Thoughts on the Children’s Museum and Lakeview
Today’s nice Journal Star article about the Children’s Museum got me thinking…
The Peoria Park District, Lakeview Museum and The Junior League of Peoria. Interesting how these three groups are tied together.
The Junior League of Peoria helped found Lakeview Museum.
The Junior League holds their monthy meetings at Lakeview.
Lakeview sits on Peoria Park District property.
The Park District is vacating it’s offices for the Junior League’s Children’s Museum.
The Peoria Park District’s offices will move to the old Lakeview Museum.
Lakeview is moving out and thumbing their noses at everyone on the way.
If you’re wondering why the Children’s Museum isn’t part of “Museum Squareâ€?, the answer is very simple: The powers that be at Lakeview have an ego and elitistism that can’t be denied. Small children will likely not be very welcome at the new museum. I was at Lakeview’s version of an interactive kids exhibit not long ago. It was what it was- not great, a few simple playthings, but not horrible. Lakeview was trying. But in a moment that typifies their attitude, an older lady who was working there was staring down my kids as if she were guarding the Mona Lisa. Aren’t the kids supposed to play with the ‘interactive’ exhibit?
Would the Children’s Museum be a good fit downtown? Talking in generalities, yes, but not with Lakeview running it. The Park District, while they like to cause their own controversies, have bent over backwards to make this thing work but at the same time are wisely keeping their hands off of it. The Junior League is doing their own private fundraising (not begging the city for cash), designing and building it, involving the community, and recruiting local experts. They’re doing it right.
I hope Lakeview succeeds. Lord knows with all of my tax dollars going to them, it’d better succeed, but unfortunately Lakeview’s elitism screwed up an opportunity to add a great exhibit to “museum squareâ€? which people actually will travel to.  In the end, it probably works out better this way… at least for the youngins.
April 14th, 2006 at 9:49 am
I had heard that when WTVP 47 was building it’s new facility, it included something like 3,000 or 5,000 sq ft of floor space to accomodate a children’s museum. Additionally, WTVP was working with the city or park district on this one.
Then came the Junior League, who coughed up some dough to build a children’s museum elsewhere. This left 47 with a bit of unfilled space.
I don’t know how true this all is, or if I remember all the facts correctly, but this shows you what kind of politics are being played around this town and how someone can get “backstabbed” if not careful.
April 14th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
This is what I know- the WTVP site was originally a collaboration with both Lakeview and the Junior League to build a Children’s Museum there. Obviously, it fell through and everybody went their separate ways. The Junior League put the museum project on the back-burner until the Park District stepped in.
(the Junior League having a bunch of dough is misnomer…)
As to the politics in Peoria, I couldn’t agree more!