New children's museum with 'explorable spaces' coming to Portland

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- There's a new immersive arts experience for children coming to west Louisville.

Portland Museum is showcasing some new whimsical figures that hint at what families might see at AHOY, the "Adventure House of You."

"We're just kind of pushing art, inspiration and fun," Danny Seim, AHOY Director, said. "The AHOY concept was more or less started by my 7-year-old son who wanted a place to play close by in the neighborhood."

Seim said the upcoming children's museum, next door to the Portland Museum on Portland Avenue, will have indoor and outdoor explorable spaces for an interactive, artistic experience.

"This whole thing is going to kind of give the children of the West End the option to be ambassadors to their own neighborhood, so kids come to them because their cool instead of the opposite where they have to go to a place where they're not as comfortable," Seim said.

The Portland Museum teamed up with the Weber Group, a fabricator company, to create AHOY. It's a project the Louisville-born designers Tom and Donny Weber are happy to take part in.

The brothers grew up in the Shawnee neighborhood in the 1940s and attended Flaget High School.

"For my brother and I, especially having grown up here and having such fond memories, it's an extra special privilege," Donny Weber said. "We're happy to be a part of the project and thrilled to see the progress the museum has made over the years."

The museum's latest exhibition features some of the Weber Group's work and renderings of what the organization hopes AHOY will be. There are oversized tentacles, miniature elephants, terracotta warriors and larger-than-life robots.

"It's really really awesome to see the museum with this stuff in it, because this is kind of exactly the kind of vibe we're going of next door."

Seim said they are currently fundraising for the AHOY project and hope to open it in the fall of 2023.