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On January 28, 2017, Explore! Children’s Museum, which will be part of a future phase of the Art Place at Fort Totten, will open a temporary pop-up exhibit downtown at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibit will be free to the public.

The museum held a couple of neighborhood events last year to introduce staff and concepts for the museum. The year-long pop-up is another chance to showcase the museum and test out some exhibits in a cool collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery. Tell your neighbors and friends.

Details from the website:

In Explore! with the Portrait Gallery, kids can experiment with portraiture in an age-appropriate way to answer questions such as “What is a portrait?” “How do I see myself?” and “How do others see me?”. Young visitors will be able to trace each other’s silhouettes, strike a pose for a projected video art piece, and experiment with expression and emotion by building faces out of illustrated blocks.

• Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11:30 am to 6:00 pm on the first floor of the gallery
• Designed for children ages 18 months to eight years old
• Text in English and Spanish

Check the website for additional details.

The Washington Business Journal profiles the Explore! Children’s Museum, which is anticipated to be part of a future phase of the Art Place at Fort Totten development. The museum will open a temporary location at the National Portrait Gallery on January 28, 2017. We have covered the museum’s progress on this blog in several posts, noting in our year-end neighborhood development profile that there are still open questions regarding the museum. The article provides a few details on the temporary exhibit and notes that museum officials hope to begin construction on the permanent museum here in Riggs Park at the end of 2017:

The portraiture exhibit is one that could be replicated in the eventual permanent museum, though Explore! has not yet decided exactly what exhibits will be installed, said [Executive Director Rhonda] Buckley. She and the other museum principals are still keeping mum on other details on the project as well, including size and cost.

They hope to begin construction by the end of 2017 and open to the public in mid-2019, however. The museum will be built on “Parcel B,” as the developer refers to it, which is in the second phase of the Cafritzes’ Art Place development. . . .

 We will see if this timeline holds. In the meantime, check out the temporary museum at the National Portrait Gallery later this month.

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