Discovery Gateway, formerly The Children's Museum of Utah (TCMU), is an interactive, hands-on children's museum located in downtown

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. Comprising over of exhibit space, Discovery Gateway is located at 444 West 100 South in The Gateway.

History

The Children's Museum of Utah was founded in 1978 and opened its doors in 1983. For most of its history, TCMU was located in the former Wasatch Warm Springs building two miles north of downtown Salt Lake City. The museum started with only eight exhibits. Some of these original exhibits included the paleontology dig of a mammoth dinosaur bones, a Western Airline's 737 cockpit, the artificial heart demonstration, the frozen bubble box using dry ice, and the KSL news station for children. By 1998, TCMU had grown to 140 permanent exhibits and over of public space. That year, it had become evident that TCMU had reached the physical limits imposed by its current building, and the decision was made to relocate and expand to better serve the community. In 2002, a bond issue was approved by Salt Lake County voters to fund the relocation of TCMU to a new, larger building in the Gateway District of Salt Lake City. Ground was broken on the new Museum on 22 September 2005. Less than one year later, on 16 September 2006, TCMU opened to the public at its current location and officially became Discovery Gateway.

Exhibits

Everything at Discovery Gateway is designed with kids in mind. The exhibits are all interactive and hands-on. Exhibits on the second floor of the museum include the ''Garden'', where kids can play music together on a giant

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbr ...

, keep an enormous machine humming, or peer into a “penny drop” to see how every little bit adds up. Just behind the Garden is ''Kid's Eye View'', a kid-sized town where kids can shop in the Market, build structures in the Construction Zone, or feed the animals on the Utah Family Farm. Within Kid's Eye View is ''Hatch, Waddle, and Fly'', an area dedicated just to children under the age of three. The third floor of the museum features the ''Story Factory'', where kids direct the action by putting on a play, drawing a comic strip, or making a stop-motion animated film. Also located on the third floor is the ''Studio'', where the worlds of

science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

, invention, and art meet. The museum's outdoor terrace houses ''Saving Lives From The Sky'', which includes a real Intermountain Healthcare Life Flight

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attribut ...

for visitors to learn about rescue operations.

Special exhibits

A special exhibits gallery hosts rotating exhibits from museums around the nation. Previous exhibits have included ''Robots: The Interactive Exhibition,'' ''Sesame Street Presents: The Body,'' and ''Invention at Play.''

Programs

Discovery Gateway's programs explore science, art, and the humanities. Workshops and classes are geared to meet the needs of children ages birth - 12. Early Childhood Education classes take place daily in the ''Curiosity Shop'' and let kids practice fine and gross motor skills. Programs and workshops for older kids take place in the ''Workshop Room'' and often focus on the exhibits at the museum. Discovery Gateway prints a calendar of classes every month. In 2012 Discovery Gateway introduced Sensory Inclusive Afternoon, a feature in which they dim lights and cut noise in order to make the museum and its exhibits more

autism friendly Autism-friendly means being aware of social engagement and environmental factors affecting people on the autism spectrum, with modifications to communication methods and physical space to better suit individual's unique and special needs. Ove ...

. The museum began a virtual concert series during the 2020

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

. The following year they expanded to outdoor in-person concerts.

Outreach

Discovery Gateway offers a chemistry program, ''Reaction Time'', to every 5th grade class in the state of Utah. Over 55,000 children from every county in Utah have participated in this program.

Junior Achievement city

Discovery Gateway, in conjunction with Junior Achievement of Utah, operates Junior Achievement City, the only JA Enterprise Village/Finance Park program facility within of Salt Lake City. Junior Achievement City offers hands-on experiences for school groups that support learning about economics, the free enterprise system, career options, and personal finance. Junior Achievement City is located on the fourth floor of the museum, and is currently open only to school groups.

References

External links

{{commons category, Discovery Gateway
Discovery Gateway Website
Children's museums in Utah Museums in Salt Lake City 1978 establishments in Utah