Art at the Heart of STEAM

There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles over a space right before everything changes. The kind that feels less like stillness and more like breath being held, a pause before the first note of a song, the moment before a seed breaks open, the hush before a room fills with possibility. That’s where we are with the Grand Forks Children’s Museum...standing in the quiet days before the building becomes what it’s meant to be: a place alive with curiosity, color, motion, and the joyful noise of children discovering the world.

As the walls rise and the exhibits take shape, one of the most energizing parts of this journey has been defining what STEAM looks like here…not as five separate subjects, but as a way of thinking the way that children already do instinctively. Science, technology, engineering, art, and math are woven into every corner of the museum because they reflect how kids naturally explore: with questions, creativity, and the courage and inspiration to try something new.

In our version of STEAM, Art isn’t just one of the last letters in the acronym. Art is the connective tissue that makes the others work.

• Art gives science its sense of wonder.

• Art gives engineering its imagination.

• Art gives math its patterns and beauty.

• Art gives technology its humanity.

• Art helps children see ideas, express discoveries and approach problems with creativity and confidence.

That is why the recent art planning meeting felt so electric. The Art of Giving (TAG), the Public Arts Commission, and our museum art committee gathered around a table covered in sketches, word diagrams, and early inspirations that will become the first threads of a visual language that will run through the entire building.

We talked about the places where art will live: mural walls that anchor exhibit zones, sculptures that greet families outdoors, and ceiling‑suspended installations that move, shimmer, or surprise, creating moments that make children look up and wonder. We explored themes that could tie everything together: curiosity, motion, community, nature, and the wonder of discovery. Ideas that don’t just decorate a space, but shape how it feels to walk through it.

With TAG’s generosity, guidance from TAG’s curator Jason Restemayer and the Public Arts Commission’s Curator, Vickie Arndt, the museum will welcome resident artists, rotating exhibits, and develop artworks in partnerships with artists that are connected to and understand our region, and that will turn the museum into a living, breathing creative environment.

For the overall concept of the permanent art collection, curator Vickie Arndt has shaped a guiding narrative called Hand and Imagination: The Thread That Weaves Meaning. For generations, art and craft have often been treated as separate worlds, art as expressive and conceptual, craft as skilled and functional. In truth, the two have always been intertwined. Craft gives ideas their structure and durability; art brings vision, emotion, and meaning. Together, they form the full story of bringing ideas to life.

A child’s drawing, sculpture, or handmade object begins from the same spark that has inspired artists throughout history: curiosity, observation, imagination, and the simple desire to create. Every accomplished artist starts in this place of wonder. Fine art doesn’t stand apart from childhood creativity. It grows from it, shaped over time through learning, practice, and experience.

The Grand Forks Children’s Museum’s permanent collection is still being shaped, but its guiding spirit is already clear. It will celebrate this continuous thread: connecting hand and imagination, art and craft, play and discovery. And most importantly, it will honor the idea that every work of art begins with the same essential act, the courage and joy of making something new.

This isn’t art as ornament. It’s art as invitation… an invitation to imagine, to question, to build, to explore, to understand, to create. An invitation to see oneself as a maker.

That’s the heart of our STEAM story: a museum where art isn’t a separate activity, but the spark that animates everything else. A place where art and science sit side by side; where engineering and imagination share the same table; where every child can feel the thrill of discovery and the joy of creating something new.

We’re still in the quiet days. But not for long. Soon the walls will hold color, the ceilings will hold stories, and the rooms will fill with the sound of children learning in the most natural way they know how, by following their curiosity wherever it leads.

When that happens, this museum will become exactly what it was always meant to be: a place where wonder lives.

Katie Mayer, Executive Director, Grand Forks Children's Museum