Hall of Ideas
You Are Creative
Step inside a hands-on Museum where art and science move together. Experiment with light, sound, motion and materials. Meet Michigan innovators. Follow an idea to what it might become.
COMING SOON / Hours & Cost of Admission
The Hall of Ideas is coming soon. While exhibit installation continues, explore our programs, plan a field trip or learn about Museum memberships. Opening details, regular hours and admission information will be shared here as soon as they are announced.
Follow an Idea Wherever It Leads
The Hall of Ideas begins with a simple belief: creativity belongs to all of us. It is how we notice, question, imagine, test and shape the world around us.
Here, art and science do not sit in separate corners. Move through interactive exhibits. Try something, change it and try again. Discover how artists, scientists, engineers, architects and inventors use the same creative habits in different ways.
Different by Design
Midland Center was designed by architect Alden B. Dow to bring people, disciplines and ideas together. The reimagined Hall of Ideas brings its iconic architectural rings back into view at the center of a new, multi-level Museum experience.
See. Move. Listen. Make.
Choose what catches your attention and follow the questions that come next. There is no single path through the Hall of Ideas.
Creative Community
Meet people who see possibilities in familiar places. Their work shows that creativity can begin in a studio or laboratory, at a workbench, in a neighborhood or anywhere someone is willing to ask a better question.
Creative Process
Start with a question. Test an idea, adjust it and try again. Explore the stops, starts and surprises behind making something new.
Creative Inputs
See. Move. Listen. Use light, sound, motion and your senses to investigate how creative thinking begins.
Hall of Materials
Touch, compare, combine and transform materials. Investigate what they can do and how makers select the right material for an idea.
Hall of Innovations
Explore tools, systems and discoveries shaped by Michigan thinkers—then consider what you might create next.
Where Past and Present Meet
Art, science and history come together throughout the Hall of Ideas. Objects and stories from Midland Center’s art collection and the Midland County Historical Society connect the creativity of earlier generations with the ideas shaping Midland, our region and Michigan today.
Together, they invite visitors to look closely, make new connections and discover how the past continues to influence what comes next.
A Place to Explore Together
Children, teens and adults can follow different paths, work side by side and compare what they notice. There is no single right way to experience the Hall of Ideas—and no single kind of creativity on display.
The Hall of Ideas gives you plenty to explore, but the Museum does not stop there. Rotating exhibitions introduce new artists, objects, scientific questions and stories throughout the year. Museum events offer even more ways to investigate, make and take part.
