Boston Children’s Museum Receives International Lifetime Achievement Award

Photo by Robert Benson Photography provided

For more than 100 years, Boston Children’s Museum has been engaging the city’s youngest minds and encouraging learning by hosting a wide range of hands-on exhibitions and activities.

Now, the local institution is being recognized on a global stage. The museum announced today that it’s been honored as one of two recipients of the 2015 Children in Museums Award for Lifetime Achievement, given out at the Hands On! International Conference in Amsterdam.

The conference was organized by the Rijksmuseum and the Jewish Cultural Quarter, and the Children in Museums Award was first introduced in 2011 by the European Museum Academy and Hands On!, an international network of children’s museum professionals.

Thirty-seven museums competed for the award this year, and the eight short-listed finalists included three institutions from the Netherlands, one from Belgium, one from Spain, one from Singapore, and one from Austria. Boston Children’s Museum was the only finalist from the U.S.—although the Miami Children’s Museum was among the 37 original candidates—and took the top honors alongside the ZOOM Kindermuseum in Vienna.

According to the judges’ report, the Boston Children’s Museum was praised for being “open to all those who do not normally enter the world of culture, art, and science, and who have difficulties within the educational system,” as well as for connecting children with first-class artists and hosting landmark exhibitions that have set the standard for children’s and science museums both nationally and internationally.

Boston Children’s Museum and the ZOOM Kindermuseum each received a bronze statue of Miffy, a popular character created by Dutch artist Dick Bruna.