Tag Archive for: american jazz museum

Kudos Affiliates!! February 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

New Hanover County leaders announced Cape Fear Museum (Wilmington, NC) was one of the first round of grant recipients from a $1.25 billion community endowment. The museum was awarded $17,000 to support STEM programs.

Philadelphia City Council approved a midyear budget transfer of $3 million to African American Museum in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) to support museum operations.

New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (Albuquerque, NM) has partnered with Meta. The museum board voted unanimously to approve Meta’s proposal to grant the company the naming rights for the Space Sciences wing of the museum, including the planetarium, for a period of five years. In return, Meta will provide the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science Foundation with a $300,000 grant, which will go toward expanding educational programming.

History Colorado (Denver, CO) was awarded $74,998 from the National Park Service as part of their Underrepresented Community Grants. History Colorado will fund a statewide survey of Green Book sites in Colorado, as well as to nominating one such location to both the National and State Registers of Historic Places. In addition, History Colorado recieved $40,000 from the Colorado Tourism Office to support the growth of the motor tour coach market through the promotion of diverse experiences and cultures in the American West.

Duke Energy has donated $20,000 to the White River Alliance to boost the nonprofit’s efforts to improve and protect water resources throughout central Indiana. Duke Energy’s support will fund the installation of two new White River Art Canoes, one near Duke Energy’s substation and the other at Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN) to raise awareness of the importance of the White River to the local economy and the quality of life for area residents. The donation is also supporting the planting of trees at Conner Prairie near the 3.3 miles of river that run through its property.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Association of African American Museums announced the particpants and advisors for their Mellon Funded Working Group. Samuel W. Black, Director, African American Program, Senator John Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA) and Dr. Jacqueline Hudson, Exhibitions Content Developer, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati, OH) were named participants. Dr. Dina Bennett, Director of Collections and Curatorial Affairs, American Jazz Museum (Kansas City, MO) was appointed advisor.

Antonio J. Busalacchi, President, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) (Boulder, CO), has been named an honorary member and fellow of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG).

LEADERSHIP

Dan Provo, Director of Oklahoma History Center (Oklahoma City, OK) announced he is retiring from his position effective January 30, 2023. Jeff Briley has been named interim director.

Bishop Museum of Science and Nature (Bradenton, FL) announced that Mr. Andrew M. Sandall has been appointed the new CEO of the Museum. Most recently, Sandall has been the executive director of the Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ). Mr. Sandall will succeed interim CEO Charles Zajaczkowski and assume his new responsibilities on March 6, 2023.

The Long Island Museum (Stony Brook, NY) announced that Sarah Abruzzi and Joshua Ruff have been appointed to the joint role of co-executive directors of the museum. Neil Watson, former executive director of the LIM, retired on October 7 after nine years of leadership.

Kudos Affiliates!! Summer 2022

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 Nissan Foundation announced $848,000 in grants to 33 nonprofit organizations for its 2022 grant cycle. The following Affiliates were part of this award: 

NASA’s Teams Engaging Affiliated Museums and Informal Institutions program has selected Adler Planetarium (Chicago, IL) and its proposed project, Climate Change and Me: Engaging Young People with NASA Data, Missions and Careers through Immersive Visualizations, Planetarium Programs, and Virtual Experiences to help inspire the next generation of explorers and to expand student participation in STEM fields. Through on-site and virtual field trips, students in grades 5 through 8 will learn about global climate change concepts, analyze data and various factors that may determine how certain human activities affect the Earth’s climate. The agency awarded approximately $800,000 for the implementation over the next two to four years. 

Oklahoma legislators approved a bill to issue a bond worth $46 million to address critical deferred maintenance needs of the Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK). 

The Wallace Foundation announced Arab American National Museum was one of 18 arts organizations of color selected to participate in the first phase of a new five-year arts initiative, part of the Foundation’s efforts to foster equitable improvements in the arts. Arab American National Museum will receive five years of funding totaling approximately $900,000 to $3.75 million with the aim of developing useful insights about the relationship between community orientation, resilience, and relevance. 

The Museum of History & Industry (Seattle, WA) has announced a $10 million donation from Jeff Bezos, to expand the museum’s Bezos Center for Innovation. The new gift will allow the center to expand interactive storytelling; enhance educational programs; create a dynamic “innovation hub” where the community comes together to tackle major problems on topics ranging from climate change to social justice; present insights from leading-edge innovators; and build a definitive collection of artifacts and archives that preserve Seattle’s history as a global center of innovation. 

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center (Huntsville, AL) announced a $10 million gift from Shift4 Founder/CEO Jared Isaacman for a new training facility to support Space Camp programs. The planned concept will be a 40,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art hangar-style building featuring space and aviation simulators, an aquatic center, a netted drone space, classrooms, and a challenge course designed for the training of future astronauts, pilots, and engineers. 

AWARDS & RECOGNITION 

The South Dakota State Historical Society’s (Pierre, SD) third Pioneer Girl Project installment, “Pioneer Girl: The Revised Texts” written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and edited by Nancy Tystad Koupal, has been selected for the Association of University Presses Scholarly Typographic award. 

The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) announced the winners of the 77th annual Leadership in History Awards, the most prestigious recognition for achievement in the preservation and interpretation of state and local history. The Award of Excellence, which is presented for excellence in history programs, projects, and people, included: 

  • History Colorado (Denver, CO) was also a recipient of the AASLH’s History in Progress Award. 

Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture (Seattle, WA) was one the six recipients of the 2022 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor given to libraries and museums that make significant and exceptional contributions to their communities. 

Museum Grants for African American History and Culture from the Institute of Museum and Library Services were awarded to the following Affiliates: 

  • National Civil Rights Museum (Memphis, TN) ($250,000) to increase visitor access to the museum through a ticketing software implementation project. The project will support visitors’ ability to manage online reservations, make member reservations, and redeem coupons, while also providing information to museum staff about how visitors experience the museum. 
  • National Jazz Museum in Harlem (New York, NY) ($49,981) to celebrate the “jazz in Harlem experience” by developing two exhibitions: a free in-person experience and a digital exhibition featuring interviews and artifacts sourced from Harlem residents. Staff will host two community artifact drives where historians and digitization experts will review photographs and correspondence and record oral history interviews with selected residents. 
  • Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture (Baltimore, MD) ($50,000) to support the growth and development of emerging museum professionals by creating opportunities to engage with and learn from African American museum leaders. 
  • Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA) ($236,610) to expand its Emerging Artists Program, a competition to identify emerging Black artists for solo exhibitions. Each year of the two-year project, museum staff will work with a jury of experts to identify four fellows to receive financial and professional support to help promote their work, better establish their careers, and expand their visibility. A digital publication will document each fellow’s exhibition. 
  • Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, AL) ($98,140) to update its programs by applying an intersectional lens to the educational goals in alignment with their recently updated strategic plan. The project team will also enrich the Legacy Youth Leadership Program curriculum with intersectional narratives, develop two archives focused on Latinx and immigrant human and civil rights struggles, update the human rights gallery, and collaborate with members of local tribes to develop a plan for the addition of a land acknowledgement marker. 
  • American Jazz Museum (Kansas City, MO) ($50,000) to improve the care of the John H. Baker Film Collection by conducting an inventory and catalog project. Based on recommendations from a 2021 Collections Assessment for Preservation (CAP) report, the museum will contract with a filmmaker/preservationist to be assisted by a student intern to assess, inventory, and catalog more than 2,000 film titles dating from 1927 through the 1970s. They will digitize a subset of films and make them available to the public, along with educational programming developed in partnership with local institutions of higher education. 

LEADERSHIP 

Clayton Anderson, Nebraska’s only NASA astronaut, has been named the new president and CEO of the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum (Ashland, NE). 

Kudos Affiliates!! June 2022

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

Greenville City Council has allocated almost $2 million in accomodations tax funds a number of local organizations including The Children’s Museum of the Upstate (Greenville, SC) ($25,000) for exhibitions and Upcountry History Museum (Greenville, SC) ($10,000) for general operating expenses.

Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA) announced a $1 million donation from the Safe Family Foundation for the Museum’s endowment. The gift will help support the educational mission of Mayflower II.

 The Maryland state delegation from Baltimore announces $166 million in state funding to revitalize the downtown and Inner Harbor areas including $5.5 million to the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture (Baltimore, MD) for maintenance and general operating expenses.

Gov. Tom Wolf announced a $753,397 redevelopment grant was awarded to Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites (Bethlehem, PA) to repair the historic Grist Miller House. The project involves structural repairs including electrical and plumbing; and interior and exterior restoration/preservation work.

Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) received $125,000 for their Putnam Reimagined project. The funding was one of 77 community grants approved by the Regional Development Authority Board to support area nonprofit, civic, and governmental organizations.

The Kansas City Council appropriated $1,233,850 from the Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund (NTDF) to 131 nonprofit organizations to promote neighborhood, cultural and entertainment events throughout Kansas City. American Jazz Museum (Kansas City, MO) was allocated $27,000 to support the 25th Anniversary Concert Series.

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced $33.17 million in grants for 245 humanities projects across the country featuring the following Affiliates:

History Colorado (Denver, CO) ($40,000) for the reinterpretation of Fort Garland Museum, an 1850s U.S. Army fort in south-central Colorado.

History Colorado (Denver, CO) ($360,938) to produce Season 4 of Lost Highways, a podcast series about the history of the Rocky Mountain West.

Florida International University (Miami, FL) ($50,000) to enhance access to the papers of Dana A. Dorsey, Miami’s first Black millionaire, who developed the city’s Colored Town (present day Overtown) in the early twentieth century. This work will include transcription, georeferencing, and creating tabular data from the 291 records and 620 pages of legal documents that constitute the collection.

Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) ($346,206) for the expansion of the African American, African, and African Diaspora Studies Digital Resource Quilt Index to include nearly 3,900 new quilts, 100 pieces of ephemera, 54 oral histories, and expanded metadata representing African American, African, and African Diasporic quilt history, as well as the development of up to 18 related resources, such as essays, lesson plans, and exhibits.

Center for Jewish History (New York, New York) ($350,000) to support the arrangement and description of 1,475 linear feet of Connection and Community: Documenting 20th-century American Jewish Philanthropy and Public Service records dating from 1916 to 1999, as well as the digitization of 5,000 items selected from the collection.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

The Iowa Tourism Office presented National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium (Dubuque, IA) with the Outstanding Attraction award recognizing excellence in the tourism industry during the 2022 Iowa Tourism Conference.

Coming Up in Affiliateland in June 2021

Enjoy these summer offerings!

Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo book coverWASHINGTON
Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator at the National Air and Space Museum, will give a virtual lecture on her new book Operation Moonglow for the Museum of Flight, Seattle, 6.3. They also collaborated on a podcast, here. 

CALIFORNIA
The USS Hornet- Sea, Air and Space Museum in Alameda will screen Smithsonian Channel’s Battle of Midway: The True Story virtually, 6.6.

Jon Grinspan headshot

National Museum of American History Curator Jon Grinspan

NATIONWIDE
Affiliates across the country will co-host our latest Virtual Scholar Talk, What America’s Greatest Father-Daughter Political Dynasty Teaches Us About Fixing Democracy.  National Museum of American History curator Dr. Jon Grinspan will share this story from his book, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought To Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915, 6.17.

From Miami to Alameda, Indianapolis to San Antonio, Smithsonian Affiliates all over the country will disseminate thousands of copies of Inspiration Nation, a summer activity guide for K-8 students presented by the Smithsonian in collaboration with USA Today. Filled with stories from the Smithsonian, students can use the publication to step away from their screens and find inspiration everywhere around them.

Coming Up in Affiliateland in May 2021

Spring continues to bloom at Affiliates! 

MISSOURI

Billie Holiday on stage at Sugar Hill

Billie Holiday on stage at Sugar Hill, Newark, New Jersey, April, 1957. All photographs © 2018 Jerry Dantzic/ Jerry Dantzic Archives. All rights reserved.

The American Jazz Museum will open the SITES’ exhibition Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill, in Kansas City, 5.8.

MARYLAND
Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator at the National Air and Space Museum, will give a virtual lecture on her new book Operation Moonglow for Historic Annapolis, hosted in Annapolis, 5.4.

MICHIGAN
Dr. Muir-Harmony will also talk about Operation Moonglow for the audiences of the Yankee Air Museum, hosted from Belleville, 5.5.

NEW YORK
As part of its Environments Examined series, the Rockwell Museum will host a virtual panel with scientists from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and National Air and Space Museum, From High Tech Science to High Tech Art: Transforming Data into Action, hosted from Corning, 5.27.

Kudos Affiliates!! October 2020

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 Durham Museum (Omaha, NE) received a $25,000 grant from The Iowa West Foundation to develop resources, programs, and projects that focus on economic development, education, place making, and healthy families.

The Nissan Foundation awarded $680,000 in grants to 27 nonprofit organizations for its 2020 grant cycle including awards to:

The NASA in Kansas program received a $2.8 million grant to help continue STEM-based education and research in the Sunflower State. The four-year award from NASA will help fund a consortium of universities and science museums, including the Cosmosphere (Hutchinson, KS).

The International Museum of Art and Science (McAllen, TX) was awarded a Collections Assessment for Preservation grant for $7,000 from the Foundation for the Advancement in Conservation. The funding will be instrumental in providing credible information for long-term planning for collections care and preparing for re-accreditation in 2022.

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission awarded grants to the following Affiliate organizations to support the general operations of the museums:

Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) received a $20,000 Cultural Leadership Partners grant administered by the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs. The grant will support a wide range of programs and events the Museum and Science Center will provide in the coming year.

New Mexico’s legislative session concluded with a $250,000 allocation for renovations at the Hubbard Museum of the American West (Ruidoso Downs, NM) and $750,000 to the New Mexico Museum of Space History (Alamogordo, NM) for facility and exhibit improvements.

The National Park Service, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, announced $12,800,000 in Save America’s Treasures grants to fund 42 preservation and conservation projects in 26 states including the following Affiliates:

  • Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT) – $102,000-for the preservation and accessibility to curatorial files.
  • YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (Center for Jewish History), (New York, NY) – $119,433-for the preservation and accessibility for Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded grants totaling $25,899,000 for museums across the nation to improve services to their communities through Museums for America, and special initiatives-Museums Empowered and Inspire! Grants for Small Museums. Affiliate awardees include:

Museums for America

  • Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI) – $172,000.00-The Arab American National Museum will work with a learning design firm and a museum-focused exhibition design firm to develop, design, and fabricate new components for their children’s gallery spaces. This project will result in four new bilingual, less text-heavy exhibition elements that will allow young visitors in grades K-5 to gain a more balanced perspective on cultural and racial diversity within their communities, as well as an appreciation of the large-scale impact of all immigrant communities on American life.
  • Springfield Science Museum, part of Springfield Museums, (Springfield, MA) – $84,637.00-Museum staff will undergo Disability Inclusion and Universal Design training to redesign and enhance a core multi-use learning space and principle STEM program that can remove physical, cognitive, and social barriers to learning. External evaluators will measure access needs and learning outcomes before and after project upgrades in order to track progress and develop a scalable model of inclusive practice for all the museum’s science programming.
  • Mercer Museum (Doylestown, PA) – $40,000.00-Mercer Museum will conduct a detailed condition survey of 256 windows (including dormers and skylights) located in its original 1916 National Landmark Mercer Museum building. The survey will result in a comprehensive report, with recommendations and methodologies for repair and remediation intended to improve environmental conditions for the exhibited collections.
  • Arizona State Museum (Tucson, AZ) – $122,471.00-The Arizona State Museum will ensure the long-term preservation and accessibility of 50 items including large, handcrafted barkcloth fabrics and woven basketry mats from Indigenous groups in northern Mexico (Pima Bajo, Pipil, Tarahuamara, Tepehuan, Warhio, Yaqui, Tohono O’odham, and Otomi) and the Pacific Islands (Fijian, Hawaiian, Javanese, Melanesian, Philippine, Samoan, and Tongan).
  • Museum of Us (San Diego, CA ) – $249,668.00-The Museum of Us will engage with representatives of the Kumeyaay Nation (Kumeyaay) in a community-driven exhibit and program development process. This project will engage Kumeyaay community members in large forums, focus groups, one-on-one meetings, and written evaluations to accurately capture content for a new exhibit that is self-determined by the community.
  • Adler Planetarium (Chicago, IL) – $248,825.00-The Adler Planetarium will expand access to STEM programs for African American and Latinx Chicago teens through a progressive series of entry-point, introductory, intermediate, and advanced level programs. Students in grades 7-12 will be invited to join teams of scientists, engineers, and educators to undertake authentic scientific research and solve real engineering challenges. In collaboration with schools and community-based organizations, Adler will develop and implement new participant recruitment and retention strategies to reach teens in specific neighborhoods.
  • South Carolina State Museum (Columbia, SC) – $245,239.00-The South Carolina State Museum will improve the stewardship of its collections through a two-year collections inventory and digitization project. The project will result in refined inventory and photography protocols for digitization of collection objects, the implementation of a new collections management system, and the acquisition of a dedicated server to ensure that the database has capacity for future growth.
  • Florida International University (Miami, FL) – $250,000.00-Florida International University will expand the shelving capacity in its Rare Books and Special Collections Library, improve storage conditions for the collection, and improve public access to the collection.
  • National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium (Dubuque, IA) – $206,286.00-The National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium will conduct a collections survey and planning project that will build upon previous successful collections stewardship projects and improve the museum’s ability to care for and interpret its historical collections.
  • High Desert Museum (Bend, OR) – $155,280.00-The High Desert Museum will bring together key stakeholders to develop and implement the first High Desert Project, deconstructing the traditional conference structure to create a new approach to engaging broad audiences in dialogue-one that builds on the unique strengths of museums.
  • Connecticut Historical Society (Hartford, CT) – $238,604.00-The Connecticut Historical Society will inventory, rehouse, catalog, and digitize the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program CCHAP collection which documents the cultural traditions and heritage within the rich diversity of Connecticut’s ethnic and workplace communities.
  • Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT)-$167,303.00-Mystic Seaport Museum will restore its 1921 fishing schooner-L.A. DUNTON-a National Historic Landmark vessel and one of the last surviving examples of its kind. Progress will be captured on video for podcast and other forms of distance learning to further expand the project reach.
  • Denver Museum of Nature and Science (Denver, CO)-$240,740.00-The Denver Museum of Nature and Science will advance stewardship and public access for 718 objects in its Northwest Coast Collection through collaborative conservation that involves Kwakwaka’wakw, Makah, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Tlingit and Haida tribes.
  • Center for Jewish History (New York, NY) – $52,230.00-The Center for Jewish History will improve stewardship of the 35mm and 16mm motion picture film collections of its five in-house partners: the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute, as a pilot of a new digitization process.
  • USS Constitution Museum (Boston, MA) – $250,000.00-The USS Constitution Museum will launch a Salute to Service initiative to transform itself into a hub for conversation, connection, and community around military service so the community can see the museum as a trusted space for community engagement, and civilian participants in Salute to Service programs to gain an elevated understanding of military service and family sacrifice.
  • Witte Museum (San Antonio, TX)-$250,000.00-The Witte Museum will improve the conservation and preservation of its paleontology and geology collections to support continued fossil preparation for new fossil finds and acquisitions.
  • Krannert Art Museum (Champaign, IL) – $250,000.00-The Krannert Art Museum will reinstall its collection of ancient Andean art. This reinstallation will transform the ancient Andean gallery into an innovative teaching and research tool that better serves their core constituents and exposes audiences to the historical depth, cultural richness, and contemporary relevance of ancient Andean civilizations.
  • Plimoth Plantation (Plymouth, MA) – $227,272.00-The Plimoth Plantation will develop a suite of educational resources for teachers, students, and the general public focusing on the relationship between the early Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people.

Museums Empowered: Professional Development Opportunities for Museum Staff

  • Ohio History Connection (Columbus, OH) – $249,920.00-The Ohio History Connection will conduct an online professional development program to help the network become better managed, more resilient, and better able to serve the public. Modules will focus on topics such as board development; collections handling; engaging with local communities; and essential museum knowledge for boards, directors, staff, and volunteers from outside the museum field.

Inspire! Grants for Small Museums

  • Dubuque Museum of Art (Dubuque, IA) – $40,975.00-The Dubuque Museum of Art will upgrade its collections management software through a four-phase project that will increase public access to the museum’s collection.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded $52.2 million in grants for 562 humanities projects featuring the following Affiliate initiatives:

  • Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ) – $4,622-The Heard Museum will use the funding for the preservation assessment of a library and archive collection dedicated to Native American art and cultures, covering topics such as Native American fine art, literature, anthropology, and museum studies.
  • Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA) – $172,445- The Japanese American National Museum will develop two, one-week workshops -Little Tokyo: How History Shapes a Community Across Generations- for 72 school teachers about the history and culture of Japanese-American immigrants and their place in U.S. history.
  • History Colorado (Denver, CO) – $224,914-History Colorado will digitize 100,000 pages from Colorado newspaper titles, published from 1859 to 1942, as part of the state’s continuing participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
  • History Colorado (Denver, CO) – $208,808-History Colorado will produce eight 45- to 60-minute podcast episodes about Colorado and Western U.S. history entitled the Lost Highways Podcast Program.
  • Grinnell College (Grinnell, IA) – $6,000-Grinnell College staff will conduct research for a book on the development of the Filipino diaspora in the United States and Europe, as a case study to understand how diasporas evolve.
  • Plimoth Plantation (Plymouth, MA) – $49,200-The Plimoth Plantation will conduct an assessment of the collections and buildings at Plimoth Plantation, which has extensive collections of archaeological artifacts, fine and decorative art, and archival materials.
  • Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) – $9,901-Michigan State University Museum will purchase storage equipment for the Siyazama Project collection, which is housed at the university’s museum and consists of 66 traditional craft works created by South African women as part of an organized art and health initiative during the HIV/AIDS crisis.
  • Center for Jewish History (New York, NY) – $65,500-The Center for Jewish History will provide 12 months of stipend support (1 fellowship) per year for one year and to defray costs associated with the selection of fellows.
  • Museum of Flight (Seattle, WA) – $236,824-Museum of Flight will arrange, describe, catalog, and select the digitization of 170 cubic feet of archival materials and 260 objects from the William P. and Moya Olsen Lear Collection, including correspondence, photographs, model planes, invention prototypes, and 33 audio recordings and 18 films related to groundbreaking discoveries in aviation and radio that span the twentieth century.
  • Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, WY) – $48,933-Buffalo Bill Center of the West will construct a plan for storage spaces at all six of the center’s collecting units to maximize the preservation environment, space efficiency, and access to collections by staff and the public. Center staff would work with a consulting conservator, architect, and engineer to develop the plan.
  • Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience (Seattle, WA)-$189,984- Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience will create two one-week workshops for 72 school teachers about the history and culture of Asian Pacific American immigrants in the Pacific Northwest.

The Mary Black Foundation awarded new grants to 19 nonprofits serving Spartanburg County, including $15,000 to Children’s Museum of the Upstate (Spartanburg, SC) to assist with operational costs to provide high-quality learning opportunities for young children in Spartanburg County.

Mid-America Arts Alliance awarded $50,000 to the American Jazz Museum (Kansas City, MO) to assist operational costs and digitizing of their collections.

Oklahoma History Center (Oklahoma City, OK) was awarded a grant through the Oklahoma Department of Libraries (ODL) for personal protective equipment (PPE) to be utilized by the OHC Education Department. The funding has been used to purchase sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizer and disinfectant for use by museum visitors and staff, as well as to be included in the trunks for our award-winning Traveling Trunk program.

The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium (Dubuque, IA) received funding from two area foundations to support conservation education and equitable access for Dubuque County residents. Alliant Energy Foundation has awarded the Museum $5,000 towards the expansion of its conservation education live animal outreach program address Iowa bird conservation initiatives and provide teacher workshop opportunities. The McDonough Foundation awarded $2,000 to increase equitable access through the Everybody’s Museum Membership (EMM) program—a free membership program that is open to economically challenged youth and families in Dubuque County, as well as community members with physical and intellectual disabilities.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Mercer Museum & Fonthill Castle (Doylestown, PA) and USS Constitution Museum (Boston, MA) recently received reaccreditations from the American Alliance of Museums (AAM).

RANDY PARKER/THE DAILY TRIBUNE NEWS Booth Western Art Museum is named the Best Art Museum in the USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards contest.

The Booth Western Art Museum (Cartersville, GA) was named Best Art Museum in the USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards contest.

The Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society at the Cultural Heritage Center (Pierre,SD) earned an AASLH Award of Excellence for the exhibit “Silent Silos: South Dakota’s Missile Range.”

Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) received the Special Achievement – Excellence in Community Empowerment award for its exhibition – “Finding Our Voice: Sister Survivors Speak” at the 32nd annual Excellence in Exhibition Competition, presented by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM).

Framingham State University (Framingham, MA) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were recognized for their efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus with a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award. The award is given by INSIGHT into Diversity, the oldest and largest diversity magazine and website in higher education.