Kudos Affiliates!! May 2023
/0 Comments/in Affiliates in the News, enewsletter feature, Kudos, You Heard It Here First /by GlavasCKudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.
FUNDING
MakerUSA, in collaboration with the Pinhead Institute (Telluride, CO), has received a $100,000 grant to fund a program manager to design and operate “maker” programming regionally. The grant will cover the costs of a program manager, as well as an $8,000 sub-grant that will go directly to Pinhead to develop programming.
The Arvest Foundation announced a $2,500 contribution to the Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK) to support digitization and preservation of oral interviews of veterans who served in WWII and beyond. The interviews were conducted and recorded in the 1980s through the 1990s using technology that is deteriorating.
The California Natural Resources Agency announced more than $19.7 million in funding awarded by the California Cultural and Historical Endowment to support 63 museum projects including:
- LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes (Los Angeles, CA) ($500,000) for the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes Capital Improvement Projects.
- Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA) ($500,000) to support Searching for Ibasho.
- Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA) ($500,000) for the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Renovations Toward Accreditation Project.
- California Science Center (Los Angeles, CA) ($217,610) to develop the Elementary Science Community of Learners.
- Museum of Sonoma County (Sonoma, CA) ($150,102) to create Sonoma County Stories.
- San Diego History Center (San Diego, CA) ($500,000) for All-In San Diego Community History Archiving Project.
New Mexico’s Governor approved $100,000 in capital funding to provide, improve, and enhance exhibits and programs at the New Mexico Museum of Space History (Alamogordo, NM).
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
Neville Crenshaw, manager of special exhibitions and featured experiences at the Saint Louis Science Center (Saint Louis, MO), and the Center’s team were awarded the Mission Moment 2022 award from MindsEye, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving people of all ages with visual disabilities in the St. Louis region. The award recognized the work from the team to make 2022’s HOCKEY: Faster Than Ever special exhibition more accessible for guests who are blind or partially sighted.
The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) announced the reaccreditation awards for 2023, which included three Smithsonian Affiliates:
- Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ)
- Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ)
- National Museum of Nuclear Science & History (Albuquerque, NM)
Aquarium of the Bay (San Francisco, CA) received reaccreditation for 2023 through 2028 by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced 30 finalists, including three Affiliates, for the 2023 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries that demonstrate excellence in service to their communities.
- Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center, part of History Colorado (Fort Garland, CO)
- Museum of Us (San Diego, CA)
- Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science (Miami, FL)
A collaboration between Nebraska Public Media Labs and the University of Nebraska State Museum (Lincoln, NE), Expedition Nebraska: A Virtual Natural History Experience has been honored for Metaverse, Immersive and Virtual Experiences in the 27th Annual Webby Awards. The project allows visitors to virtually travel back in time to prehistoric Nebraska and experience how it has changed over millennia. The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, is the leading international awards organization honoring excellence on the internet.
Senator John Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA) received the S.K. Stevens Award from the Pennsylvania Museums Association for its work on the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES) exhibition American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith.
The National Art Education Association has named Miriam Machado, director of education at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum (Miami, FL) as the recipient of the 2023 National Museum Education Art Educator Award. This prestigious award, determined through a peer review of nominations, recognizes the exemplary contributions, service, and achievements of one outstanding NAEA member annually at the National level within their division.
LEADERSHIP
Pamela D.C. Junior, director of the Two Mississippi Museums (Jackson, MS) announced her plans to retire. She has led the Two Mississippi Museums, which consists of the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, since 2019. Junior’s retirement is effective June 30.
Kenosha Public Museums‘ (Kenosha, WI) director Leslie Brother has resigned. Peggy Gregorski has been named interim director while a national search is conducted.
Kudos Affiliates!! March 2023
/1 Comment/in Affiliates in the News, enewsletter feature, Kudos /by GlavasCKudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.
FUNDING
Framingham State University (Framingham, MA), in partnership with Accelerate The Future, received $1.39 million from the Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services to diversify and expand the state’s pipeline of behavioral health specialists. The funds will help place 300 employees at local community health organizations into the University’s master’s degree program in mental health counseling. An emphasis will be placed on recruiting and retaining Black, Indigenous and people of color, bilingual, and culturally responsive behavioral health employees.
Mouser Electronics, Inc.is a major sponsor of Engineers Week through the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (Fort Worth, Texas). Mouser has been a sponsor of this annual event designed to increase public awareness and appreciation of engineers and their work for over a decade.
Dubuque Museum of Art (Dubuque, IA) received $25,000 from the Dubuque City Council as part of the American Rescue Plan ARPA funds. The funds will be used to support daily operations at the museum.
Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI) received a $1 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Staff will use the funds for strategic planning, digital content creation, marketing, and investment in tech-related personnel to expand their current digital presences.
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
Kurt Dewhurst, director emeritus and curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage for the Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) and Marsha MacDowell, curator of Folk Arts and Quilt Studies for the MSU Museum, each received the Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes long-term, exemplary efforts made during their time at Michigan State University. Dewhurst and MacDowell have explored, celebrated, and expanded diversity, equity and inclusion through their work as museum professionals, teachers, mentors, researchers, writers and administrators.
Kudos Affiliates!! December 2022
/0 Comments/in enewsletter feature, Kudos /by GlavasCKudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.
FUNDING
Peoria Riverfront Museum (Peoria, IL) received two major gifts as part of their 10th anniversary celebration. Along with a $1 million commitment from the Gilmore Foundation, the museum unveiled the latest acquisition for its permanent collection: a 10-foot amethyst geode from Uruguay. The funding will be used for additional acquisitions to their collections and exhibitions that will help bring in new audiences and inspire people at the museum.
The Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) was awarded $15,000 from Michigan Humanities to support public programming for Sounds of Religion. Sound of Religion is organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in cooperation with the American Religious Sounds Project of The Ohio State University and Michigan State University and made possible through the generous support of The Henry Luce Foundation.
Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum (Ashland, NE) received a $29,986 contract from the Nebraska Department of Education to be a Center of Excellence. As a Center of Excellence, the museum’s education team will develop a “STEM in Space” workbook that includes activities corresponding to 2023 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) directives, such as the Artemis Mission series and James Webb Space Telescope.
Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art (Oak Brook, IL) was awarded $2,500 from the DuPage Foundation as part of its Community Needs grants. The grant will support ongoing programs at the museum.
Springfield Museum of Art (Springfield, OH) announced $800,000 in new commitments to its capital campaign including a $500,000 gift from the Hatch Foundation.
Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA) has been awarded a grant of more than $2.5 million by the Perenchio Foundation. The multi-year Operating Support Grant will go towards increasing the museum’s capacity and supporting day-to-day expenses, organizational learning, and additional staff.
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic named Cecilia Rokusek, president and chief executive officer of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library (Cedar Rapids, IA) as the recipient of the prestigious Gratias Agit award. The award is in recognition “for the promotion of the good name of the Czech Republic abroad, and in appreciation of prominent personalities and organizations developing activities in non-governmental fields.”
The Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) presented the Roy L. Shafer Leading Edge Individual Leadership Award to Peg Filliez, Volunteer, University of Nebraska State Museum (Lincoln, NE). The Individual Leadership category recognizes extraordinary accomplishments in a leadership role for the individual’s organization and/or the field.
The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) announced the reaccreditation awards of the Accreditation Commission for the following Affiliates:
Conner Prairie Museum (Fishers, IN)
Denver Botanic Gardens (Denver, CO)
International Tennis Hall of Fame (Newport, RI)
Kudos Affiliates!! February 2022
/0 Comments/in Affiliates in the News, enewsletter feature, Kudos, You Heard It Here First /by GlavasCKudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.
FUNDING
The National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium (Dubuque, IA) received a $10,000 grant from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ “Spring into Action” campaign to provide opportunities for people in the community to do conservation work and to restore and preserve habitat areas.
An anonymous donor contributed $25 million to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (Denver, CO) and its supporting organization, the DMNS Foundation. Ten percent of the donation will help with staffing, equipment and launch activities. The remaining will help establish an endowed fund to support the museum’s collections conservation work.
Framingham State University (Framingham, MA) received a $146,785 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant will fund a series of workshops and focus on using digital humanities tools to explore issues of race in America, both historically and in the current moment. Potential topics for exploration include tracing the transatlantic slave trade, uncovering Native American presence in colonial New England, identifying local abolitionist movements, and showcasing contemporary African American and Latinx literature.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research at the Center for Jewish History (New York, NY) received $7 million in funding for the launch of the Vilna Online Collections. The online collection is an international project to digitally reunite its pre-WWII archive located in New York City and Vilnius Lithuania.
The National Endowment for the Arts announced the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2022 featuring the following Affiliate recipients:
- Arizona State Museum (Tucson, AZ) ($40,000) to support a professional development program for emerging and master folk artists. Emerging artists studying with acclaimed Indigenous weavers and teachers, Porfirio Gutiérrez (Zapotec) and Barbara Teller Ornelas (Navajo), will receive instruction in using natural dyes and weaving. The artists will learn skills associated with the museum, such as object handling and exhibit design and will culminate with an exhibit produced by the artists that will showcase their weavings and the master artists’ collaborative work.
- Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA) ($40,000) to develop a traveling exhibition featuring artist Glenn Kaino. Based on the fictional story of three young Japanese Americans in U.S. internment camps during World War II, and inspired by the conflicts found in the traditional fable of “The Fox and the Stork” in which the two animals play pranks on one another to their detriment, Kaino analyzes the challenges that American-born citizens faced while imprisoned in the camps. The story will be presented in multiple formats by Kaino, including a monumental work outside the museum and inside, a series of new paintings and cinematic vignettes that convey the entirety of this story.
- History Colorado (Denver, CO) ($20,000) to support the collection, digitization, and exhibition of artwork produced during the Colorado Chicano Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s-70s. The exhibition will explore Chicano identity and empowerment, displaying historic works alongside works by contemporary Chicano artists.
- Kona Historical Society (Kealakekua, HI) ($10,000) to support a concert series that presents songs, stories, and the history of the land of Hawai’i. Local Hawaiian musicians will perform combining music and storytelling in their presentations. These free in-person concerts will be livestreamed on social media, and each concert will be recorded for future online viewing.
- Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI) ($35,000) to create a writing fellowship program for youth. Programming will feature BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) teaching artists skilled in a variety of writing disciplines such as poetry, fiction, script, and graphic novels/zine-making. The program will provide local high school students, who include middle to low-income Arab-American, Black, and Latinx families, with opportunities for self-expression and collaboration with peers through imaginative writing, production, and performance-based activities.
- City Lore, Inc. (New York, NY) ($20,000) to implement a qualitative study exploring the resilience of organizations with arts programming that are excluded from the arts philanthropic support system. The project will address research questions about the resilience of arts and cultural providers such as social clubs, religious institutions, and small businesses during times of crisis, with a focus on the periods before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Springfield Museum of Art (Springfield, OH) ($20,000) to support an exhibition and accompanying catalogue featuring the works of women artists. The exhibition will explore the theme of contemporary women artists who focus on issues of identity.
- International Storytelling Association (Jonesborough, TN) ($25,000) to support Storytelling Live!, a seasonal teller-in-residence program. Artists, including African, Latino, Asian, and Native American storytellers and representing a broad range of storytelling traditions, will be featured in week-long residencies that include concerts, workshops, and special performances serving hospitals, schools, senior centers, and correctional institutions.
Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence, RI) received a $48,000 grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission for capital preservation work at the facility.
The Children’s Museum of the Upstate (Greenville, SC) was awarded a $28,500 grant from the Bosch Community Fund to support steamWORKS, the museum’s special think-tank lab.
Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT) received three grants totaling $519,999 from Connecticut Humanities. The largest grant of $500,000 is a Connecticut Cultural Fund Operating Support grant, which assists organizations in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and improves their ability to serve their communities. The second is a $10,000 grant from the Sustaining Humanities through the American Rescue Plan Capacity Grants to support diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion training across all departments. The third award of $9,999, is a Capacity Building Grant to fund Lord Cultural Resources’ external information gathering and reporting in order to help the museum better understand and engage with a more diverse public.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has designated Mystic Seaport Museum an Informal Education Community Anchor. The designation recognizes the museum and its Treworgy Planetarium as a community resource and provides a $24,266 grant to bring space exploration to traditionally underserved areas and broaden student participation in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.
LEADERSHIP
The Kenosha Public Museums Board of Trustees has named Leslie Brothers the next executive director of the Kenosha Public Museums (Kenosha, WI). Brothers brings extensive experience as an executive director, most recently at the Ulrich Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art at Wichita State University and the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University. Leslie will begin her new role in March.
Executive Director, Andrew Sandall of the Museum of Arts & Sciences (Daytona Beach, FL) announced he is stepping down from his position to take over as president and CEO of the Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ). Maria Hane will serve as the interim executive director until a search for a new executive director is completed.
Dr. Gabriela Chavarria has been named the new executive director of the Burke Museum (Seattle, WA). Dr. Chavarria currently serves as the vice president and chief curator of the Science Division at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Dr. Chavarria’s appointment begins on March 1, 2022 following the retirement of current executive director Julie Stein.
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden (Staten Island, NY) welcomed Jessica Baker Vodoor as the next President & CEO to lead the 83-acre site and historic cultural institution. Ms. Vodoor served for eight years in Times Square as the Vice President, Operations for the New 42nd Street where she directed the operations of the New 42 Studios and the Duke on 42nd Street. Ms. Vodoor began her role on January 10.
2021 Affiliations Virtual Conference was a Huge Success!
/0 Comments/in Conference Ideas, enewsletter feature /by Elizabeth Bugbee
Thank you to our Smithsonian and Affiliate speakers and attendees who participated in our 2021 Virtual Conference, October 26-28, and made it an extraordinary success! 2021 saw the highest-ever conference attendance in the history of the Affiliations National Conference, which is a testament to our conference program and the introduction of Affiliate Institutional registration, allowing even more Affiliate colleagues to attend this year.
“I greatly appreciated the virtual nature of this conference. I don’t think I would have been able to attend if it were in person. I found it interesting to hear from so many different museums. Thank you for making this conference accessible to museums with tight budgets!“
Smithsonian Affiliate attendee
Throughout three days and 30 sessions and workshops, Smithsonian, Affiliate, and guest speakers led thought-provoking sessions on collaboration opportunities, inequity in exhibition development, creating inclusive HR practices, engaging communities in civic action, best practices in exhibition writing, and more. A dynamic opening session centered youth advocates and their views on the future of the museum field alongside Ellen Stofan, Under Secretary for Science & Research, and Kevin Young, Director of the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
In addition to the sessions and workshops, the Smithsonian Resource Fair library provided Smithsonian and Affiliate colleagues a virtual booth where they could upload documents, videos, and other resources for conference attendees to download and share with their organizations. Registered attendees can access and download these resources on the Virtual Attendee Hub until January 20, 2022.
“Sensational conference! I even wrote to my directors to thank them for making this possible. The platform used for the virtual conference was the easiest and most sophisticated I’ve experienced. The presenters were super, and I learned so much. Kudos to moderators–well done with links provided to us in the chat as well as lots of good interaction. I loved the conference!”
Smithsonian Affiliate attendee
All Smithsonian and Affiliate colleagues, regardless of registration, are able to view selected recordings from the Virtual Conference on our Smithsonian Affiliations website or YouTube playlist. If you require transcripts or have any questions, please email us at affiliates@si.edu.
Mark your calendars for when we next meet for an Affiliations Conference, October 23-25, 2022!

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