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published on 03/14/2007
"Alice's Wonderland … A Most Curious Adventure"
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Follow Alice and the White Rabbit through the rabbit hole and find yourself in "Alice's Wonderland – A Most Curious Adventure" at the Creative Discovery Museum. This new, interactive exhibit based on Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland will be at the Museum from May 26 to September 4.
Alice's Wonderland is sponsored at the Creative Discovery Museum by Little Debbie Snack Cakes® and by Baylor School.
With 2,500 square feet of hands-on experiences to explore, children -- and adults alike! -- become as curious as Alice herself in a journey that makes the unknown more familiar, maybe even logical, and most certainly fun. Visitors are reminded of the story in each exhibit area through quotes from the original book and are delighted by encounters with some of the tale’s famous characters.
Entering the Museum’s Wonderland at the same place Alice’s dream-adventure begins -- the streamside knoll where she nodded off to sleep in her sister's lap -- visitors follow the White Rabbit into the Underground by crawling through the rabbit hole and "falling" through the earth. Inside, children play with the meanings of words and explore the 'antipodes' with a specially-outfitted globe. They soon discover they are in the Hall of Doors, an atmosphere filled with illusions and surprises.
As the exhibit unfolds, visitors create a Mad Tea Party, manipulate time with a Crazy Clock, explore shadows in a Pool of Tears, and use a zoetrope to understand animation at a Caucus Race, to name a few. The adventurous at heart may choose to challenge Alice and the Queen to a game of Crazy Croquet where balls in motion are surprisingly predictable.
Alice’s Wonderland is an innovative approach to helping children and adults build a shared foundation for science and math literacy. By bringing Alice's bizarre experiences to life through a series of interactive exhibits, Alice’s Wonderland encourages children to delve into important educational concepts in uniquely accessible ways.
“The story of Alice’s adventures is filled with opportunities to introduce science and math concepts to even very young children," said Henry Schulson, executive director of Creative Discovery Museum. "Because so many parents grew up with the story, the exhibit encourages them to play and learn together with their children as they have conversations about Alice’s experiences in Wonderland,” he added.
In the century since the book was originally published, it has been translated into various languages and illustrated by a number of artists. The exhibit’s Victorian Library hosts a collection of over 30 books, including copies in Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and French, and a gallery of Alice portraits, which range from the blond-haired, Victorian girl originally drawn by John Tenniel to a contemporary Alice donning a t-shirt dress and tennis shoes. The gallery, designed to show Alice in her many interpretations over decades and across cultures, encourages visitors to see Alice’s spirit of curiosity and wonder in every child.
Creative Discovery Museum is open Mon-Sat: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun: noon-5 p.m. Tickets: $8.95 for children and adults. 321 Chestnut Street. For more information, call , or visit www.cdmfun.org.
The Alice’s Wonderland exhibit was created and is circulated by Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, California, with major funding from the National Science Foundation and the MetLife Foundation.
Creative Discovery Museum is recognized as one of the top children’s museums in the nation. It is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to educational enrichment for children ages 4-months to 12-years-old through interactive, hands-on experiences that foster creative and critical thinking. CDM focuses on a broad range of areas encompassed by Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Technology and the Sciences. In addition to its exhibits, CDM provides local residents and visitors with special events, educational programming, teacher resources for the classroom, field trips, after school programming, early childhood education classes, artist residencies, camps, art lessons, science demonstrations, and a branch of the local library. Creative Discovery Museum is a funded agency of Allied Arts and Tennessee Arts Commission.
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