Kudos Affiliates! for November 2017

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Bravo Affiliates on these great accomplishments!

Funding

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) recently announced $1,998,484 in funding for 28 training and professional development projects for museums across the country as part of its Museums for America grant program, including the following Affiliate projects:

Abbe Museum (Bar Harbor, ME)-Award: $53,050.00

The Abbe Museum will invest in professional development and training for its staff, board, and volunteers to support its work with the Wabanaki Nations towards a decolonized approach to every aspect of its operations. An emerging concept in museum practice, decolonization is an ongoing process of sharing authority for the documentation and interpretation of Native culture.

John G. Shedd Aquarium (Chicago, IL)-Award: $246,981.00

The Shedd Aquarium will undertake a two-year project to build the capacity of museum staff to engage diverse communities through increased cultural competencies. Through a multi-departmental and integrated suite of professional development opportunities, the project will ensure that the institution’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is effective and sustainable.

Mid-America Science Museum (Hot Springs, AR)-Award: $21,939.00

Mid-America Science Museum will implement a professional development program for its education staff and those from member museums of the Arkansas Discovery Network. Museum staffers will participate in a series of three day-long workshops on robotics, app development, and microprocessors.

Perot Museum of Nature and Science (Dallas, TX)-Award: $24,819.00

In response to changing demographics in north Texas, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science will develop staff capacity to create a culturally competent, bilingual (English and Spanish) institution.

 

Through the agency’s largest competitive grant program, Museums for America, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced $19,189,929 in grants for museums across the nation including the following Affiliate projects:

Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI)-Award: $200,000.00

The Arab American National Museum will increase its educational outreach programming about Arabs, Arab Americans, and Islam to regions of southeastern Michigan. The museum will provide comprehensive educational resources and tools, underwrite fieldtrips to the museum, and offer off-site workshops to under-resourced school districts in the targeted regions of the state.

Buffalo Bill Historical Center (Cody, WY)-Award: $255,000.00

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West will work with advisory groups and an external exhibit design firm to renovate and reinstall the Cody Firearms Museum, a 22,500-square-foot gallery. The reinstallation will feature six thematic areas with educational interpretation and media interactives that put firearms into the larger context of history while still providing the technical information of interest to collectors.

USS Constitution Museum (Boston, MA)-Award: $326,032.00

The USS Constitution Museum will transform the interpretive endeavors of two separate entities through a strategic alliance with the U.S. Navy’s USS Constitution. The All Aboard project will integrate experiences to take place both on board the ship and in the museum for the first time to maximize learning.

Springfield Museum of Art (Springfield, OH)-Award: $24,729.00

The Springfield Museum of Art will increase public access, knowledge, and use of the 325 prints in its permanent collection by partnering with the Dayton Printmakers Cooperative. The Print Positives: Rediscovering and Using Our Print Collection project will include study sessions and research assistance from the printmakers to enable museum staff to develop an exhibition of prints from the permanent collection.

San Diego Museum of Man (San Diego, CA)-Award: $310,430.00

The San Diego Museum of Man will engage with the Kumeyaay Nation to build the museum’s capacity to engage the federally recognized tribe as a partner in decisions about collections, exhibitions, and programs.

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, NC)-Award: $139,681.00

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences will address urgent conservation needs for three marine invertebrate collections acquired from the Charleston Museum, Duke University Marine Laboratory, and the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences.

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, AL)-Award: $184,295.00

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute will digitize interviews from its oral history collections to allow broader access to the public and encourage scholarship and new interpretations of the Civil Rights Movement.

Connecticut Historical Society (Hartford, CT)-Award: $24,467.00

The Connecticut Historical Society will undertake a film digitization project to catalog, digitize, and improve storage conditions for selected items from its motion picture film collection, which provides insights into the lives and culture of 20th -century Connecticut residents and communities.

 

Arconic Foundation awarded Putnam Museum (Davenport, IA) a $40,000 grant for the IMMERSE Program, a week long, immersive, in house learning experience for students.

Burton D. Morgan Foundation trustees approved a $172,000 grant to The National Inventors Hall of Fame (Newark, OH) to operate its Camp Invention programs in the summer and conduct a study on STEM education in co-curricular settings.

The Dubuque County Historical Society has received funding from the City of Dubuque’s Arts & Culture Special Projects program. Funding will support the creation of hand-painted murals that illustrate the stories of aquatic life featured in the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium’s (Dubuque, IA) Rivers to the Seas exhibits and the much-anticipated Conservation Lab.

Coming up in Affiliateland in November 2017

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We’re thankful for all the activity in Affiliateland this month. Happy Thanksgiving Affiliates!

D.C.
Two Affiliates are loaning objects to The Sweat of their Face: Portraying American Workers exhibition at the Smithsonian. The Lowell National Historical Park has lent a wood engraving by Winslow Homer and the High Museum has lent a photograph by Peter Sekaer and an oil painting by Francis Hyman Criss. Opening at the National Portrait Gallery, 11.3.

CALIFORNIA
The San Diego History Center opens the Mail Call exhibition (SITES) which explores the history of America’s military postal system, in San Diego, 11.4.

MASSACHUSETTS
Richard Kurin, Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large, will lecture on his book, Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gem at the Springfield Museums, 11.5.

NATIONWIDE
Teens at five Affiliates continue to advise the Smithsonian through the Secretary’s Youth Advisory Council, meeting again via videoconference from Fort Worth, Corning, Cincinnati, Dearborn and Greenville, 11.8.

GEORGIA

From the Ocean Optimism initiative website, oceanoptimism.org

Dr. Nancy Knowlton, senior scientist emerita from the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Institute in Panama, will give a Science on Tap lecture to discuss the Ocean Optimism Initiative, at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, 11.14.

ALABAMA
A new Smithsonian Spark!Lab, an immersive, interactive place for exploring invention, will open at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, 11.24.

Kudos Affiliates! for September 2017

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Great job Affiliates!

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced more than $39 million will be awarded to nonprofit organizations including the following Affiliate initiatives:

Portrait of Leonard Berstein, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

  • Denver Museum of Nature & Science (Denver, CO) $300,000
    To support a project to rehouse an archaeology collection of 72,000 objects that focuses on North America. The artifacts will be moved to the LEED-certified Avenir Collections Center and placed on custom-created storage mounts and in new cabinetry.
  • Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT) $154,811
    To support a four-week institute for twenty college and university faculty to study the social, cultural, and environmental history of American maritime regions.
  • Kentucky Historical Society (Lexington, KY) $300,000
    To prepare for digital publication of the papers of the governors of Kentucky during the Civil War.
  • Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Jackson, MS) $274,175
    To progress the Mississippi Digital Newspaper Project, Phase Three
  • National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia, PA) $250,000
    To implement a traveling exhibition about American composer Leonard Bernstein on the centennial of his birth.
  • Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, WY) $200,000
    To upgrade environmental controls and improve fire and security systems at the Cody Firearms Museum, which houses a collection of 7,000 firearms and more than 20,000 related objects chronicling the development of firearms from 1425 to the present.

Humanities Nebraska recently awarded a $5,500 grant to the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum (Ashland, NE) for the case and signage of a new exhibit on Astronaut Clayton Anderson.

Coming up in Affiliateland in September 2017

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Great stuff to see as we cruise through Affiliateland in September!

GEORGIA
The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra will be part of a family festival at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, 9.8-10.

Ann Caspari, an educator at the National Air and Space Museum, will lead a science educator workshop for teachers at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, 9.14-16.

ALASKA
The Anchorage Museum will open Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline, an exhibition of the travels and fossil adventures of Alaska artist Ray Troll and paleontologist Dr. Kirk Johnson, director of the National Museum of Natural History, in Anchorage, 9.15.

VERMONT
The Sullivan Museum will host a talk by Dr. Adrienne Kaeppler, anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History, on the Wilkes expedition and the amazing specimens from it in Northfield, 9.21.

NATIONWIDE
Over 100 Smithsonian Affiliates will open their doors free of charge to ticket holders as part of Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day Live!, 9.23.

FLORIDA
The Museum of Arts and Sciences will host a lecture by Valerie Paul of the Fort Pierce Marine Station on 9.23. The Museum will also present two concerts by the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra in Daytona Beach, 9.30.

Join the Universe of Learning

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Universe of Learning logo

Smithsonian Affiliations, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and funded through NASA’s Universe of Learning, is launching a new, two-year science literacy pilot program and looking for participants. Funding is available–up to $2,000 per year– for seven Affiliate organizations to use resources from the Universe of Learning site to develop programs exploring  art, history, and natural science. The goal of the pilot is to create sustainable models of innovative STEM learning for youth, families, and lifelong learners.

To participate, interested candidates must complete three of  seven professional development online webinars.* The webinars are hosted by astrophysics scientists and educators and discuss NASA’s three main questions: How does the Universe work? How did we get here? Are we alone? An accompanying online forum will further strengthen the discussion topics and address how your organization can best use the available resources to develop and share your program model.

Webinars are every two weeks on Wednesday at 2pm EST (the next one is on Sept 13th). *Two out of the seven webinars have already occurred. However, they were recorded and we encourage for your institution to partake in this great opportunity.

The application opens in November and is only available to Smithsonian Affiliates.

For any inquiries, please email Patty Arteaga at ArteagaP@si.edu.

kudos Affiliates! for August 2017

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Congrats to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments!

FUNDING

The Smart Museum of Art and DuSable Museum of African American History (Chicago, IL) have been jointly awarded a $250,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art in support of the special exhibition South Side Stories. The collaborative exhibition opens in September 2018 as part of Art Design Chicago and explores the artistic production and cultural legacy of Chicago’s South Side. At the DuSable Museum, Holdings will consider the ways in which individuals, artists, and institutions collect, shape, and embody history, and how these histories—whether personal memories or institutional archives and collections—are subsequently shaped and reshaped over time through research, curatorial forgings, individual motivations, and incorporation into contemporary artistic practices.

The National Park Service announced that Mystic Seaport (Mystic, CT) is the recipient of a National Maritime Heritage Grant. Mystic Seaport was awarded $49,959 to support development of From Clippers to Containers: The Benjamin F. Packard and the History of U.S. Deepwater Cargo Transport, a long-term exhibition that will explain changes in the maritime cargo trades from the mid-19th century to the present.

The Harry Wilson Loose Trust has awarded a $200,000 one-year grant to Union Station Kansas City (Kansas City, MO) to complete an expansion project that includes an outdoor event space and outdoor Science City exhibit.

Officials at the Peoria Riverfront Museum (Peoria, IL) unveiled the Every Student Initiative, a program to fund once-a-year visits to the facility for 9,000 children across central Illinois through a $250,000 grant from the Barton Family Foundation.

 AWARDS and RECOGNITION

Javier Cevallos, the president of Framingham State University (Framingham, MA) was appointed to serve on a new state-wide Latino Advisory Commission which will promote the economic prosperity of Latinos in Massachusetts.

LEADERSHIP and STAFF CHANGES 

 The DuSable Museum of African American History (Chicago, IL) has named Lee Bly as the museum’s first ever vice president for planning, education and museum experience.

Ahmad Ward, former Vice President of Education and Exhibitions at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute accepted an Executive Directorship role at the Mitchelville Preservation Project in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The mission of the Mitchelville Preservation Project is to replicate, preserve and sustain a historically significant site and to educate the public about the sacrifice, resilience and perseverance of the freedmen of Mitchelville, which in 1862 was the first self-governed town of freed slaves in America. Among the project’s key partners is the Coastal Discovery Museum (Hilton Head Island, SC).

Jeff Nathanson, new Executive Director of the Museums of Sonoma County

Jeff Nathanson has been selected as the new Executive Director of the Museums of Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, CA). Nathanson served as Executive Director of the Arts Council of Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey.