Boston Stories: Internal Culture of the Boston Children's Museum in the 1970's and 80's

This project “Boston Stories” is the work of many people, mostly alumni of the Boston Children’s Museum during the 1970’s onward. Each of the stories tries to describe the time and ascertain the reason why working at the Boston Children’s Museum was such a joyful and fruitful experiencet.  Michael Spock was our director then and is the leader of this project as well.  In the lovely website and careful writings you can see again how he manages to get the best from the people around him by being persistant, kind, and encouraging.  We all owe him an immeasureable debt.

I wrote the linked chapter in 2008 to try to recollect why this experience was not only foundational in my life but why it was never duplicated again in my work experience (save once).  I meant the chapter to be useful for managers in many museums so that the experience might be translatable to others and they could experience the joy of such productive comaraderie.

The Website of Boston Stories is linked below. 

There are also 3 or 4 associated videos whose URLS are also attached.  Each one tries to parse out why the Boston Children’s Museum was such a joy and how others might make use of our collective experience.