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[through the ages/families]
Family Museums, Israeli Style
Interactive Hebrew exhibit offers lessons for next generation of children’s museums
by Deborah Moon
Hot on the heels of their success with the interactive A-B-See-
Do exhibit at Israel’s Diaspora Museum, Tamar Hadar and Efrat
Adiv came to Portland to share their vision of the future of children’s
museums at the 2012 Association of Children’s Museum
Conference held in Portland this year.
The two women presented a lunch program at the Portland
Hilton in May during one of the three days of InterActivity
2012: The Wonder of Learning, which drew 750 participants
from around the world.
At the Diaspora Museum, Tamar and Efrat created a
5,700-square-foot interactive exhibit about the Hebrew
language that drew more than 50,000 visitors in six months.
In English the exhibit is called A-B-See-Do and in Hebrew it
is A-ba-ga-da (ga means touch and da is to know). The exhibit
enables families with children between the ages of 1 and 12 to
experience learning through self-exploration and play within the
framework of a family outing.
“We emphasize the visit as a family experience,” says Efrat.
“The next generation (of children’s museums) will be family
museums. That’s why we were asked to lecture.”
“People want to see how we’ve actually done it,” adds Tamar,
noting the exhibit at the Diaspora Museum attracted people
from 1 to 89.
“We wanted to share with people the way they can achieve
more in their museums,” says Efrat of their presentation at the
museum conference. “And we want them to share with us … we
came to learn about fundraising.”
The duo’s Children’s Museum of Tomorrow Association is
developing a national center in Israel for creativity and innovation,
making it experiential education for children.
“We have the concept, we have the land, we need funding,”
says Efrat.
Children enjoy an interactive display at the A-B-See-Do exhibit at
Israel’s Diaspora Museum.
Tamar Hadar and Efrat Adiv, right, at InterActivity 2012 in Portland.
“The museum will be about life skills,” she explains. “The
world changes so fast, we need to teach kids how to learn by
themselves. … Israelis know high tech is a tool. It has to enable.
We teach children to use the tools that surround them.”
As a nonprofit startup company, the women say they have no
problem sharing their knowledge and experience. They say they
hope the national center in Israel will have an impact on the
world.
They also are developing traveling exhibitions similar to the
Hebrew language exhibit at the Diaspora Museum.
“The CEO of the Diaspora Museum told us we were
change-makers for the museum,” says Tamar. “We brought
in 50,000 visitors in six months, who then moved on to other
exhibits.”
In an email, Irina Nevzlin Kogan, president of the NADAV
Foundation, which supports Beit Hatfutsot (the Diaspora
Museum), said: “As a foundation that is dedicated to strengthening
the sense of Jewish peoplehood, we were extremely
enthusiastic about the idea of a multi-sensory free-play journey
of learning Hebrew that is fun, and at the same time promotes
educational goals. The exhibition is a wonderful means to create
a special connection between children and culture, and when
Tamar and Efrat first presented us with this idea, we saw its
great potential and decided to get involved in the development
and construction process from the initial concept until the final
completion of this incredible project.”
For more information on the project, visit www.cmota.com.
OREGON JEWISH LIFE | JULY 2012 63