The National Building Museum's new long-term exhibit, Building Stories, takes visitors inside the pages of beloved children's books for an immersive exploration of architecture, engineering and design.
Curated by Leonard Marcus, an expert on children's literature, Building Stories aims to be the first national exhibition to call attention to the built environment's role as an important character in children's literature, the museum said.
"When we first started this, we thought it would be an exhibition more about construction and books, and actual physical buildings and buildings in books. But we really figured out early on that so many books are about finding your place in the world and how the built environment is not just a backdrop but a character in our books," Cathy Frankel, a deputy director at the Building Museum, said.
The exhibition encourages visitors to interact with familiar classics and new favorites through hands-on activities, media installations, sketching, reading and building stories of their own.
Kids and adults alike are invited to step into the storybook world, but the exhibition is geared toward kids in kindergarten through third grade and their caregivers.
Frankel said visitors can come back over and over again to find new things.
"I think it'll be attractive to anybody. There's a real scholarship with this exhibition," Frankel said. "There's so much detail in this. We keep saying we have left no surface untouched."
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The exhibition is set to be in the Building Museum for the next 10 years.
Admission to the museum starts at $10 for adults and $7 for children over the age of three, students and seniors. The museum also hosts free days, typically on the second Saturday of each month. There's also a free-admission program for SNAP recipients; here's more information.
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