Operations
In 2008, the institution had revenue of $26.37 million and expenses of $26.369 million, with over half its income being supplied by the museum's endowment. The facility had more than one million visitors in 2008. Field trips from 775 schools brought more than 83,000 students to the museum during 2008. In 2010 the museum had 400 part and full-time employees. Additionally, 1,500 individuals contribute over 65,000 hours of volunteer work annually.
The museum has five floors of exhibit halls in the main building. There are several smaller structures around the main building including a planetarium, Dinosphere, a theater, and an outdoors garden gallery. In total, the museum has 472,900 square feet (43,933.85 m2) of floor space. The museum has a collection of over 120,000 artifacts, divided into three groups: Natural World, Cultural World, and American Collections.
To maintain a regular change in its exhibits, significant emphasis is placed on research and development. Field experts are consulted regularly to assess the exhibits and offer proposals for new ones. The museum employs many experts who are leaders in their field of study. Because of its leadership and innovations, the museum is a world leader in its field. Child and Parents magazine have both ranked the museum as the best children's museum in the United States. The "institution is considered the gold standard of museums for children."
The museum employs a Wikipedian in Residence, appointed in August 2011, and has some QRpedia codes posted for visitors to read Wikipedia articles about objects in the collection, translated into their preferred language. QRpedia codes are located in the All Aboard! exhibit, which directs users to the Reuben Wells steam engine Wikipedia article, and in the Carousel Wishes and Dreams exhibit, which links to the Broad Ripple Park Carousel article.
Read more about this topic: The Children's Museum Of Indianapolis
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)