DoSeum opened in June of 2015 to an enormous $47 million constructing. Throughout the first 5 weeks it had drawn 100,000 guests. And within the final 10 years, greater than 4 million folks have attended the youngsters’s museum.
“That success was no accident,” stated DoSeum CEO Dan Menelly.
The DoSeum is a by-product of the San Antonio’s Youngsters Museum, which was based downtown in 1995 by a bunch of volunteers. The nonprofit ultimately rebranded into the DoSeum and moved to its prime location on Broadway and Mulberry Avenue.
The museum can also be dwelling to a small non-public college centered on twin language immersion and employs greater than 80 full-time employees members. The DoSeum affords 68,000 sq. toes of interactive area with out of doors and indoor play areas, a Little City set up with a fake H-E-B retailer and options yearly rotations of touring exhibitions.
DoSeum’s title facilities on the concept youngsters study by doing, which is why it focuses on hands-on studying in science, know-how, engineering, math, arts and literacy for kids as much as age 11. All of its 250 displays are interactive.
Final 12 months, DoSeum featured limited-time exhibitions like “Uniquely Us,” which mixed play-based studying with conversations about race, fairness and empathy, and “Feelings at Play,” an exhibit based mostly on the Pixar movie “Inside Out” the place visitors may discover feelings like pleasure, anger, concern and unhappiness.
The DoSeum’s 2025 artist-in-residence, a program based in 2017, was Liza Fishbone, an Austin-based large-scale portray and 3D printing artist.
The DoSeum depends on non-public, public and company monetary contributions. Final 12 months, the youngsters’s museum raised $1.44 million {dollars} and earned $5.17 million in income — it spent $5.16 million on instructional programming and displays.
Tickets for museum guests over 1-year-old price $18, however the DoSeum affords as much as a 70% off for households on meals help packages by means of its Museum for All program. About 23% of visitors in 2025 utilized this low cost.
Attain past Broadway
A part of the DoSeum’s mission is to fill gaps in STEM schooling for college students and educators throughout San Antonio. The museum typically works with Title I campuses, faculties with giant teams of low-income college students, to offer programs {and professional} improvement with a give attention to STEM and state schooling requirements.
In October of 2023, the DoSeum partnered with Harlandale Impartial Faculty District to repurpose a closed particular schooling college right into a “makerspace” for college students to get a few of the hands-on studying and artistic instruction Doseum is thought for.
The makerspace is outfitted with 3-D printers, laser cutters, an esports middle, a backyard, a kitchen, an audio-visual studio, a drone impediment course and several other different options to suit pupil pursuits.
Based on the DoSeum’s 10-year influence report, the nonprofit served 23,538 folks by means of its outreach packages in 2025.
DoSeum’s footprint reaches far past San Antonio too. By means of its design studio, DoSeum collaborates with different organizations inside and out of doors Texas to create distinctive displays and academic packages.
Initiatives embrace a 26-foot climbing playground within the pavilion of the Brownsville Youngsters’s Museum, idea and design work for the youngsters’s flooring of the Museum of the Future in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and a library area for Youngster Advocates of San Antonio (CASA) utilizing trauma-informed schemes.
Planning for development
The DoSeum plans to develop its bodily presence on Broadway quickly.
In October, the nonprofit took over the lease on Good Time Charlie’s, a decades-old consolation meals diner on Broadway, and bought the encompassing property.
The transactions gave DoSeum one other 1.4 acres subsequent to its present constructing.
On the time, Menelly stated the extra area opened the door to a number of potentialities: extra out of doors area, parking or a reimagined entrance of the museum, which is at present tucked behind bushes, parking and an extended driveway.
On Wednesday, DoSeum spokesperson Lisa Martin-Bomnskie stated the museum doesn’t have particular improvement plans to share however is happy concerning the subsequent decade.
“The DoSeum is stronger than ever and poised for its subsequent decade, with plans for higher influence on early studying in San Antonio and past,” stated Menelly.
This 12 months, guests can count on to see a returning “Bug Squad!” exhibit that includes animatronic bug superheroes within the spring and a brand-new “Dinosaurs in Movement” exhibit opening this summer season, that includes 16 life-sized and interactive dinosaur sculptures comprised of recycled steel.
