No kidding around at Children's museum

BY VICTORIA EDWARDS

For more than 25 years, Renée Edelman has been able to combine her passion for children and technology as a board member of the Children's Museum of Manhattan.

“This is real — shaping children's lives — giving families the same access that people who can afford to pay for private schools get — giving underserved children in the city the same access,” said Edelman.

Edelman, who serves as senior vice president at her family's international public relations firm Edelman — among the largest independently owned PR firms in the world — has contributed her communications and technology expertise to the museum.

“I've always been an advocate for CMOM to be at the cutting edge of technology. So early on I connected them with someone to give them email — it was probably in the mid 90s,” Edelman said. “I had known someone in Harlem who was advising — now they run Silicon Harlem, but they were trying to enable nonprofits to use email. My passion is really state-of-the-art technology combining education, and trying to attract technology sponsors.”

But she has not just contributed expertise, but also financial backing by way of her family's foundation of which she's a trustee, along with her brothers Richard and John. Her family's support of the CMOM has not gone unrecognized – they were given the Laurie M. Tisch award at the 2014 Spring Gala for supporting the museum over the years.

Edelman recalls visiting the museum with her nieces when they were young and playing in an exhibit that mimicked the body.

“They literally go through their own — they crawl through the intestines of the stomach. They had a toilet the way the toilet flushed and you heard the noise. I mean they make it multimedia, but you get down on the floor and you play with the kids,“ she said. “And you literally get down on your hands and knees and you play with the children.”

Edelman said her nieces were 4, 5 and 6 when she went with them for that exhibit. The oldest of the three is now nearing 30.

Over the years, the museum, like the children who have run through it, has grown up. The CMOM started out of a storefront in 1973 and it's almost outgrown its space in a church on West 83rd Street, where about 350,000 visit each year.

Edelman says she wants to see the CMOM become a cultural institution like the Met Fifth Avenue or the Museum of Modern Art. Already she says the Children's Museum with its interactive exhibits and mix of play, art and multimedia has changed the way people view children's museums.

“The CMOM has set a standard for children's museums,” Edelman said.