With the closing of Thomas and Friends: Explore the Rails! on May 11, 2025 the Discovery Center’s beloved Multimedia Gallery (MMG) will no longer house traveling exhibits. This space will now transition into a permanent exhibit, Top City Build, and traveling exhibits will now be hosted in a bigger and better traveling exhibit gallery as part of the Building Discovery Expansion.

Thomas and Friends was a very appropriate final exhibit for “the little gallery that could”—a room that many outside our museum thought was too small and uniquely shaped for world-class traveling exhibits, but our team knew better! The MMG hosted 19 special exhibitions in 13 years, including 13 nationally-traveling exhibitions, 4 exhibits built by our own team, and 2 that were a bit of both! What was your favorite?

• Science of Nano: It’s a Small World After All – Spring 2013
• Children’s China – Fall 2015
• Native Voices – Fall 2017
• The Pigeon Comes to Topeka! A Mo Willems Exhibit – Fall 2018
• Travel Adventure featuring LEGO Bricks – Spring 2019
• Discovery Space! – Summer 2019
• Kenya’s Kids – Fall 2019
• Discover Bees! – Summer 2021
• Snow-Ventures: a Winter Fun Exhibit! – Winter 2021
• Tiny Titans: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies – Spring 2022
• STEM Play Workshops – Summer 2022
• Storyland: A Trip Through Childhood Favorites – Fall 2022
• Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood: A Grr-ific Exhibit – Winter 2023
• Camp Kansas: a Summer Fun Exhibit – Summer 2023
• Curious George: Let’s Get Curious! – Fall 2023
• XOXO: An Exhibit about Love and Forgiveness – Winter 2024
• Picture the Dream: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement through Picture Books – Spring 2024
• Emotions at Play with Pixar’s Inside Out – Fall 2024
• Thomas & Friends: Explore the Rails! – Spring 2025

Special exhibitions are part of what makes our museum exciting for Topekans. We love offering new, fun experiences while keeping your old favorites families want to return to again and again. These experiences are only available thanks to generous donors, they would be far beyond our budget without our corporate and community partners!

So what will the first traveling exhibit be in the new gallery? Visitors are hungry to find out, but you’ll just have to wait for the announcement later this year!