Kudos Affiliates!! November 2023

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:

• Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Jackson, MS) ($106,237) for the rehabilitation and renovation of Raymond Hall.
• Oklahoma History Center (Oklahoma City, OK) ($750,000) for the preservation of Stone Barracks at Fort Gibson.

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 20^th-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.