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The Jackson Hole Children’s Museum is putting final touches on a new playspace rooted in the Tetons and the natural world.
After having to move twice in the last decade, the nonprofit has found a more permanent location at 105 Mercill Avenue on the ground level of a new affordable housing complex.
Since 2011, Jackson Hole Children’s Museum has offered year-round after-school programming, seasonal camps and creative playspaces for kids. Catering to pre-kinder youth through elementary school, the museum plans to cut the ribbon on several outdoors-inspired exhibits as early as February.
The organization has secured $5 million of a $6 million capital campaign and a 30-year lease with Teton County.
Since taking the helm in 2020, Executive Director Ethan Lobdell has guided the museum through losing its temporary modulars in 2022 to make way for the school district’s staff housing. That was after the museum had already lost its space in 2017 to make way for an affordable housing complex on town-owned land.
At 5,200 square feet, the new space is an upgrade in terms of both size and potential.
“It’s incredibly exciting,” Lobdell said. “To have a space of this caliber with all of the amazing exhibits.”
Lobdell said highlights range from a mountain climber jungle gym and play-proof recreations of a fox den and osprey nest.
Twenty Jackson Hole artists have contributed to the project, some teaming up with local businesses for the reclaimed material that are used in the exhibits. Jackson outdoor brand Stio’s donation of fabric for artist Courtney Cedarholm’s rendition of 8-foot long osprey eggs in the bird-themed playspace is just one example.
Advancement Director Miki O’Connell said exhibits like these will allow a place for kids to make a mess, free of expectations.
“We want to have a space where kids are…seen in a way that they’re not necessarily seen in a traditional classroom,” O’Connell said.
