Shaping Empathy Featuring Rowan Gallery Exhibit Opens at Boston Children’s Museum

Shaping Empathy Featuring Rowan Gallery Exhibit Opens at Boston Children’s Museum

Installation by Hayley Morris, Emmy Award Winning Artist and Animation Director

BOSTON, MA—October 28, 2025 — Boston Children’s Museum recently opened Shaping Empathy: Featuring Rowen by Hayley Morris, an Emmy award winning artist and animation director, working under the studio name Shape & Shadow. Located in the Museum’s Gallery, which showcases work of artists from the New England art community, Shaping Empathy encourages visitors to explore aspects of the relationship between a caregiver and child and practice the building blocks of empathy—the skill of understanding and caring about how another person feels.

 

Rowen is a stop-motion clay animation video about Morris’s own experience of motherhood, and the powerful ways both mother and child are continuously shaped by one another. The artist’s approach to animation, featured in the exhibit in a separate behind-the-scenes video, is deeply rooted in experimentation with physical materials—paper, clay, fabric, fibers, found objects, and natural elements. She strives to tell stories that are both playful and poetic, blending character-driven and abstract elements with a tactile, sensory quality.

“Shaping Empathy is a lovely reminder of the special connections we share with the people we are closest to and how important it is to understand the perspectives, needs, and emotions of others,” said Sage Brousseau, Senior Art Educator.

 

Immersed in the space alongside the artist’s work, Museum visitors—children and their own caregivers—can engage with activities designed to support empathy development, and skills such as kindness, perspective taking, and respecting oneself and others. Activities include practicing caring for others by role playing with baby dolls, sharing ways they like to show care by posting notes on a talk-back board, and reading books together to explore different characters’ feelings, perspectives, and ways of offering support.

 

The exhibit is the first of the Gallery shows connected to Empathy at the Heart, Boston Children’s Museum’s five-year initiative to foster empathy in young children and empower the adults in their lives to support this vital character development. Empathy is a skill that children (and adults!) develop with time and practice, and like any skill, the more we all practice empathy, the better we can become. Empathy at the Heart is being funded by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its national initiative, Fostering Character Through Children’s Museums.

 

Specializing in mixed media and stop-motion animation, Hayley Morris creates visually captivating stories that come to life through intricate textures, handcrafted details, and inventive storytelling. Her work spans a wide range of applications, including commercials, music videos, projection design, miniature fabrication, and short-form animation for both documentaries and feature films.

 

Morris has collaborated with clients such as MTV, Amazon, Netflix, Sesame Street, and Burt’s Bees, as well as work with musicians like Explosions in the Sky, Iron & Wine, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Hilary Hahn—creating visuals that complement their music and creative vision.

Morris is based in Vermont. When not animating or crafting, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their 4-year-old daughter.

Shaping Empathy: Featuring Rowan will be open at Boston Children’s Museum through March 8, 2026.