Children's Museum Marketing

By Cathy Hamaker, Exhibit Developer

Now that Jolly Days is packed away, we’re hard at work on the next exhibit for that gallery—Incredible Costumes from Film and TV!  And it’s going to be pretty incredible, believe me.  We’re renting this exhibit from Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, and it has lots of cool real-life movie costumes on display.  The Children’s Museum is adding even more costumes--plus dress-up and play activities for kids of all ages!

Now, some movie characters are scary, and when I was five I think the scariest character I’d seen was the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz—and her flying monkeys, brrrr!  Terrifying. But one thing that helped me be less scared of her, believe it or not, was an episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood!  Mr. Rogers interviewed Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Witch, and showed me that she was a very nice lady dressed up like a witch, and not a real witch at all.  They talked about the character, and then she put on her witch costume piece by piece… and suddenly she wasn’t so scary anymore.

One of the costumes on display in the exhibit will be that very same witch’s hat Margaret Hamilton wore when they filmed The Wizard of Oz.  So we thought, why not see if we can use a quote or two from that  Mr. Rogers interview to help younger kids understand the difference between real and pretend-scary?  I contacted the Fred Rogers Company to ask about a transcript, and (not surprisingly) they were amazingly helpful! They found the episode in their archives, and generously gave us a license to show the whole interview on video in the exhibit.   You and your kids can watch it together, and maybe it will help the Wicked Witch be a little less scary for them, too!

Incredible Costumes will be open March 12 – May 8, 2011 at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.