SPECIAL EVENT : PLEASE TOUCH THE EXHIBITS : From the Bowers Comes Kidseum, Where the Learning Is Hands-On

When Bowers Museum executive director Peter Keller went out for a sandwich one day last spring, he didn’t plan to pick up anything more substantial than a ham on rye.

But his lunch-hour walk turned out to be the first steps in an eight-month process that, through a serendipitous mix of good timing and combined efforts by Bowers and city staff and community members, is about to bring a new learning center to elementary school-age children and their families.

On Sunday morning at 10, the Bowers’ Kidseum will open its doors to the public. Housed in an 11,000-square-foot building two blocks from the Bowers’ main Museum of Cultural Art, it will feature interactive exhibits targeted to kids ages 6 through 12, along with a children’s art lab and gallery and a resource library for teachers. The majority of Kidseum’s exhibits and programs will focus on the three cultures emphasized at the main museum: The Americas, the Pacific Rim and Africa.

Opening festivities, which will include storytelling, art activities, ethnic games and live music and dance, will be free to the public and will continue till 4 p.m.

Kidseum is opening just a little more than two years after a three-year, $12-million expansion of the main museum. And frankly, the plans for it came as something of a surprise even to the Bowers staff.

On the day Keller took his lunchtime stroll, the Bowers administrators had been poised to begin a $165,000 renovation of their existing education center--then housed in a down-at-the-heels former strip mall just north of the museum--with funding from Santa Ana’s Community Development Agency.

But while walking down the alley that runs parallel to Main Street from the museum, Keller noticed the vacant former California Federal Savings building on the corner of Main and 18th. It struck him that the museum could make good use of the building for its educational programs, and when he returned to the office, he mentioned the idea to Janet Baker, the Bowers’ chief of education and curator of Asian art.

In the weeks that followed, planning sessions between Keller, Baker and Patricia Korzec, who would be named Kidseum coordinator, along with input from members of the city’s redevelopment agency refined the initial plan from a simple expansion of existing programs to a full-blown children’s museum.

The process has been fast and furious from the start, Baker says.

“When Peter told me he’d like to open (Kidseum) by Christmas, I said ‘Christmas what year?’ It’s amazing to think all of this came about in just a few months. We’re still a little dizzy around here.”

City officials helped move the project along by quickly transferring the $165,000 earmarked for the old education center to the Cal Fed building project. Most of the money was spent modifying the building to comply with fire-safety regulations and to improve access for disabled visitors. The building is owned by the city’s redevelopment office and is being loaned to the Bowers through a special operating agreement.

Kidseum doesn’t stand to be a big moneymaker for the Bowers: Admission is only $1.50 to $4.50--and the tickets also will be good for admission to the main museum. The money to develop exhibits and programs and to meet operating costs has to come from somewhere, so the Bowers launched an $850,000 fund-raising campaign to cover the next two years.

So far, about $700,000 has been given or pledged by corporate and private donors, including the Weingart Foundation, Disneyland and New Line Cinema. Monterey Carpets has donated custom floor coverings, and dozens of $100 donors have created hand-painted tiles to hang near the entrance.

Although it won’t be ready by Sunday, a 6-by-20-foot mural is being drawn by Chuck Jones, the internationally known creator of the Road Runner and Bugs Bunny (among other characters) who lives in Corona del Mar and is an honorary Bowers fellow. The mural, which will feature Jones’ characters, will hang in the main hall.

Donors of $50 or more gathered Sunday evening for a party that featured a sneak peek at the Kidseum, a dinner and a performance by Santa Ana’s St. Joseph Ballet troupe of inner-city youngsters.

The renovation process had been in high gear for weeks. Five days before the party, construction workers still were installing lights and building exhibit areas. The Discovery Bridge, a free-standing suspension bridge that visitors can use to cross into the main exhibit area, was a skeleton of poles and cross beams; toilets awaiting installation stood sentry in the back parking lot. Power tools whined while Howard Stern blared on a worker’s portable radio.

Strolling among the chaos in shirt sleeves, Keller explained the motivation for establishing a separate children’s center.

Even though hundreds of schoolchildren tour the Bowers’ California history rooms every weekday, he said, “we’ve felt for a long time that we had underserved families with young children.” He noted that Bowers patrons--including his own 8-year-old son--had expressed this view as well.

But as Baker pointed out, children are not the only ones who might benefit from the new center.

“Our target audience is 6- to 12-year-olds, but by and large I hope we will educate parents and teachers, too,” said Baker, who had put aside her academic work to schlep garbage bags full of cardboard bathroom tissue tubes and empty tennis ball canisters into the Kidseum art lab.

“This is a changing world. Our demographics are changing, and we are living in communities where people are from diverse backgrounds,” she continued. “This is what the future holds, and (we hope that the multicultural emphasis of Kidseum) will help the younger generation get a step ahead.”

To that end, Kidseum organizers have established a central theme of adventure and exploration to carry visitors through the museum’s separate areas. As he or she enters, a child will be given a Kidseum passport to be stamped at each area when the child completes a task. The first stop is the Explorer’s Backpack station, where visitors can check out one of 21 brightly colored packs, each containing a different self-contained lesson.

Korzec showed how a parent and child would use the packs by demonstrating one labeled “Bountiful Bazaars.” Inside was a script, one of many written for the series by Korzec and Baker, to help the parent guide the child through lessons on textiles, communication and other aspects of various cultures. The scripts offer information and suggest questions to peak the child’s observational and problem-solving skills.

On the average, a backpack project takes about half an hour to complete, depending on a child’s age and the degree of difficulty, said Korzec, who has a bachelor’s in art education and is completing a master’s in museum education. “Bountiful Bazaars” asks you to identify a strip of African kente cloth, to estimate how many you would need to make a shirt for yourself, and to write your name using a set of hieroglyphic stamps. At other points in the lesson, one can trace figures with a Chinese brush, take a stab at chopsticks, finger the wool of a toy llama or send a message with a small African drum.

Other titles in the backpack series include “Cracked Pot,” an exercise in archeology; “Fit for a King,” a lesson in international textiles, and “Swingin’ Safari,” an overview of African instruments. Korzec says the format allows children to contrast and compare aspects of various cultures through hands-on study.

“So many times we segment the study of cultures,” she said. “But in the backpacks, kids will see there are a lot of similarities between them.”

From the backpack station, children can cross the Discovery Bridge into the main gallery, where they will find a variety of interactive exhibits.

They can dig through trunks filled with ethnic costumes and stage impromptu performances on a raised stage. An organization called the Fashion Group of Orange County has donated many of the costumes and will continue to add to the collection, Korzec said. The stage also may be used by visiting groups, she added; on Sunday, Fiesta Folklorico, a children’s dance troupe, will perform there.

Nearby is a storytelling alcove with a glass wall facing the gallery. Here, children can pull up “magic carpet” squares to listen to international tales spun by volunteer storytellers.

On Sunday, the lineup will include Paul Apodaca, the Bowers curator of Native American exhibits, telling Navajo and Hopi stories. Storytelling sessions, developed by Bowers docents using artifacts from the museum’s collection, will continue Saturdays from 1 to 2 p.m. initially and will increase as time goes on, according to Dottie Weingarten, the volunteer coordinator. Organizers hope soon to offer stories in Spanish and Vietnamese.

The old Cal Fed bank vault, its foot-thick steel door propped permanently open, has been transformed into the Time Vault, dedicated to Native American history. Here, against murals painted by local artist Higgy Vasquez, children can explore the evolution of Native American culture and traditions through a variety of artifacts, pretending to grind corn with a stone mortar and pestle, trying on a ribbon shirt or beaded moccasins, or playing the hoop and dart game of the Yokuts tribe.

Artifacts will be rotated every few months so repeat visitors will “always be able to see and try new things,” said Korzec.

“I don’t think there’s anything going on in this place that’s not touchable,” she added. “The whole concept is to be able to touch and experience. . . . I have a feeling that after they’ve been in the Bowers (main museum, where the artifacts cannot be handled), adults will enjoy (Kidseum’s) accessibility just as much as the children.”

Next to the vault, a large art lab appointed with tables, sinks and a kiln will be open weekends from noon to 3 p.m. for drop-in art classes. Projects will tie in to the Kidseum exhibits (on Sunday, children can make Native American rain sticks and rattles).

Korzec also plans to implement a “Rainbow Exchange,” a monthly program in which Kidseum visitors will create artwork to trade with children of other cultures. The art received at Kidseum will be displayed in a children’s gallery in the community room (Korzec hopes to mount a display by children in Africa there in the spring).

The second floor of the facility is for offices, a teachers’ resource room and storage.

Members of the county’s arts and business communities have been instrumental in getting Kidseum on its feet, said Baker, noting that an advisory committee has helped her develop educational programs and fund-raising and will help attract local artists to display and perform. Baker and Korzec also received direction from representatives of some of the area’s established children’s facilities.

One was Cathy Michaels, executive director of the 17-year-old Children’s Museum at La Habra. Though she expressed some concern over competing with Kidseum for community funding, Michaels said she views the new facility as a positive addition to the county’s cultural landscape.

Karen Johnson is director of the Discovery Museum, which operates a hands-on history facility in Santa Ana as well as the Launch Pad, an interactive science center in Costa Mesa’s Crystal Court mall. Johnson hopes to open the Discovery Science Center, a 76,000-square-foot interactive learning center and Imax theater, on Main Street in mid-1997. If that happens, the Discovery Science Center would join Kidseum and the Bowers in Santa Ana’s “museum district,” a downtown area city leaders hope to establish as the cultural heart of the county.

Although her science center would be less than a mile away from Kidseum, Johnson doesn’t view Kidseum as competition but welcomes it as a positive step for arts groups and their audiences.

“I’m pleased,” she said, “because I think the City Council and the city staff are making the arts a priority in Santa Ana.

“There aren’t nearly enough cultural opportunities for kids in this county. Having a strong program like Kidseum will be a great advantage for us, and vice versa.”

* What: The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art’s Kidseum children’s center.

* When: Opens Sunday, Dec. 18. Opening festivities will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

* Where: 1802 N. Main St., Santa Ana.

* Whereabouts: From the Santa Ana (5) Freeway, take the Main/Broadway exit and drive south on Main Street.

* Wherewithal: Admission on opening day will be free. Regular admission will be $1.50 for ages 5 to 12, $3 for seniors and students, and $4.50 for adults. Those under 5 will be admitted free, and all prices include admission to the Bowers’ main museum as well.

* Where to call: (714) 567-3600

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