Strong National Museum of Play

Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, USA, is a museum that documents the history of play in American culture. Established in 1969 and based initially on the personal collection of Margaret Woodbury Strong, the museum opened to the public in 1982. Since then it has refined and increased its collections, which number more than 500,000 items, and expanded twice, in 1997 and 2006. The museum is home to the National Toy Hall of Fame, the National Center for the History of Electronic Games, and the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play and produces the American Journal of Play.

Known originally as the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum and later simply as the Strong Museum, it became the Strong National Museum of Play in 2006, after completing renovations and an expansion that nearly doubled its size to 282,000 square feet. It is the only collections-based museum anywhere devoted solely to the study of play, and although it is a history museum, it has the interactive characteristics of a children’s museum making it the second largest museum of that type in the United States. The museum includes exhibits that interpret the key elements of play, as well as allow guests to explore the worlds of Sesame Street, the Berenstain Bears, Reading Adventureland, and the Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden.