Kudos Affiliates!! Dog Days of Summer 2024

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Kudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.

FUNDING

Union Station, Kansas City, Inc. (Kansas City, MO) officials announced a grant award on behalf of the Missouri Humanities to support Disney100: The Exhibition speaker series. Topics and presenters featured in the special speaker series will cover fascinating Disney history, animation, design, illustration and more.

The City of Fishers will distribute a $55,000 grant to Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN) through the city’s nonprofit grant program to support educational outreach activities.

The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium (Dubuque, IA) received a $5,000 grant from Alliant Energy to support the River Discovery Center phase one gallery renovations in the William Woodward Mississippi River Center, including five new exhibits, a refreshed interpretation grounded in environmental history, the integration of living and historic collections, and introduction new species. In addition, the Museum received grant support from Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area for a summer intern to assist with the organization’s Watershed Conservation Action through Advocacy, Research and Engagement program. The summer conservation intern will work on a team to develop, deliver, and evaluate new conservation education programs aimed to elevate visitor understanding of—and promote stewardship of—the Upper Mississippi River Watershed.

The Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum (Ashland, NE) received a $20,000 grant from Peter Kiewit Foundation. The contribution will boost the museum’s efforts to advance STEM education, focusing on immersive experiences in space and aviation. The museum said the funds will be used for cutting-edge technology, including VR Oculus sets and Pilot Pro Simulators, enabling students to engage in ground school, flight training and other hands-on STEM experiences.

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum (Baltimore, MD) announced a $500,000 grant from Bank of America to support plans to restore the South Car Works building in the museum. The restoration plan will reconfigure the museum’s layout, with the entrance to be at the South Car Works building, create community-accessible spaces, an amphitheater, and a street-facing cafe, among other changes.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services announced the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (San Juan, PR) was one of the FY24 recipients of its American Latino Museum Internship and Fellowship Initiative, awarding the museum $343,521. The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (MAPR), in partnership with the University of Sagrado Corazon and the University of Puerto Rico, will develop a workplace-based learning and practice immersive experience, featuring the design and implementation of internships that will grow student professional skills in museum studies and the arts, provide work experience in the creative sector, and expand the way students add depth and can incentivize their skills as employable cultural workers. Project funds will support paid mentors for students, a Lunch Box Speaker Series and an Annual Internship Alumni Portfolio. The resulting outcomes will include the production of the MAPR 25th Anniversary Celebration in conjunction with the production of the exhibition Puerto Rico Plural.

The New Hanover County Community Foundation has awarded a $2,140 grant to Cape Fear Museum (Wilmington, NC) to fund an 1898 field trip collaboration with the Bellamy Mansion.

Dr. Anne B. Kerr, President of Florida Southern College, announced a historic gift to the Polk Museum of Art (Lakeland, FL) through a generous donation from the Nicholas and Ashley Barnett Foundation at GiveWell. In tribute to Florida Southern College and Museum Trustee Ashley Gibson Barnett’s deep commitment to the arts, the museum will be renamed The Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art at Florida Southern College, effective July 13, 2024. This gift also establishes an endowment to support world-class exhibitions, operations, community art and educational programs, expanding the Museum’s engagement, accessibility, and influence.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services announced the FY24 recipients of its Museum Grants for African American History and Culture including these Affiliate initiatives:

  • The National Jazz Museum in Harlem (New York, NY) ($99,655) – to create educational videos and provide artist-led educational workshops for students. Educational resources will focus on introducing jazz and improvisation to grade 1-3 students and multimedia workshops for fourth and fifth-grade students. Staff will work with a team of educational consultants to create and post online videos for teachers to show their classes before visiting the museum to prepare students for their visit as well as videos for after students visit the museum to stimulate classroom discussions and reinforce concepts learned at the museum. The main beneficiaries of the project will be Title I New York City public school students.
  • The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati, OH) ($500,000) – to create a new permanent exhibition examining the historical roots of social justice movements in the United States, from time of the Underground Railroad to the present day. To develop the exhibition, staff will engage three panels of historians, scholars, artists, activists, and community stakeholders over three years. Coinciding with the opening of the exhibition, an accompanying one-day symposium will feature guest scholar speakers.
  • The DuSable Black History Museum & Education Center (Chicago, IL) ($100,000) – to create a digital catalog and finding aid for its collection of over 1,000 boxes of materials related to the history of civic engagement of African Americans in Chicago. For the project, staff will move materials out of storage and rehouse materials in a climate-controlled environment. An archivist consultant will process and catalog archived materials as well as train staff on the maintenance of digital systems. As a result of the project, staff will have increased access to the collection for use in programming and exhibitions, as well as providing increased access for partner academic institutions and the public.

The Nissan Foundation distributed $1.2 million in grants to 44 nonprofits that promote cultural understanding and appreciation of diversity. The recipients are located near Nissan facilities in Southern California, Middle Tennessee, Central Mississippi, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Southeast Michigan, New York City, North Central New Jersey, and Atlanta. Each funded program aligns with the Nissan Foundation’s mission of building community by valuing cultural diversity and promoting the many benefits that diversity brings to society including:

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

The American Association for State and Local History announced the Awards of Excellence recognizing excellence for projects (including civic engagement, special projects, educational programs, exhibits, publications, etc.) and featuring the following Affiliates:

LEADERSHIP

The Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) appointed Cindy Diehl Yang to be the new President and CEO. Cindy is replacing Rachael Mullins, who has served as President and CEO since 2019 and retired earlier this year. Cindy began her role right after the Fourth of July holiday.

Miriam Machado has been appointed Interim Director at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University (Miami, FL). Miriam has held the position of Director of Education at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum for over 15 years.

Kudos Affiliates!! Spring 2024

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Kudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.

FUNDING

History Colorado (Denver, CO) has been awarded a $58,798 Underrepresented Community Grant from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by the National Park Service. The funding will be used by the State Historic Preservation Office to survey 25 properties associated with the LGBTQ+ community in Colorado and designate three of these properties to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Hubbell-Waterman Foundation has granted $140,000 to the Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) as part of a multi-year grant for capital construction to advance its vision of a growing, thriving, inclusive community through investments in innovation and accessibility.

The Colorado Department of Local Affairs awarded the Pinhead Institute (Telluride, CO) $30,000 to assist historically marginalized communities statewide through educational programs.

Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN) received $5,000 from Indiana Landmarks to support efforts, including architectural assessments and repairs at historic structures, workshops, and digital walking tours promoting preservation and heritage. 

Denver bankers, Donald and Susan Sturm, have donated $20 million to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (Denver, CO). The gift will be used for the renovation of the museum’s theater, its east wing, and its outdoor spaces as part of an effort to expand the museum’s ability to develop new education and community programs.

Union Station, Kansas City, Inc. (Kansas City, MO) received a grant for $20,000 from Bayer Fund. This grant will be used towards building a better future by helping provide scholarships for local students to visit both Science City and the Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium. The program is for students in grades K-12 at public or charter schools in the Kansas City metro area as well as non-profit community groups that serve individuals from historically underrepresented communities.

Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA) was awarded $10,000 from Americana Corner’s Preserving America Grant Program. The awarded funds will be used for the acquisition of reproduction items and materials needed to update the 17th-Century English Village’s palisade.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

The following Affiliates (Category & Place) were recognized in the final 2024 USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards:

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Best Free Museum

No. 3: Saint Louis Science Center (St. Louis, MO)

Best History Museum

No. 1: Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA)

No. 2: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati, OH)

No. 3: Cincinnati History Museum (Cincinnati, OH)

No. 4: Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (Jackson, MS)

No. 8: National Museum of the Pacific War (Fredericksburg, TX)

Best Music Museum

No. 8: Birthplace of Country Music Museum (Bristol, VA)

No. 9: Musical Instrument Museum (Phoenix, AZ)

Best Open Air Museum

No. 1: Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA)

No. 2: Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT)

No. 8: Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN)

No. 9: Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE)

Best Science Museum

No. 1: The Wild Center (Tupper Lake, NY)

No. 3: Michigan Science Center (Detroit, MI)

No. 4: Tellus Science Museum (Cartersville, GA)

No. 5: Saint Louis Science Center (St. Louis, MO)

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Kudos Affiliates!!! February 2024

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Kudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.

FUNDING

Frontiers of Flight Museum (Dallas, TX) received a grant from the PPG Foundation to provide aerospace education to the North Texas area. The grant contribution from the foundation will allow over 4,000 girls from underserved Dallas County neighborhoods to participate in its Aerospace-STEM Challenge for Girls program next year. The museum’s initiative provides opportunities for girls to learn from women in senior leadership roles in the aerospace industry.

Adler Planetarium (Chicago, IL) will partner with Southern Illinois University on a $2.6M grant from NASA for the SolarSTEAM project, which uses celestial marvels as inspiration to study the sun. The grant, which runs through June 2026, will pay for a multifaceted, national heliophysics public engagement and empowerment program centered on the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. Adler Planetarium will provide heliophysics-themed videos and other visualizations tied to actual events for national distribution to museums, planetariums and amateur astronomy clubs.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA) received two awards from the New England Museum Association (NEMA) that recognize the outstanding work of museum staff and projects. Kim VanWormer, Guest Experience Manager for the Plimoth Grist Mill, was the recipient of NEMA’s tenth annual Excellence Award and Plimoth Patuxet received second place in NEMA’s 2023 Publication Award for its keystone publication – Plimoth Patuxet Life: The Thanksgiving Edition.

George Sparks, President & CEO of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (Denver, CO) was the winner of the Pinnacle Award in the Denver Business Journal’s 2023 Most Admired CEO awards program.

The American Alliance of Museums announced 41 reaccreditation awards featuring the following Affiliates:

:

Maha Freij, president & CEO of Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), was honored with the prestigious “Let Freedom Ring” Social Service award. The award presented by Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition, recognizes individuals whose work and actions embody Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of social justice and humanity. ACCESS is the parent organization of the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI).

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Kudos Affiliates!! December 2023

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Kudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu. 

FUNDING

High Desert Museum (Bend, OR) is one of 28 Oregon arts organizations receiving a $10,000 grant through the Oregon Arts Commission Arts Learning Program to strengthen arts education for K-12 students. The grant will support Kids Curate, a yearlong, bilingual education program that provides more than 50 hours of engaging and sequential arts learning experiences to 50 underserved students at Bear Creek Elementary School in Bend.

Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) is the benefactor of a $2 million gift from the Forest Akers Trust. The investment will be used to construct and equip two spaces within the museum— an Immersive Lab and an Exhibit Lab. These new labs will empower university students to take a hands-on approach to exhibition creation and visitor engagement with the museum’s extensive collection of more than 1 million objects.

University of Nebraska State Museum (Lincoln, NE) received a $2 million gift from the Hubbard Family Foundation to establish the inaugural Dr. Michael and Jane Voorhies Endowed Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology position. Dr. Voorhies is a professor emeritus in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and curator emeritus at the state museum. The gift honors the Voorhies’ work discovering, researching, and helping establish the Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park. Ashley Poust, a paleontologist and a postdoctoral researcher at the San Diego Natural History Museum, has been named the inaugural curator.

The Fishers City Council approved a resolution granting Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN) $80,000 to serve the Fishers community, following a recommendation from the Fishers Nonprofit Committee.

Through its new Geosciences Open Science Ecosystem program, the National Science Foundation is funding 12 new projects to support sustainable and networked open science activities including Project Pythia and Pangeo: Building an Inclusive Geoscience Community Through Accessible, Reusable, and Reproducible Workflows. Led by the University at Albany, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, CO), and Code for Science and Society/2i2c, this project will advance the development and use of Pythia Cookbooks, which are web-based interactive computing platforms embedded in open, cloud-based computational environments for executing common geoscience workflows.

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced $41.3 million in grants to support vital humanities education, research, preservation, and public programs featuring these Affiliate projects: 

  • Anchorage Museum (Anchorage, AK) ($100,000) to conduct comprehensive energy and carbon audits and cover consultant costs associated with development of a climate smart sustainability plan for the museum. 
  • Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA) ($190,000) to develop two five-day workshops for 72 secondary school teachers on Japanese American history and community history through Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo neighborhood. 
  • Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA) ($3,642) to purchase a digital, automatic monitoring system to record consecutive temperatures and relative humidity. 
  • Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI)  
    • ($10,000) to purchase storage furniture to house portions of the Apparel, Textiles and Design teaching collection in museum-quality cabinetry. 
    • ($9,983) to improve the storage of 6,500 excavated and cataloged objects by replacing shelving and implementing radio frequency identification tagging technology for the digital tracking and retrieval of the collection. 
  • Dennos Museum Center (Traverse City, MI) ($10,000) to install 1,400 square feet of window tint film to reduce visible light levels in the museum’s promenade wing, a gallery space for light-sensitive objects such as photographs, works on paper, and organic materials. 
  • Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Jackson, MS) ($187,059) to create two, one-week Freedom Summer: 60 Years Later workshops for 72 K-12 educators on using a site-based approach to studying the civil rights movement in Mississippi. 
  • Center for Jewish History (New York, NY) ($350,000) to reconstruct the Center for Jewish History’s collection storage building to improve preservation of irreplaceable collections and reduce energy costs and carbon emissions. 
  • City Lore, Inc. (New York, NY) ($175,000) to develop a two-week Understanding Puerto Rican Migration and Community Building through the Arts and Humanities residential institute for 30 K-12 educators on the migration experience of New York City’s Puerto Rican communities expressed through the arts. 
  • Ohio History Connection (Columbus, OH) ($319,511) to digitize 100,000 pages of Ohio newspapers published prior to 1963, as part of the state’s sixth round of participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program. This phase would focus on three themes: community building, democracy, and transportation. 

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

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Barco presented their fourth annual Blooloop 50 Museum Influencer List for 2023.The list highlights 50 key individuals whose innovation and creativity have been integral to developing today’s museums including:

The Southeast Museums Conference awarded the Greensboro History Museum (Greensboro, NC) two Gold Awards and one Silver Award for excellence in the use of technology. The competition encourages innovation, effective design, accessibility, creativity and pride of work, as well as recognition of institutional identity. The Gears of Democracy introductory video won Gold Awards for both its production and multi-screen installation in the NC Democracy: Eleven Elections exhibition. The stereoscopic video produced for the museum’s Gerrymander Madness received a Silver Award. NC Democracy: Eleven Elections has also been recognized with a 2023 Award of Excellence from the American Association of State & Local History. The exhibition explores choices and change across 11 state elections between 1776 and 2010, illustrating the twists and turns of who could participate, how voters cast their ballots, and what influenced decisions that continue to shape what democracy means today.

Kristan Uhlenbrock, director of The Institute for Science & Policy, a project of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (Denver, CO), was named one of the recipients of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications. The award presented by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in partnership with Schmidt Futures recognized Uhlenbrock’s podcast series using interviews to explore the complex mix of climate change, science, politics, policy, economics, culture, and humanity to tackle one of the biggest problems facing the Western U.S.– water scarcity. In addition, the Institute earned a $100,000 grant from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to explore creating a science policy fellowship program that would give state legislators direct access to doctoral-level scientific experts. The grant is part of the NCSL’s State Science Policy Fellowship Planning Grant Initiative and could help legislators make choices about issues like energy, air pollution, climate, water, public health, and technology.

The American Alliance of Museums announced Samuel W. Black, Director of the African American Program, Senator John Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA) and Marise McDermott, President and CEO, Witte Museum (San Antonio, TX) have been named members of its Excellence in DEAI Steering Committee.

LEADERSHIP

Misha Galperin, Ph.D., president & chief executive officer, Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia, PA), announced she will be stepping down from her role at the museum. Misha will stay on and work with the Board to onboard a successor and effect a smooth transition. 

Kudos Affiliates!! November 2023

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Kudos 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 Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $76.4 million for the inaugural Global Centers Competition including University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana-Champaign, IL) and partner institutions: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, CO) and Arizona State University. These collaborative research centers will apply best practices of broadening participation and community engagement to develop use-inspired research on climate change and clean energy. The centers will also create and promote opportunities for students and early-career researchers to gain education and training in world-class research while enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Researchers will be supported by NSF up to $5 million over four to five years.

The Glen and Polly Barton Educational Endowment Fund donated $1 million to the Peoria Riverfront Museum (Peoria, IL) for the museum’s Every Student Initiative. The program brings Peoria Public School students to the museum to expand on topics outside of their classrooms.

Science Museum Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, OK) received a $1.5 million gift from the Chickasaw Nation to support a state-of-the art planetarium scheduled to open in 2024. The multimillion-dollar Love’s Planetarium will provide Oklahoma with an educational venue that will include an optical projector with a digital system that produces 9,500 bright stars and 56 nebulae and clusters for viewing as well as approximately 8 million detailed stars to recreate the Milky Way, all with high-intensity LEDs and fiber-optics. When it’s complete, the planetarium will be the only one of its kind with this combination of projection systems in the Western Hemisphere.

The National Park Service (NPS), in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), announced $25.7 million in Save America’s Treasures grants from the Historic Preservation Fund to preserve nationally significant sites and collections. Preservation projects receiving a Save America’s Treasures grant from NPS include:

Collections projects receiving a Save America’s Treasures grant from IMLS include:

  • Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA) ($163,680) to support Preserving Mayflower II: A Project to Ensure the Longevity of a National Icon
  • YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York, NY) ($224,007) for the preservation and access of unique historical documents and photographs of the Jewish Labor and Political Archives.
  • Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, WY) ($750,000) to improve and remodel collections storage spaces at the center.

International Museum of Art & Science (McAllen, TX) received three grant awards from the Texas Commission on the Arts for the 2023-24 fiscal year in the following categories:

  • $3,500 – Arts Respond – Public Safety and Criminal Justice– to support Screen It: Youth Identity Through Art which brings at-risk teens and working artists together to learn about the process of screen printing, culminating in a public exhibition.
  • $11,000 – A two-year Arts Create award to advance the creative economy of Texas by investing in the operations of the museum.
  • $74,924 – Cultural District Project award to support Destination McAllen: Art, Culture, IMAS which will attract tourists with public art and high-quality artistic videos featuring McAllen’s Cultural District.

The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium (Dubuque, IA) received $8,000 in funding from the City of Dubuque’s Arts and Cultural Affairs grant program to support a special 20th-Anniversary exhibit at the museum.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

UNESCO World Heritage Committee added Ohio’s Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks as the United States’ 25th addition to the World Heritage List. The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, which includes five locations managed by the National Park Service and three managed by the Ohio History Connection (Columbus, OH), were built by Native Americans between 1,600 and 2,000 years ago.

The Dubuque County Historical Society, which operates the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium and the Mathias Ham Historic Site, has been awarded a Top Workplaces 2023 honor by Iowa Top Workplaces.

Jose Santamaria, former executive director of Tellus Science Museum (Cartersville, GA), was recognized with the Entwisle Award for Lifetime Service in Tourism by Only in Cartersville Bartow Tourism.

Mr. William D. “Bill” Welge, Archivist, Historian, and Author, and former Research Division Director of the Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK) was inducted into the Oklahoma Historian’s Hall of Fame in March 2023.  His service spanned nearly 44 years beginning in 1977. The OHS archives were renamed the “William D. Welge Archival Collections,” in his honor.

LEADERSHIP

Jose Santamaria announced he will be moving from his executive director position of the Tellus Science Museum to part-time director emeritus. Tellus’ director of development, Adam Wade assumed the executive director role, effective October 1.

Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) President/CEO Rachael Mullins will retire in June 2024. She plans to relocate to the Atlanta area to be closer to family and assist in caring for her mother. A search committee will conduct a professional search to place a new president/CEO by June 1, 2024.