Last week, it was all over the news that Nashville is poised to get its "first" children’s museum. The Tennessean covered it: “Nashville may soon get its first children’s museum.” WSMV covered it: “A children’s museum may finally be coming to Nashville.” Even the website for this Music City Children’s Museum links to a Nashville Business Journal story about it.
I have long been an enemy of the Adventure Science Center. Just kidding. But if I were an enemy of the center, I would be pleased to see the casual dismissal of its 80-year history serving as Nashville’s children’s museum and as a partner and then friend of the beloved Nashville Zoo.
I could see the owners and developers of the old scrapyard space over on the East Bank — where this new museum is being proposed — not knowing the history of our current children’s museum. Most people here are new, and it’s real easy to get way up in the top of the Adventure Science Center, get overheated, pass out and forget where you are — but perhaps you could research your existing competition before you send out a press release announcing yourself as Nashville’s first children’s museum.
But no reporter who wrote about this knows about the Adventure Science Center? Bah, I refuse to believe it. That has to be a deliberate snub. Which is too bad, because it means we don’t actually get to hear about how the Music City Children’s Museum will differ from the Adventure Science Center, because people were just regurgitating a press release instead of asking questions.
Unless ... unless. OK, hear me out. You know how we have a supervillain trying to tunnel under Nashville and how the one tunnel he’s managed to actually build is full of toxic dangers and we’re all worried that we also might get inundated with toxic dangers? But the state is like, "We need to set up our own tunnel oversight board and get our friends to be on it so that nothing stands in the tunnel’s way"? And it’s like, whew, are we living in a comic book or what? Maybe we are.
It all makes sense. The Music City Children’s Museum will be Nashville’s first children’s museum because they intend to build a time machine, go back to September 1945 — just before the Nashville Children’s Museum opened — and snatch up Lindsley Hall in order to transport it to the East Bank in our current time, when it will once again serve as the home of our first children’s museum.
Think of how awesome this will be for the kids. They’ll learn about history by being in an old building (that has stolen the identity of a different old building, which is wonderful) that was around even before the Civil War. They’ll learn about philosophy and physics as they ponder the time loop that the people who stole the building and brought it forward in time must be stuck in. Will the building still also exist in its current location? Will the Adventure Science Center still exist in its current location? Will the museum display the artifacts it had in 1945? Will we find out what happened to the stuff from said children’s museum that was supposed to go to the Tennessee State Museum, but never arrived? Will elderly Nashvillians peer into the windows of the new-old-new children’s museum at twilight to see if they can catch a glimpse of their childhood selves, eyes wide in delight, scurrying through the halls? Will we finally have some whimsy in this bleak moment?
This probably isn’t anything that interesting, though — just a little hubris and thoughtlessness on the part of the new museum. But I still find it interesting. According to the MCCM’s website, this has been in the works since 2014, with a ton of support from the community, and yet no one ever pointed out that this isn’t the first children’s museum? People who went to the Adventure Science Center when it was called the children’s museum as children are still alive! None of them are involved in this initiative?
I’m all for this museum, in spite of my concerns. The city has enough kids to support two children’s museums, and the Adventure Science Center has honed its mission over the years into something more narrowly focused on science. That leaves a great deal of art and history to be covered. (Though maybe history isn’t the MCCM’s strong suit.) But they don’t need to be great historians. They just need to hire great historians and listen to them.
So bring on a second first children’s museum in Nashville. It’s a good idea whose time has come, again.
