Educational Activities For Kids Near Me in Grant

 The Museum of Arts & Sciences is a not-for-profit educational institution founded in 1955 and chartered by the State of Florida in 1962. The Museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums and is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. Programs are sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the County of Volusia.

Museum collections and research include Cuban and Florida art, American Fine and Decorative Arts, European Fine and Decorative Arts, pre-Columbian and African artifacts, Pleistocene fossils, Florida history and regional natural history.

The Museum houses changing arts and sciences exhibition galleries, permanent collection galleries, a gallery of American art, paintings, decorative arts and furniture.

Mission Statement:

The basic purposes of the Museum are:

To render educational and cultural service to the local community, the region, and the State of Florida through collection, conservation, presentation and interpretation of original and significant objects which are important components of the artistic, scientific and historical legacy of our multicultural and multi-ethnic society.

To achieve this mission by developing, building and maintaining multinational and multidisciplinary collections, exhibitions, research, and teaching facilities within the scope of the Museum, namely the broad areas of art, science and history, with particular emphasis on Florida history; and to initiate, exhibit and promote, alone or in conjunction with other museums or educational institutions, programs for bringing about a better understanding and appreciation of the world in which we live.

Mission Statement:

As an arts leader in Florida, Polk Museum of Art educates and inspires the community through creative and diverse exhibitions and collections, cultural alliances, and compelling events and programs.

Vision Statement:

Polk Museum of Art will be a leading innovator among Florida's visual arts museums.

Dinosaur World is the name of three outdoor museums, one in Plant City, Florida, one in Cave City, Kentucky, and the third in Glen Rose, Texas, where visitors can see up close and life size the amazing creatures that once ruled the Earth.

Life sized models of dinosaurs welcome families and classes to learn, have fun, or just enjoy a quiet encounter with the lifelike animals. Dinosaur World is the brainchild of Swedish businessman Christer Svensson, who has been in the entertainment business for over 30 years. Svensson and his family moved to the United States. Attracted to central Florida, where he and his wife and children had vacationed many times, Svensson purchased a former alligator farm as a home for his ancient reptiles. To develop the best park possible, he consulted with the manager of a similar open-air dinosaur museum in Germany, as well as with internationally known authorities on prehistoric life. With a great deal of information, planning, and hard work, the Svensson family created a pleasant environment in which to entertain and inform their visitors. Less than five years later, Dinosaur World opened in Kentucky. The Texas park followed about 5 years after that.

The dinosaur models, up to eighty feet in length and based on the latest scientific discoveries, are made of fiberglass, steel, and concrete. The dinosaurs are arranged  in groups of as many as eleven of a single species, in a variety of settings.

Nestled among a lush assortment of native vegetation, the dinosaurs are so believable that some visitors claim to see them moving through the shadows cast by the many native trees.

A giant T-Rex waits to greet visitors at each location. It’s hard to miss this prehistoric giant on the main entryway in Plant City, Florida, Glen Rose, Texas and Cave City, Kentucky.

About Us:

In 1960, Rudolph Rhode and his sister, Miss Annie Rhode, the children of a prominent farmer in San Antonio, gave 37 antique farm implements and tools to the Pasco County Fair Association. Such were the humble beginnings of the Pioneer Florida Museum. On April 28, 1961, the museum was chartered by the State of Florida as The Pioneer Florida Museum Association, Inc., with 87 charter members. The growing collections were housed at the Pasco County Fairgrounds for many years. In 1973, Emily Larkin donated 6.5 acres to the Museum Association in memory of her husband, William Larkin. This gift made it possible to accommodate the growing array of items depicting early life in West Central Florida.

The Museum's picturesque site is located just north of downtown Dade City, Florida, adjacent to the Little Everglades Ranch. In later years the Museum grounds grew to 21 acres. Governed by a Board of Trustees, the Museum is dedicated to educating, promoting, fostering, and encouraging public interest in Florida life and history from pioneer times until 1945. To accomplish its mission, the Association acquires, preserves, restores, exhibits, interprets, researches and publicizes items of historical significance, aimed at depicting pioneer life in Florida through an organized community effort. The Association has established a museum that recalls the basic, simple values of our forebears, asserts the dignity of labor, and emphasizes the value of craftsmanship.

On display are tools of the Florida Pioneer Man, showing how he built his house, made his furniture, plowed his fields, harvested his crops, and did his leather-work and blacksmithing.

There are many wonderful historic buildings including the Trilby Train Depot, a Lacoochee one-room schoolhouse, the Methodist Church from Enterprise settlement (now Lumberton Area of Dade City/Zephyrhills), a two-story 1860s restored Overstreet house, a general store, and more.

On display in the Overstreet House and kitchen addition, are furnishings which reflect the Florida Pioneer Woman's everyday experiences - churning butter, cooking on a wood-burning stove, spinning, weaving, battling and boiling the family wash and doing her household tasks with simple primitive equipment.

The Pioneer Florida Museum hopes to show that the men and women who were here before us, struggled, made do, and sometimes won and sometimes lost their battles with nature. In essence, they were people much like us.

Blanton Packing House - Citrus Plant that educates school children as well as visitors. A new Blacksmith Shop and Woodworking Shop were added in 2018. A log house built in 1910 has recently been moved to the museum and is currently being put back together, preserved and furnished.

There are more than a dozen buildings filled with displays.

Our Mission:

To enrich our community through artistic, interactive experiences for all ages which inspire creativity and encourage an understanding of the world in which we live.

Our Vision:

We aspire to shape a world in which art empowers the human spirit.

Our Values

- We believe that art changes lives and is an essential component of a complete education
- We believe that early learning through the arts leads to lifelong success
- We believe it is important to provide a platform for contemporary artists, enabling them to connect personally with the museum audience
- We believe that art builds self-confidence and self-esteem
- We believe it is our responsibility to embrace every child regardless of his/her physical, developmental or financial capability

The mission of the Edison and Ford Winter Estates is:

To educate the public and inspire an inventive spirit by interpreting and preserving the innovations, legacies, artifacts, gardens, homes, laboratory, and other structures of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, emphasizing Florida history, science, horticulture, and the arts.

Our History

The Florida Railroad Museum, Inc. was founded as The Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum with the stated goal of preserving Florida's railroad history. Over the years, the Museum has acquired and preserved rolling stock and equipment to operate for the public's enjoyment. We hope our visitors appreciate the sights and sounds of Florida railroading as it existed in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Museum is a Non-Profit Organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Museum Operations

The Ticket Office and Gift Shop is open Wednesday – Sunday from 10 AM to 4 PM. The museum's exhibits and train rides operate on weekends only. Our operating train equipment is not available for viewing during the week.

The train operates on a six mile rail line between Parrish and Willow, Florida in rural Manatee County. Built by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad in the early 1900s, this was the first line through Manatee County. Following the merger of the Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Airline in 1967, this line was downgraded and finally abandoned in 1986.

Each weekend our diesel powered trains take passengers on an excursion using a variety of open-air, open-window and air conditioned cars. Trains are operated entirely by museum members volunteering thousands of hours a year to make this unique experience possible.

Future Operations

The Museum is currently expanding its facilities in Willow where preservation and repair work is conducted. Additional storage tracks have been built to accommodate a larger collection of rolling stock and provide additional space for restoration work.

A replica Seaboard Air Line Station has been constructed in Willow where passengers may detrain during the excursion. A collection of railroad artifacts are on display in the station.

Join the Museum today and help support of Florida's Railroad History!

Support the Museum

All donations are tax-deductible and go directly towards the General Fund for restoration and operation of the Museum's railway equipment.

Mission & Vision

The Tampa Museum of Art collects, preserves, studies, and exhibits iconic and important works of art to educate, engage, and inspire the residents of our region and others around the world.

Silver Springs State Park combines the charm of a historic Florida attraction with the crystal clear beauty of one of the last uninhabited spring runs in the state. 

The Main Entrance:  Enjoy the headspring from a viewing deck, walk along the river on paved trails, see the ornamental gardens, and enjoy an easy stroll through the Real Florida. Visitors can enjoy a meal from the restaurant with a view of the spring. Glass bottom boat rides and canoe and kayak rentals are offered through our concessionaire. There is a $4.00 per boat launch fee if you bring your own canoe or kayak at the headspring launch. There is no land access from the water along the river and in the headspring area except at the canoe and kayak launch ramp.

The Camping Entrance: Visitors can paddle down the crystal clear river (there is no fee to launch from this ramp, but there is a ½ mile hike to launch area), hike or bike along one of the nature trails, or just sit and watch the wide variety of birds and wildlife.The picnic area features three pavilions available for rental with grills and a playground nearby. For overnight stays, the park has a 59 site full facility campground and 10 modern cabins. 

The Equestrian Entrance: Silver Springs State Parks horse trail traverses a wetland habitat.  Unless we are in drought conditions, expect areas of mud and standing water along the trails. Summer seasons feature biting insects, plan accordingly. If you do not have your own horse, we have a Visitor Services Provider offering guided trail rides. Cactus Jack's Trail Rides will offer groups or individuals (6 years and up) rides through the oak trees on well-mannered horses.  

History

A Passion Begins

John Ringling was one of the early 20th century's most prolific collectors of art. The Museum of Art is his legacy.

In 1905 Ringling married Mable Burton, a woman who shared his love for and taste in art. Soon after their marriage they became fixtures in New York's art auction houses, buying paintings, furniture and tapestries from the homes of the wealthy and socially prominent for their own growing collection. In 1924, the Ringlings met the prominent German art dealer Julius Böhler, a relationship that would prove crucial to Ringling and his growing interest in collecting art.

The Museum Begins to Take Shape

The Ringlings had been traveling through Europe for years and had fallen in love with Baroque art. In 1925 he hired architect John H. Phillips to design and build a museum on his Sarasota property to house his ever-growing collection.

What Phillips designed was a U-shaped pink palace with 21 galleries to house Ringling's treasure trove of paintings and art objects, highlighted by a collection of masters that would eventually include Velazquez, El Greco, Van Dyke, Veronese, Tiepolo, Gainsborough and Rubens.

Paired perfectly with the Renaissance-style of the Museum, the Museum of Art's Courtyard embodied the ideals of the Renaissance garden. Its long loggias flank a central courtyard that features an impressive group of early twentieth-century bronze and stone casts of famous Classical, Renaissance, and Baroque sculptures, among them, at its heart, Michelangelo's David from Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. 

Ringling hoped that by building the Museum he would make Sarasota a cultural and educational center. To achieve his vision he began buying comprehensive collections with prestigious provenances, beginning with the purchase of three rooms complete with furnishing, paintings and architectural finishes from the Astor Mansion and a villa in the Tuscan countryside.

He also purchased four tapestry paintings, oil on canvas, by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens from the Duke of Westminster. Today these magnificent paintings welcome you as you enter the Museum's gallery and are the foundation of the Museum's extraordinary Baroque collection.

The Collection Grows

Between 1925 and 1931, Ringling acquired more than 600 Old Master paintings from the Late Medieval thorough the 19th century. His purchase of Rubens' Pausias and Glycera was considered so significant that Art Digest reported on it.

In 1928, Ringling made another significant acquisition that was to form the core of his classical antiquities collection, 2800 objects of Greek, Roman, and Cypriot antiquities from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Excitement about his collection was growing in art circles; the New York Times did a full-page article about the purchase, praising not only the collection but the Museum and its surroundings as well.

That same year he bought the Parisian Gavet Collection, 300 hundred pieces of Late Medieval and Early Renaissance decorative art, sculpture and religious liturgical objects from the Vanderbilt's Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island.

After Ringling

In his will Ringling bequeathed his museum to the people of Florida, a gift he hoped would achieve his vision of creating in Sarasota a cultural and educational center.

Hurt by the Depression, Ringling had fallen into debt and creditors and legal wrangling would delay the settling of his estate for a decade. Funds were poorly managed and the endowment Ringling left languished and barely grew. The Museum was only occasionally opened between 1936 and 1946 and not properly maintained. Gradually, the care that the buildings required were either put off or handled piecemeal.

But while the Museum struggled with a lack of finances, a series of Directors continued to foster its artistic growth, most notably A. Everett (Chick) Austin, Jr. the charismatic former Director of The Wadsworh Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut who became the Museum's first Director and Curator in 1946 and served until his death in 1957.

Other Directors followed and made their contributions: Kenneth Donahue, who served from 1958 until 1964 established the Member's Council and started the quarterly newsletter; Curtis Cooley, the Director from 1965 to 1972 oversaw the completion of the West Wing and established the Museum Foundation; Richard S. Carroll created the Docent Program and had the Museum added to the National Register of Historic Places during his tenure from 1973 to 1984; Laurence Ruggiero, who served as Director from 1985 until 1992 established the Museum's archives, during David Ebitz's Directorship from 1992 until 2000 governance of the Museum was passed to Florida State University (FSU).

Restoration

The state promised to fund immediate repairs and in 2002 provided through FSU another $43 million to fund restoration of the Ringling - provided the museum board could raise another $50 million within five years. Thanks community efforts and truly generous public support, they exceeded beyond expectations and more than $56 million was raised by 2007.

John Wetenhall, the Museum's Director from 2001 until 2009 shepherded its extraordinary rebirth and oversaw the building of the Searing Wing, which provides more than 20,000 square feet of new exhibition space.

A New Beginning

Interim director Marshall Rousseau, a longtime Ringling supporter, oversaw the Museum after Wetenhall's departure and in 2011 was instrumental in bringing Steven High to The Ringling.

High is committed to expanding the range of Museum offerings by introducing audiences to those emerging talents in the international arts community.

Under his leadership, a 10-year project, Joseph's Coat, a Skyspace by modern master James Turrell, was completed, thrilling audiences by inviting them to contemplate light and perception as they gaze at the sky through a 24' aperture, in the ceiling. High has also overseen the mounting of Paolo Veronese, the first major exhibition of the renaissance artist in over 20 years and the first artist that John Ringling acquired.

The Future

In December of 2013 ground was broken on a new building that will house the Museum's new Center for Asian Art.

Scheduled to open in 2016, the Center will provide educational opportunities for students and scholars and enable the public to better understand and appreciate Asian history and society through exhibitions, programs, and publications.

The momentum of these and other recent Museum of Art successes have accelerated exciting plans for new acquisitions, buildings and programs, fulfilling John Ringling's dream of a great cultural center on Florida's West Coast.

Dali Museum Mission Statement :
The Salvador Dalí Museum shall educate the public and promote understanding, enjoyment and scholarly examination of art through the exhibition of works by Dalí and artists of similar vision. The Salvador Dalí Museum shall preserve and expand its collection of art of Dalí and related archival material.

In cooperation with other museums and educational institutions, the Salvador Dalí Museum shall be an active resource in the cultural life of our local, state, national and world communities by the presentation of intriguing and varied exhibitions and programs.

The Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement (MAACM) is the only museum in the world dedicated exclusively to the American Arts and Crafts movement. Founded by local philanthropist and collector Rudy Ciccarello, MAACM is St. Petersburg’s newest museum, featuring stunning architecture, incredible works of art, and an ideal location in the downtown waterfront arts district.

Ciccarello, along with Alfonso Architects, designed and oversaw the incredible task of creating the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement in St. Petersburg, Florida. The five-story, 137,000 square-foot museum is a work of art itself, with incredible architectural elements such as a grand atrium, skylights, and a dramatic spiral staircase—all adorned with period art, light fixtures, windows, fireplaces, and more. MAACM features more than 40,000 square feet of gallery space, as well as a destination restaurant with private dining rooms, a retail store, an upscale café, a children’s gallery, a reference library, a theater, a graphic studio, a beautiful event space for weddings and corporate events, and an outdoor green space enhanced by original period tiles and fountains.

Emerging at the end of the Victorian era in England, the Arts and Crafts movement was fueled by anxieties about the quality of life in the industrial era and the rise of mass-produced goods. Arts and Crafts designers sought to reform both decorative design and daily life, creating objects that were beautiful and functional. In America, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the country from approximately 1890-1930. The tenets of the movement – simplicity in design, honesty in materials, hand craftsmanship, and depicting the natural world – are still widely valued today.

The most important artists and enterprises of the American Arts and Crafts movement are represented at MAACM. Visit us to see fine examples of Gustav Stickley, Charles Rohlfs, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Roycrofters, William Grueby, Newcomb Pottery, Margaret Patterson, Greene and Greene, Louis Sullivan, and many other gifted craftsmen and women. Immerse yourself completely in the movement with furniture, pottery, tiles, lighting, textiles, photography, fine arts, woodblocks, metalwork, period room installations, and more.