on the fifty-two acre nature preserve, the museum uses the building for outdoor education programs. The nature center is only open for specific programs.

Hazel Lutz

The late Hazel Lutz was an art teacher in the town of Manchester.^[4] She travelled often, collecting items along the way that she believed would interest her students. She organized a "museum" out of these trinkets in the storage closet of her schoolroom. As her collection grew, members of the community began to donate to Hazel Lutz's "museum," and soon became a collection of educational tools that could relate to most disciplines. The collection was moved to larger and larger spaces until the Lutz Children's Museum was founded in its current location in 1953. The museum still follows Hazel Lutz's mission of combining artifacts from the community and around the world to spark children's interest in education and culture.^[5]

References

External links

• Lutz Children's Museum website

Coordinates: 41°45′20″N 72°31′12″W / 41.7555°N 72.5199°W / 41.7555; -72.5199