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 Iowa Economic Development Authority announced as part of the Cultural Leadership Partners Grant Program, the Putnam Museum (Davenport, IA), National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium (Dubuque), and the National Czech and Slovak Museum & Library (Cedar Rapids), each received a $20,000 grant for operational support. 

Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI) has received a $100,000 grant from the Joyce Foundation’s 2024 Joyce Awards. The funding, awarded in collaboration with writer, director, and performer Andrea Assaf, will support the development of DRONE, a live theater production exploring the ethical and human implications of drone warfare. Assaf’s project will feature a multimedia approach that combines theater, live music, and digital design, informed by community engagement methods such as story circles and art-based dialogues. 

The following Affiliates received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the 2024 funding cycle to support their humanities projects: 

  • Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA) ($190,000) – to support two five-day, residential workshops for 72 secondary school teachers on Japanese American history and community history through Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo neighborhood. 
  • Museum of Us (San Diego, CA) ($49,707) – to create a cultural resources housing and stewardship plan for a collection of ethnographic and cultural resources, archaeological field records, photographs, and archives. 
  • Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT) ($399,199) – to implement a traveling exhibition on the history of surfing from its Indigenous origins through the impact of colonization to today. 
  • USS Constitution Museum (Charlestown, MA) ($40,000) – to plan a permanent exhibition about the USS Constitution’s 1844–46 international cruise to expand United States diplomatic and trade relations. 
  • Dennos Museum Center (Traverse City, MI) ($10,000) – to install 1,450 square feet of window tint film that will reduce light levels in the museum’s promenade wing and gallery spaces. 
  • City Lore (New York, NY) ($600,000) – to produce a feature length documentary about the artistic couple, cinematographer James Wong Howe and author Sanora Babb. 
  • High Desert Museum (Bend, OR) ($49,885) – to develop a comprehensive sustainable preservation plan to address collections storage and climate control concerns using regenerative approaches as well as building resiliency against the threat of wildfires. 
  • Burke Museum (Seattle, WA) ($150,000) – to implement a six-month exhibition centered on the cultural and political significance of traditional wool regalia common to the 19th-century Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwest. 
  • Wing Luke Museum (Seattle, WA) ($190,000) – to provide two, week-long, residential workshops for 72 K–12 educators to learn about the histories of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in the Pacific Northwest. 

The National Park Service announced $25.7 million in Save America’s Treasures grants to fund projects that will preserve nationally significant sites and historic collections, including these Affiliate projects: 

  • The Durham Museum (Omaha, NE) ($750,000) – The Durham Museum, located inside Omaha Union Station, is conducting a multi-phase preservation project on the station. The grant will support one phase of a larger preservation project, focusing on a full replacement of the roof to this historic station and ensure the continued visitation of people who seek to experience the rich regional history preserved by the museum. 
  • Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA) ($750,000) – to upgrade their building’s infrastructure by purchasing and installing a new HVAC system to mitigate threats and future damage to its collection. 
  • B&O Railroad Museum (Baltimore, MD) ($363,750) – to restore American Freedom Train No. 1 (AFT1), the locomotive that pulled the Freedom Train around the country from 1975 to 1976 to commemorate the United States’ Bicentennial. The museum’s restoration and curatorial teams will partner with a consulting firm that specializes in railroad and locomotive project planning and repair, to undertake asbestos abatement and restoration of the AFT1. Museum staff will prepare a new covered platform to better protect and preserve the AFT1 and install interpretative panels to communicate the history and significance of the locomotive to the public. 

The Institute of Museum and Library Services announced the recipients of its 2024 grant funding programs: 

Museums for America 

  • Springfield Science Museum, part of Springfield Museums (Springfield, MA) ($250,000) – to create a new permanent exhibit about Archosaurs, the animal group from which dinosaurs evolved, and the prehistoric history of the local region. 
  • High Desert Museum (Bend, OR) ($238,840) – to create the Center for the High Desert Learning Hub to address the need for a welcoming and dynamic space for programs that will promote learning, connection, and inspiration. The Learning Hub will consist of six new spaces that will accommodate programs for visitors of all ages including K-12 students, teachers, families, and community groups. 
  • The Denver Botanic Gardens (Denver, CO) ($248,766) – to advance work on the long-term care and protection of alpine plants and ecosystems in North America. The team of cross departmental staff will be led by experts in seed conservation, plant conservation science, and scientific data management in collaboration with public garden partners across the country. 
  • The South Carolina State Museum (Columbia, SC) ($250,000) – to capture digital images for over 4,000 specimens from several specific areas of its natural history collection and incorporate the data into its collections management system. 
  • The Witte Museum (San Antonio, TX) ($250,000) – to improve care of 50,000 artifacts from the Texas History Collection through cataloging, rehousing and enhancing collections management. 
  • The Museum of York County (Rock Hill, SC) ($64,470) - to create an exhibit about the natural history of the Carolina Piedmont. Informed by the South Carolina Early Childhood Standards, the exhibit will help children visiting the space to become kindergarten-ready while learning about South Carolina ecosystems. 
  • City Lore (New York, NY) ($235,153) – to create exhibitions and programming focused on immigrant communities around the topics of women in the Blues, Cuban music, J’ouvert festival traditions, and the material culture of House Ballroom in the New York LGBTQ+ community. 
  • Senator John Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA) ($183,621) – to process, rehouse, and digitize the African American collections held in their library and archives. These collections document African American life and culture in the Western Pennsylvania region. In addition to improving the preservation and accessibility of the collection, this project will result in the development of programming and resources that utilize the collections, including finding aids, public presentations, educational programs, articles and blog posts, as well as the creation of six Smithsonian Digital Learning Lab collections. 

Museums Empowered 

  • Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA) ($240,730) – to implement an initiative to improve employee satisfaction, performance, and retention. 
  • Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) ($190,132) – to improve the quality of visitor experiences at the museum, particularly for those with visual impairments, by training museum staff to assess museum spaces for accessible pathways and developing high-quality audio descriptions for interpretative and educational application. 
  • Mid-America Science Museum (Hot Springs, AR) ($46,264) – to build the capacity of staff to use evaluation as an ongoing cycle of inquiry when creating or improving museum programs and exhibits. 

Inspire! Grants for Small Museums 

  • Dennos Museum Center (Traverse City, MI) ($15,760) – to purchase powder-coated art storage bins to improve preservation and access to approximately 225 framed works of art in its collection. 
  • American Museum of Science and Energy (Oak Ridge, TN) ($22,146) – to create a podcast series on American innovation and invention as part of the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the United States. 
  • Dubuque Museum of Art (Dubuque, IA) ($74,979) – to assemble a team of museum staff, visual arts educators, and engagement experts to develop, test, and deploy a formal process for educational engagement for public-facing programs at the museum. 

AWARDS & RECOGNITION 

The historic Moravian Church settlements of the Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites (Bethlehem, PA), have officially been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bethlehem was among four historic Moravian settlements to jointly receive the designation from UNESCO, alongside Gracehill in the United Kingdom, Herrnhut in Germany and Christiansfeld in Denmark. 

The Museum of Arts & Sciences (Daytona Beach, FL) and Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence, RI) were two of 33 reaccreditation awards made at the June 2024 meeting of the American Alliance of Museums Accreditation Commission. 

LEADERSHIP 

Matthew Davis, director of historic museums at Georgia College & State University, including Old Governor’s Mansion (Milledgeville, GA) has resigned to accept a role as director of institutional history and museums at Washington and Lee University. Dani Schulze, curator of education and public engagement, has been named interim director. 

The Board of Commissioners for the Saint Louis Science Center (Saint Louis, MO) announced President and CEO Todd Bastean will retire in Spring 2025. 

Elissa Lines, executive director of the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum (Honolulu, HI), announced her retirement. She will continue as a volunteer educational consultant until the end of the year. 

International Storytelling Center (Jonesborough, TN) announced Michael Carson as its new executive director. 

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, AL), CEO DeJuana Thompson, is leaving the position to return to Woke Vote, the 501c3 voter education and advocacy organization she founded in 2017. Board chair Isaac Cooper will serve as interim president and CEO, during a national search for a successor.