This year, the Enchanted Forest Family Party became the Every Family Party!

Every fall for the past decade, hundreds of families—nearly 1,000 guests of all ages—have gathered at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for a family-friendly carnival including scavenger hunts, entertainment, dancing, art projects, age-appropriate gallery tours, and much more. The Enchanted Forest/Every Family Party is a wonderful way for children, parents, and grandparents to kick off the holiday season while enjoying together the treasures of the Museum and raising funds to support the Museum’s award-winning educational programs.

A is for Art Museum

This year’s event was held in conjunction with the publication of A is for Art Museum, the first children’s book to highlight works in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection written by the Museum’s own Katy Friedland, Manager of Family and Children’s Programs, and Marla Shoemaker, The Kathleen C. Sherrerd Senior Curator of Education. In association with Temple University Press, this playful alphabet book takes preschoolers on a whirlwind A-to-Z tour through the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection. Over the course of 67 colorful pages, children can practice their ABCs while enhancing their powers of observation. They can also discover some of the Museum’s outstanding works of art, ranging from beloved favorites such as Edgar Degas’s bronze sculpture of a 14-year-old ballet dancer (“D is for Dancer”) to Takashi Murakami’s bright Anime-inspired cartoon creature (“Y is for Yellow”). Each image is accompanied by questions designed to get children thinking and talking about what they see. The book launch provided a wonderful opportunity for the Museum to promote literacy while making the Museum’s treasures accessible to its youngest visitors.

Event Activities

In keeping with the launch of A is for Art Museum, the Every Family Party reinforced childrens' ABCs through art- and alphabet-related activities. Children explored 15 themed art stations throughout the building’s ground- and first-floor that each celebrated a work of art highlighted in the book. In the Great Stair Hall, Philadelphia photographer Zoe Strauss, whose South Philly (Mattress Flip Front) illustrates the letter “J” in A is for Art Museum, took photographs of leaping partygoers that were projected on a large screen for all to see. Other stations included make-and-take hats, pins and other crafts, music and educational presentations, and a large, furry polar bear—all inspired by images in the book.

Gallery 185 in the first-floor Modern and Contemporary galleries became a cozy reading room, and local “celebrities” (including the Phillie Phanatic!) stopped by to read from children’s books. The evening built to a crescendo when a four-person human sculpture group formed each letter of the alphabet as A is for Art Museum was read and projected on a large screen. Guests were also invited to design their own letter-shaped cookies, choosing from a variety of toppings.

Proceeds support education programs and A is for Art Museum

In addition to supporting early childhood education programs, proceeds from the Enchanted Forest/Every Family Party help to provide copies of the A is for Art Museum children’s book to the libraries of local preschools, Head Start programs, and community centers.

The Museum is deeply committed, now and always, to integrating art into the lives of young people. The Museum's preschool programs are a model for other art museums around the country, and the Division of Education is constantly creating new and innovative ways to make visitors feel at home amongst the Museum’s treasures, which span centuries and continents. Every day young children visiting with school groups participate in fun, interactive, age-appropriate gallery tours and lessons, and every Sunday the Museum comes to life for families with gallery activities and hands-on art making for children—all with “Pay-what-you-wish” admission. The Museum’s educational and community-outreach programs touch—and often transform—the lives of more than 100,000 children and families annually.

The Enchanted Forest/Every Family Party 2008 is generously supported by PNC Bank.

For more information, please contact Development by phone at (215) 684-7750, by fax at (215) 236-0796, or by e-mail at .