Hartford Museum Hosts Valentine’s Day Event for Local Families

By Ayanna Kelley-Fraser

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Valentine's day cards made by children for their loved ones at the Connecticut museum of history and culture.

Hartford, February 11th, 2026

While couples were stressing over dinner reservations and finding babysitters, the Connecticut Museum of History and Culture opened its doors to local families and their children for an annual event called ‘Valentine’s for Kids.’ Children huddled around glitter-strewn tables; scattered around were all kinds of arts and crafts accessories such as construction paper, stickers, and stamps, creating a perfect environment for their vibrant imagination as they made Valentine’s Day cards for their loved ones. 

Padmashree and Ravikiran from West Hartford spent their 13th wedding anniversary at the event with their daughter, Arya, who also made a Valentine’s Day trinket to show off to her friends. “We get to make the kind of arts and crafts which we could never make at home,” said Padmashree. The family mentioned how they make it a point to attend the museum’s monthly family events, calling it a “non-missable” part of their routine.

While the Valentine-themed event is an annual tradition, the museum hosts free events every first Saturday of the month, where families from around Hartford can engage in various games or dabble in arts and crafts, while learning about the state of Connecticut and its history.

“Everyone is so welcoming, even the staff that coordinated the event…and it's just a great thing to do on a cold Saturday like today that's indoors,” said Candice. She attended the event with her son and daughter, who participated in the games organized by the museum. Her 6-year-old daughter, Ava, won the “Pin the rose on the woman"

'Pin the rose on the woman' was a popular game at this event.

game and made a Valentine’s Day card for her father. Ava's card had a pink heart stickers sat on top of pink and white striped paper, and an adorable overlapping piece with a puppy on it that said “Don’t tell me it’s puppy love, ‘cause it ain’t!”

The museum also hosts free movie nights in the winter, animal and migration history in Connecticut for homeschooled students, and numerous summer programs. One of their summer programs, “Beat the Heat,” is an event where the Hartford Symphony Orchestra teaches children to play different instruments, with music classes being taught in the afternoons. According to Katerina Mazzacane, the Youth and Family Programs Manager, over 20,000 students participated in these school programs last year. 

Another attendee of the Valentine's Day celebration event, Stacey, is a regular at the

Inspire Center. The Center takes artifacts from the museum, and invites visitors to discover how these tools transformed challenges into solutions. Visitors are then encouraged to think of new, imaginative solutions and build prototypes of their inventions to go with it.  

The museum serves as a great place for community and family engagement, while preserving manuscripts and historical objects so residents of Connecticut can learn the history of their state. Mazzacane mentioned how residents of Connecticut in the 1800s were scared of losing everything from the Revolutionary War, so they started the museum to document these sacred belongings to tell the stories of the past.

“The educational programs and exhibits that we do are... they take those historic objects, and they make them more accessible to the public in unique ways, more hands-on ways…it’s important to have the objects, but you also need the interpretation to go along with it to let the people really engage with it," Mazzacane added.

Contemporary projects are also an important part of the museum, as their goal is also to tell the stories of current residents of Connecticut. An exhibit in the making focusing on Hartford’s North End is going to tell the stories of immigrants in Connecticut. That area has a long history of immigration, the museum is using that as a focus point to symbolize immigration in all of Connecticut. The exhibit will be open on February 12th from 5:30 pm-7:30 pm. 

“It was created in conjunction with high school students from Classical Magnet, which is something that is really new for the museum,” says Mazzacane. “There are five primary stories in the exhibit, each one is designed by a different artist, and all of those stories, those plots and those themes, were selected by the high school students based on their own analysis of the research that was done at the museum.” She adds that the high schoolers are very excited to show the work to their families when the exhibit opens.