Tag Archive for: funding

Kudos Affiliates! for November 2017

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Bravo Affiliates on these great accomplishments!

Funding

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) recently announced $1,998,484 in funding for 28 training and professional development projects for museums across the country as part of its Museums for America grant program, including the following Affiliate projects:

Abbe Museum (Bar Harbor, ME)-Award: $53,050.00

The Abbe Museum will invest in professional development and training for its staff, board, and volunteers to support its work with the Wabanaki Nations towards a decolonized approach to every aspect of its operations. An emerging concept in museum practice, decolonization is an ongoing process of sharing authority for the documentation and interpretation of Native culture.

John G. Shedd Aquarium (Chicago, IL)-Award: $246,981.00

The Shedd Aquarium will undertake a two-year project to build the capacity of museum staff to engage diverse communities through increased cultural competencies. Through a multi-departmental and integrated suite of professional development opportunities, the project will ensure that the institution’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is effective and sustainable.

Mid-America Science Museum (Hot Springs, AR)-Award: $21,939.00

Mid-America Science Museum will implement a professional development program for its education staff and those from member museums of the Arkansas Discovery Network. Museum staffers will participate in a series of three day-long workshops on robotics, app development, and microprocessors.

Perot Museum of Nature and Science (Dallas, TX)-Award: $24,819.00

In response to changing demographics in north Texas, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science will develop staff capacity to create a culturally competent, bilingual (English and Spanish) institution.

 

Through the agency’s largest competitive grant program, Museums for America, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced $19,189,929 in grants for museums across the nation including the following Affiliate projects:

Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI)-Award: $200,000.00

The Arab American National Museum will increase its educational outreach programming about Arabs, Arab Americans, and Islam to regions of southeastern Michigan. The museum will provide comprehensive educational resources and tools, underwrite fieldtrips to the museum, and offer off-site workshops to under-resourced school districts in the targeted regions of the state.

Buffalo Bill Historical Center (Cody, WY)-Award: $255,000.00

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West will work with advisory groups and an external exhibit design firm to renovate and reinstall the Cody Firearms Museum, a 22,500-square-foot gallery. The reinstallation will feature six thematic areas with educational interpretation and media interactives that put firearms into the larger context of history while still providing the technical information of interest to collectors.

USS Constitution Museum (Boston, MA)-Award: $326,032.00

The USS Constitution Museum will transform the interpretive endeavors of two separate entities through a strategic alliance with the U.S. Navy’s USS Constitution. The All Aboard project will integrate experiences to take place both on board the ship and in the museum for the first time to maximize learning.

Springfield Museum of Art (Springfield, OH)-Award: $24,729.00

The Springfield Museum of Art will increase public access, knowledge, and use of the 325 prints in its permanent collection by partnering with the Dayton Printmakers Cooperative. The Print Positives: Rediscovering and Using Our Print Collection project will include study sessions and research assistance from the printmakers to enable museum staff to develop an exhibition of prints from the permanent collection.

San Diego Museum of Man (San Diego, CA)-Award: $310,430.00

The San Diego Museum of Man will engage with the Kumeyaay Nation to build the museum’s capacity to engage the federally recognized tribe as a partner in decisions about collections, exhibitions, and programs.

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, NC)-Award: $139,681.00

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences will address urgent conservation needs for three marine invertebrate collections acquired from the Charleston Museum, Duke University Marine Laboratory, and the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences.

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, AL)-Award: $184,295.00

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute will digitize interviews from its oral history collections to allow broader access to the public and encourage scholarship and new interpretations of the Civil Rights Movement.

Connecticut Historical Society (Hartford, CT)-Award: $24,467.00

The Connecticut Historical Society will undertake a film digitization project to catalog, digitize, and improve storage conditions for selected items from its motion picture film collection, which provides insights into the lives and culture of 20th -century Connecticut residents and communities.

 

Arconic Foundation awarded Putnam Museum (Davenport, IA) a $40,000 grant for the IMMERSE Program, a week long, immersive, in house learning experience for students.

Burton D. Morgan Foundation trustees approved a $172,000 grant to The National Inventors Hall of Fame (Newark, OH) to operate its Camp Invention programs in the summer and conduct a study on STEM education in co-curricular settings.

The Dubuque County Historical Society has received funding from the City of Dubuque’s Arts & Culture Special Projects program. Funding will support the creation of hand-painted murals that illustrate the stories of aquatic life featured in the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium’s (Dubuque, IA) Rivers to the Seas exhibits and the much-anticipated Conservation Lab.

kudos affiliates! for april 2016

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Congratulations to these Affiliates on their spring accomplishments!

The Goppert Foundation of Kansas City is contributing $250,000 to an expansion and bridge project underway at Union Station. The gift brings the station closer to meeting its fundraising goal for the $7.5 million project. Construction is underway on a vehicular and pedestrian bridge which will allow more direct access to the garage from Pershing Road as well as views of a new festival plaza and Science City expansion below.

The Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation, one of the most popular core exhibitions at the Berkshire Museum, will undergo a significant upgrade and reopen to the public on Saturday, April 16. The improvements and upgrades to the Hall of Innovation are supported by a grant from the Feigenbaum Foundation that has pledged $500,000 to the Berkshire Museum, to be used for a series of annual improvements over the next few years.

The Rhode Island Foundation has awarded more than $28,000 in grants to promote public access to historic records. The Rhode Island Historical Society in Providence will use its grant to digitize architectural drawings related to the construction of the Providence Athenaeum and Arcade by 19th-century architect Russell Warren.

kudos Affiliates! December 2015-January 2016

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Wow!  Congratulations to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments.  What a way to start a new year.

 

FUNDING

Lilly Endowment awarded a $7.5 million grant to Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN). $6 million of the grant will be used to bolster the Lilly endowment; the rest will be used to renovate the historic Chinese House, enhance summer camp programs, and hire additional fundraising staff.

The Riverboat Development Authority has awarded $50,000 to the Putnam Museum (Davenport, IA) for The Magical History Tour exhibit scheduled for February 2017.

Union Station, Kansas City (Kansas City, MO) announced that Science City had received a $250,000 grant from the David Beals Charitable Trust to enhance exhibits about human health. In addition, Science City recently received an international award for visitor experience from the Association of Science-Technology Centers.

Six contemporary Arab American artists from a broad range of disciplines will participate in a new artist residency program after the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI) received a $50,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge. The artist residency program will enlist artists that demonstrate the multiplicity of contemporary arts production by and about Arabs and Arab Americans.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $21.8 million in grants for 295 humanities projects, including the following Affiliate recipients:

  • Ohio History Connection (Columbus, OH): $12,000
    Project Description: The digitization of community materials and support for public programs that will deepen the historical record documenting Ohio’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.
  • Black Archives of Mid-America, Inc.: $12,000
    Project Description: The digitization of community photographs, letters, employment records, artworks, and artifacts pertaining to the African American experience in Kansas City, Missouri, during the early 20th century. In cooperation with the American Jazz Museum (Kansas City, MO) the project will also offer public lectures by area scholars and musicians about the history of Kansas City in the Jazz Age and Great Depression and would sponsor screenings of films held by the Jazz Museum, including the documentary Women in Jazz.
  • ACCESS (On behalf of the Arab American National Museum): $12,000
    Project Description: A digitization event, open to the general public, to gather personal collections relating to the history of Dearborn, Michigan, and a community oral history event. That event will be followed by a community-focused community storytelling and spoken word event, which will highlight the cultural history and contributions of notable Dearborn residents.
  • African American Museum in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA): $12,000
    Project Description: A community event to explore Philadelphia’s African American history through community photographs contributed by members of the public, as well as programming to highlight photography at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. The project will include workshops on family history and photographic preservation, lectures and a film screening of the documentary, Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People.
  • Birthplace of Country Music (Bristol, TN): $6,000
    Project Description: A preservation assessment of a country music collection consisting of photographs, archives, and audiovisual materials. The collections provide an important resource for scholars, community members, and visitors and are currently used for research, in exhibitions, and for public programs, including an upcoming Ken Burns documentary on country music.

In addition, NEH awarded $162,242 to the Florida International University (Miami, FL) for a Humanities in the Public Square project to fund a series of public events, programs, and conversations addressing the environmental threat posed to Miami from rising sea levels.

The National Endowment for the Arts awarded $27.7 million to support 1,126 projects in the first round of FY 2016 funding, including the following Affiliate projects:

  • Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO)-$70,000
    To support the exhibition “Women of Abstract Expressionism.” The exhibition will feature more than 50 paintings by women Abstract Expressionist painters active during the 1940s and ’50s. Artist quotes, a short documentary film, related programs, and an illustrated catalogue will help the public understand the role these women played in the Abstract Expressionist movement.
  • HistoryMiami (Miami, FL)-$20,000
    To support the Miami Street Culture Project. HistoryMiami will conduct fieldwork to identify and document the communal recreational and occupational traditions found on the streets of Miami’s various communities. These traditions will include artistic expressions such as murals, graffiti, displays of street vendors, and parades, as well as decorations found on cars and bicycles. The documentation – including interviews, photographs, and artifacts – will be assembled into an exhibit that will share and interpret these traditions with the larger community.
  • Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center, Inc. (On behalf of High Museum of Art) (Atlanta, GA)-$50,000
    To support the exhibition “Al Taylor: What Are You Looking At?,” and an accompanying catalogue. The exhibition, featuring the work of the late American artist Al Taylor (1948-99), will include approximately 100 objects, drawings, and prints, many made of commonplace materials such as hangers, broomsticks, and plastic bottles. Educational programming for all ages will complement the exhibition.
  • Lowell National Historical Park (Lowell, MA) -$35,000
    To support the Lowell Folk Festival. The festival will celebrate its 30th year showcasing master folk artists. Performances of traditional music such as Appalachian bluegrass, Portuguese Fado, and Irish reels will be offered alongside traditional dance, crafts, and ethnic foodways.
  • International Storytelling Center (Jonesborough, TN)-$20,000
    To support Storytelling Live!, a seasonal teller-in-residence program. Master artists representing a broad range of storytelling traditions from the U.S. and abroad will conduct week-long residencies. In addition to storytelling performances, the artists will offer workshops and present special programs designed to serve seniors and youth.
  • Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, WY)-$20,000
    To support the catalogue “Enduring Legacies: Indian Art from the Paul Dyck Collection.” The catalogue will feature 150 images of objects from the Paul Dyck Plains Indian Buffalo Culture Collection, long considered by scholars to be one of the most comprehensive assemblages of pre-reservation and early reservation art.
  • Musical Instrument Museum (Phoenix, AZ) -$10,000
    To support performances by violinist Rachel Barton, and associated violin master classes intended to serve lowincome and minority youth.


ACHIEVEMENTS and RECOGNITION

The Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA) and Tampa Bay History Center (Tampa, FL) have received accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums.

Springfield Museum of Art (Springfield, OH) has won a statewide award, and received national and state recognition for its current exhibit, “Authentic Narratives: Ohio’s Regionalists, 1915-1950.”  The Museum earned the RUBY Award, awarded by the Ohio Travel Association and Ohio Magazine.

A four billion year-old meteorite which plunged into a house in metro Atlanta was officially recognized and named by the international Meteoritical Society with the assistance of the Smithsonian Institution during a ceremony at the Tellus Science Museum (Cartersville, GA). The 295 gram meteorite was officially named “Cartersville” in honor of the city in which it landed. It was classified as ordinary Chondrite L5 meteorite, according to Smithsonian officials, having low iron-nickel and a level 5 degree amount of deformation on a scale of 1-7.

Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) Curator of Folk Arts Marsha MacDowell has been named a fellow of the American Folklore Society, demonstrating outstanding accomplishments and making important contributions to the field of folklore.

John E. Herzog, founder of the Museum of American Finance (New York, NY), received the International Federation of Finance Museums (IFFM) Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the field of financial literacy.

UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures (San Antonio, TX) Executive Director, Angelica Docog, has been named the recipient of the 2015 Constellation Stars Award sponsored by the San Antonio Women’s Chamber of Commerce. The award goes to women who have demonstrated advocacy, connection and empowerment.


LEADERSHIP CHANGES

The Bakken Museum (Minneapolis, MN) has hired Minnesota native Michael Sanders to replace its longtime director David Rhees, who retired in September. Rhees stepped down after 23 years overseeing the growth of the museum, which was created by Medtronic founder Earl Bakken to showcase his collection of pacemakers and historic medical devices that used electricity.

kudos! affiliates for february 2012

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The Center for Jewish History (New York, New York), announced a $2.5 million gift from The David Berg Foundation to establish The David Berg Rare Book Room.  This contribution will enable the Center and its partners to realize their longstanding goal of creating a public space that showcases and preserves some of the most important works in Jewish history.

Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, Michigan) will receive $15,000 from The Michigan Humanities Council to develop and implement “Setting Our Table,” an interpretive exhibit focusing on Arab American food ways concepts and customs as a gateway to culture. The exhibit will explore the culinary diversity of the Arab world and how foods have changed as Arab immigrants acclimated to life in Michigan and America. The project is funded through the Council’s Major Grants Program “Michigan People, Michigan Places; Our Stories, Our Lives.” The program emphasizes collaboration among cultural, educational and community-based organizations to provide public humanities projects.

Affiliates, take note… grant opportunities

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The Save America’s Treasures program offers grants for preservation and/or conservation work on nationally significant intellectual and cultural artifacts and historic structures and sites. Intellectual and cultural artifacts include objects, collections, documents, sculpture, and works of art. Historic structures and sites include districts, buildings, areas, and structures.

  • Grants are awarded through a competitive matching grant program. The program is administered by the National Park Service. A dollar-for-dollar, non-Federal match is required. The minimum grant request for collections projects is $25,000 Federal share; the minimum grant request for historic property projects is $125,000 Federal share. The maximum grant request for all projects is $700,000 Federal share. The deadline for proposal submission is May 21, 2010.

The Council on Library and Information Resources, an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to expand access to information, however recorded and preserved, has opened the pre-proposal application period for its Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant program.

  • The program will award funds to institutions (including historical associations and societies as well as archives, museums, libraries, and other cultural heritage organizations) holding collections of high scholarly value that are difficult or impossible to locate through existing finding aids. Award recipients will create descriptive information for their hidden collections that will be linked to and interoperable with all other projects funded by this grant with the purpose of forming a federated environment that can be built upon over time. Funding for the program comes from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
     
  • CLIR expects to award about $4 million in total grants ranging from $75,000 to $500,000 each. Go to https://www.clir.org/ for complete program information. The deadline is April 23, 2010 for pre-proposals.

The Endangered Language Fund provides grants for language maintenance and linguistic field work. The language involved must be in danger of disappearing within a generation or two. The work most likely to be funded is that which serves both the native community and the field of linguistics. Work which has immediate applicability to one group and more distant application to the other will also be considered. Publishing awards are a low priority, but will be considered.

  • Grants in this round are expected to be less than $4,000 each, and to average about $2,000. Eligible expenses include consultant fees, tapes, films, travel, etc. Overhead is not allowed. Grants are normally for a one-year period. Researchers and language activists from any country are eligible to apply. Awards can be made to institutions, but no administrative costs are covered. For complete details visit www.endangeredlanguagefund.org. The deadline for proposals is April 20.

 The American Sportfishing Association’s FishAmerica Foundation invites proposals for citizen-driven habitat restoration projects under its partnership with the NOAA Community-based Restoration Program.

  • The partnership requests proposals for local efforts to accomplish meaningful on-the-ground restoration of marine, estuarine, and riparian habitats, including salt marshes, seagrass beds, mangrove forests, and freshwater habitats important to anadromous fish species (fish like salmon and striped bass that migrate to and from the sea). Emphasis is on using a hands-on, grassroots approach to restore fisheries habitat across coastal America, the Great Lakes region, and U.S. Territories of the Caribbean.
     
  • A portion of the total available grant funds will be dedicated to projects that further NOAA’s Open Rivers Initiative. These projects must remove dams and other river barriers, in order to benefit living marine and coastal resources, particularly diadromous fish.  
     
  • The funders anticipate the availability of approximately $1 million in total funding; approximately $200,000 of the available funding will be dedicated specifically to projects furthering NOAA’s Open Rivers Initiative. Sub-awards will range between $10,000 and $75,000 per project. The RFP and application are available at the FishAmerica Foundation Web site, www.fishamerica.org.  The proposal deadline is June 7.

kudos, Affiliates!

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In these tough economic times, it’s nice to see some bright spots.

Here’s our congratulations roundup for November 2009.

The Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District (Newark, NJ) received $300,000 from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for job training in environmentally-friendly construction.

 

The National World War II Museum (New Orleans, LA) received $25 million from the Department of Defense to expand the museum and construct the United States Freedom Pavilion, an expansion that will include an exhibit focused on the American home front during the war.

 

Museum of the Rockies (Bozeman, MT) accepted a donation from Eleanor “Ellie” Hamilton Povah of more than 1,200 items from her family’s collection on Yellowstone history and gave a gift of $250,000 over five years to the museum, which will be used to match federal funds and cover the costs of the collection’s care, storage, cataloguing and preservation.

 

The Museum of Science and History (Jacksonville, FL) was awarded $304,737 through the Cultural Service Grant Program. The program is funded through the city and administered by the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville.

 

Michigan State University Museum  (East Lansing, MI) has been awarded $319,284 from IMLS to support the “Oral History in the Digital Age” project. Michigan State University Museum, will partner with the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center, the American Folklore Society, and the Oral History Association to recommend standards and best practices for digital oral history.

Congratulations and good luck to the National World War II Museum (New Orleans, LA) on their $60 million expansion and grand opening, November 6-8.