CMA celebrates its 30th birthday year with CIVICKIDS, a year-long series of exhibitions, community events, and digital art calls that foster civic engagement and shared community pride through artmaking. With May as our month of Celebration, we dove into CMA’s exciting history to bring you 6 fun facts about CMA’s 30 years of existence. Cheers to many more years to come!

1. CMA was founded in 1988 by Kathleen Schneider. There was no physical exhibition space when the museum was founded — all business was conducted out of Kathleen’s Greenwich Village apartment.

2. Although CMA has moved several times throughout its existence, the museum has always been located in Downtown Manhattan. CMA’s 10,000 square-foot space on Charlton Street in Soho used to be a loading dock.

2. In 1990, CMA put out a worldwide call for children’s art. Artwork arrived from over 50 countries. The submissions resulted in a traveling exhibition, "A Child’s World," at A.I.R. Gallery in Soho in January 1991.

4. As a result of this worldwide call, CMA now holds the world’s largest collection of children’s art — over 2,000 works spanning over a century.

5. In the aftermath of 9/11, CMA worked with art therapists to create special programming for the museum’s young community. The artwork from these workshops are viewable as part of the Operation Healing collection.

6. CMA’s digital collection continues to grow with its collection of children’s films and audio recordings created by museum-goers, which can be played on our Vimeo and Soundcloud channels.