Kudos Affiliates! December 2018

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Congratulations 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 received $5,000 from IBM to aid the development of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum at the museum.

Midlands Community Foundation has awarded $89,175 to 24 nonprofit organizations serving Sarpy and Cass counties. Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum received $3,300.

The Knight Foundation announced the winners of the 2018 Knight Arts Challenge in Detroit. The Arab American National Museum was awarded $100,000 to support the Arab American Arts and Cultural Festival.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

Burns & McDonnell made a multiyear, multi-million-dollar commitment to Science City at Union Station Kansas City. Burns & McDonnell will invest $2.5-3 million over the next five years, bringing the total investment over the last decade to an excess of $8 million. The first phase of offerings include:

  • Burns & McDonnell Battle of the Brains: Commitment for two more K-12 STEM competitions, with each to result in a $1 million permanent exhibit inspired by area students.
  • Field Trip and Transportation Fund: For an entire school year, Burns & McDonnell will award one field trip per week for a class to experience Science City.
  • Pop-Up Series: Burns & McDonnell and Science City STEM professionals will be on-site to present insightful talks and demos for students.
  • Summer Camp: STEM professionals from Burns & McDonnell will enrich Science City’s summer camp with industry trends and innovations and share tips and insights regarding careers in STEM.
  • Internship: A Burns & McDonnell Battle of the Brains participant will be offered an internship to work at Burns & McDonnell or Science City.

LEADERSHIP

Jody Blankenship, CEO of the Connecticut Historical Society, has stepped down to take the job as president and CEO of the Indiana Historical Society. He will replace John Herbst, who served at the Indiana society’s helm for 12 years after leading Conner Prairie and the Indiana State Museum. Herbst is retiring at the end of the year, and Blankenship will take over Jan. 21.

The Newark Museum announced that Linda Harrison had been selected to succeed Steven Kern as director and chief executive officer. Ms. Harrison is coming from the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, where she has served as the director and chief executive since 2013. Ms. Harris will begin her new position in January 2019.

Kudos Affiliates! August 2018

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

Funding

Global Fridays logoThe Nissan Foundation awarded $730,000 in grants to 29 nonprofit organizations for its 2018 grant cycle including a $10,000 award to the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI) for its Global Fridays series. Since 2005, the multicultural performance series has offered high-quality presentations for fans of traditional and modern global performing arts and those with adventurous cultural appetites.

Framingham State University (Framingham, MA) will launch a five-year project to help students from underrepresented backgrounds succeed in high-tech fields using a major grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The 64-year-old nonprofit, dedicated to advancing biomedical research and science education, will provide $1 million to the University to help the school redevelop its science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs. The University will use the money to fund a long-term effort aimed at increasing the academic success and persistence of first-generation and underrepresented students in STEM fields.

Snug Harbor Cultural Center’s Connie Gretz Secret Garden (Staten Island, NY) is getting some much needed repairs, thanks to New York Building Foundation’s first-ever community grant of $10,000. The money will be used to stabilize and beautify the entrance of the garden, provide the area with a cleaned-up interior with new plantings and interpretive signage, and improve the pathways in the hedge maze.

Carlo A. Scissura, President of New York Building Foundation; Aileen Fuchs, President and CEO of Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden and Joe Ferrara, Principal of BFC Partners and Snug Harbor Board Member outside the Connie Gretz Secret Garden. (Courtesy of Michael Papagianakis)

The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium (Dubuque, IA) has been given a $5,000 donation from the American Protein Corporation, an LGI Company, to support its Wyoming Toad conservation efforts. The money will be used to buy a brumation chamber for the toads that the Museum & Aquarium has been propagating since 2007. The Museum & Aquarium expects the chamber to improve their success rates in the future.

The Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) was awarded $150,000 from the MSU Federal Credit Union, to be the first university to house a Science on a Sphere. Developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Science on a Sphere, or SOS, displays the earth’s four quadrants in 3D and enables visitors to experience atmospheric events on earth. Additionally, SOS shows the galaxy’s other planets and moons in real-time. MSU Museum aims to open the SOS gallery in October 2019.

Battelle awarded $607,500 to fund 14 out-of-classroom learning activities in Central Ohio including The Works STEM After School Initiative, a project of The Works: Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology (Newark, OH). Partnering with middle schools in Licking County, The Works will build on activities from previous years, supporting teachers through professional learning and cross-district mentorship and collaboration while expanding student access to creative out-of-school learning opportunities to explore STEM concepts and careers.

Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT) announced that it has received a $735,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. The funding will allow the museum to curate and develop three new art installations from its extensive collections and related public programming. The art installations and associated research and public programs are designed to encourage new scholarship around the themes of The Sea as Muse, a window into the world of immigrant craftsmanship and decorative arts; The Sea as Studio for folk art such as scrimshaw; and The Sea as Commons, through a curatorial investigation by contemporary artist Mary Mattingly.

The Deadwood City Commission approved awarding eight grants to entities with historic preservation project goals from across the state in round two of the Outside of Deadwood Grant program for 2018. South Dakota State Historical Society (Pierre, SD) received $15,000 for the digitization of maps in collection, which include highway maps, cemetery maps, quadrangle maps, land survey maps, county, city, railroad, water and irrigation maps and many others.

Leadership

Children’s Museum of the Upstate (Greenville, SC) announced Nancy Halverson has resigned from her position as CEO. Halverson is moving to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, following the retirement of her husband, Dr. Bruce Halverson. Her new position will be as executive director of Levitt Shell Sioux Falls. Halverson’s successor has not yet been named, and she will continue advising the museum in a consultant role until the position is filled.

Kris Hoellen headshot

Kris Hoellen, B&O Railroad Museum

David Myers, the president and CEO of Center for Jewish History (New York, NY) has decided to step down from his position at the end of August in order to move back to Los Angeles, where he teaches at UCLA.

The B&O Railroad Museum (Baltimore, MD) announced the selection of Kris Hoellen as its new Executive Director.  Ms. Hoellen, a Senior Vice President at the National Aquarium, will assume her new position in September 2018.

Smithsonian Learning Lab Webinar: Creating National History Day Collections

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Learning lab elephant logoFor the past two years Smithsonian Learning Lab has been a tool for curating topic ideas for students participating in National History Day (NHD) research projects.

The Learning Lab team, along with educators from NHD and the National Endowment for the Humanities, will hold an online session on Thursday, August 9 at 4 pm ET around the 2019 NHD theme Triumph and Tragedy in History. Learn how to use Learning Lab to showcase your  collections and make them available to students around the country conducting research for their 2019 NHD projects. (See Learning Lab NHD collection examples here.)

In this session, designed for museum educators and other National History Day (NHD) content creators, participants will learn about the 2019 theme “Triumph and Tragedy” from NHD staff and hear from educators at the Smithsonian and National Endowment for the Humanities about their experiences in curating content for NHD students using the Smithsonian Learning Lab since 2017.

If you are new to NHD, read these two articles from Smithsonian staff in the 2019 NHD Theme Book to get a feel for how Learning Lab can help students spark ideas for their projects.

• Stories of Triumph and Tragedy found in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery (pg. 22)
• Discover Digital Tools and Resources for Triumph and Tragedy in History (pg. 43)

RSVP for the webinar here! 

Part 3: Using Collections to Think About Immigration with the Smithsonian Learning Lab

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After visiting three Affiliate communities in 2018, the staff at the Smithsonian Learning Lab wrapped-up their Teacher Creativity Studios at the City of Austin Asian American Resource Center (AARC), a Smithsonian Affiliate in Austin, Texas. As mentioned in Part 1, the goal was to increase digital access to museum collections and inspire students to investigate the world around them using objects, documents, videos and more, all available for free online. In this final installment, Hanna Huang, culture and arts education coordinator and acting supervisor at the Asian American Resource Center, shares her project, Austin’s Asian American Pacific Islander Roots.

Smithsonian Learning Lab in AustinThe AARC partnered with the Austin History Center to define Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) programming. Huang sees each AAPI community as special and unique in its makeup, much like the many cultures, ethnicities, and languages that comprise what we know as AAPI. To share this with a wider audience, the partners worked with the Learning Lab to create a collection for teachers based on a revived exhibition that covers Asian Pacific American history in Austin from the late 1800s past the 1980s.

As you work your way through, you can not only see all the images and texts from our exhibit but also find learning tools to help you with teaching topics such as Asian Pacific American history, immigration, Texas history, primary/secondary sources, and more!

Read Huang’s full blog– Austin’s Asian American Pacific Islander Roots—here.

And don’t forget about Part 1 and Part 2 in our Learning Lab Series!

Want to see more Learning Lab in Affiliate neighborhoods? Check out these blogs from past workshops at the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh: Supporting Digital Innovation in Education with the Learning Lab
Every Collection Tells a Story
Creative Introduction to Geography
Smithsonian’s Home in Pittsburgh
Creating with the Learning Lab
Teach Digital Curation with Depth

The Teacher Creativity Studio program received Federal support from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

f you are interested in learning more about the Smithsonian Learning Lab and how it could help your museum support teachers and students in your community, contact your National Outreach Manager.

Part 2: Using Collections to Think About Immigration with the Smithsonian Learning Lab

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In Part 1 of our Smithsonian Learning Lab series we took you to the Tsongas Industrial History Center at the Lowell National Historical Park, a Smithsonian Affiliate in Lowell, Massachusetts, where teachers were exploring the question “Who belongs?” (You can read the full blog here.) This time we’re headed to the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, another Smithsonian Affiliate in Seattle, Washington, to explore immigration through the lens of Chinese immigrants.

Wing Luke Learning Lab title pageIn his blog Beneath the Text: Analyzing Letters from Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, Rahul Gupta, education and tours director at The Wing, developed his first Learning Lab gallery using the museum’s collection of letters to to discuss three areas of immigration– “push” and “pull” factors that bring immigrants to the country or that reject their presence, and the letters’ style, writing and format.

I am often amazed at what I learn at this job every single day—and this project opened my understanding of the personal impact of colonialism, Chinese nationalism, gender relationships, and changing gender roles—and more and more. There are brilliant gems within our museum collection, and I am restlessly waiting to place more of these archives and artifacts into the hands of teachers and students around the country.

Read his blog and view his Learning Lab collection here.

The Teacher Creativity Studio program received Federal support from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

If you are interested in learning more about the Smithsonian Learning Lab and how it could help your museum support teachers and students in your community, contact your National Outreach Manager.

Smithsonian Announces Director for Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Smithsonian Affiliations

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Myriam Springuel

Views from the Destination Moon press event that was held in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA, on February 22, 2017. Event was held to announce the national tour of the Apollo 11 Command Module exhibit. Myriam Springuel, Director, SITES. Photo by Dane Penland. [Apollo DestinationMoon-2-22-2017-0223] [NASM2017-00421]

Today we are pleased to announce an important step in strengthening our content and peer-outreach capabilities. As of June 7, we have aligned the work of two organizations into one management structure called the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Smithsonian Affiliations. This unit will be overseen by Myriam Springuel. As many of you know, Myriam has served as the Director of Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) since 2015 and as the interim director of Affiliations since June 2017.

Smithsonian Affiliations has grown into a globally recognized program that establishes and maintains the Smithsonian’s long-term partnerships with museums, educational organizations, and cultural institutions—there are now more than 200 affiliated organizations in 46 states, Puerto Rico, and Panama. For more than 65 years, SITES has shared Smithsonian exhibitions and educational resources with people and places all across the country. More than 500 communities in all 50 states host SITES shows in formats ranging from large-scale exhibits with iconic Smithsonian objects, to exhibitions for mid-size museums and cultural centers, and from small exhibitions for rural America, to poster exhibitions tailored to school classrooms. Putting these two critical entities together under one leader is an important step in improving capabilities related to several goals in the Institution’s new Strategic Plan, including understanding and reaching new audiences, using partnerships more effectively, and catalyzing new conversations around complex challenges across the nation.

Myriam brings 30 years of experience in museum planning, management, exhibitions, education, and staff training. Before returning to the Smithsonian in 2014, Myriam worked as a consultant with museums across the country. She was Director of Education and later Associate Director for Programs at SITES from 1986 to 1994. Earlier in her career, she curated fine arts exhibitions and developed education programs at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. Myriam holds a master’s degree in art history from the University of Maryland.

We encourage you to engage with Myriam as we consider how to take our work across the country and benefit from our relationships with other museum leaders in the Affiliate community.

Sincerely,

John Davis
Provost and Under Secretary for Museums, Education, and Research

Patty Bartlett
Associate Provost for Education and Access and Senior Advisor to the Secretary

If you have questions, please contact Myriam Springuel, Director, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Smithsonian Affiliations at SpringuelM@SI.edu