Tag Archive for: IMLS

Kudos Affiliates! for November 2017

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

Congrats to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments.

Funding

Mystic Seaport announced today it has received a $1 million gift from the Thompson Family Foundation to support the Thompson Exhibition Building, the Museum’s first new exhibition building in more than four decades. The Thompson Building opened to visitors on September 24, 2016. The Thompson Family Foundation’s latest gift caps the $15.3 million required to fund the exhibition building and the McGraw Gallery Quadrangle project. This fundraising effort was scheduled to conclude on December 31. The first exhibit to be featured in the Thompson Building will be “Sea-Change,” a dramatic presentation of a range of beautiful and unique objects drawn from the collections of Mystic Seaport.

Massachusetts officials have announced state funding for an exhibit at a new museum highlighting the life and work of a renowned children’s book author. The two state senators representing Springfield, Eric Lesser and James Welch, said Wednesday that $200,000 has been earmarked for a bilingual literacy exhibit in the new Dr. Seuss Museum. Springfield Museums President Kay Simpson said momentum is building toward the opening of the new museum in just a few months. The museum will be the only one in the world devoted exclusively to Theodore Geisel, the Springfield native who authored the Dr. Seuss children’s books.

IMLS announced four STEMeX awards– the first of their kind for the agency – which fund research on informal educational approaches that make use of the knowledge and skills of community Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) experts. These long anticipated awards generated a tremendous response from the field, and all of us at IMLS are anxious to see the results of this important work. Researchers from the High Desert Museum, Oregon State University Cascades and the Deschutes Public Library, will answer questions including: How might the experts’ use of storytelling impact rural families’ talk during STEM activities, understanding of the nature of science, engagement, and attitudes?

Awards and Recognition

Antonio “Tony” J. Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), will be inducted next week into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) during a ceremony in Washington, D.C. Election to the NAE honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, or education. It is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer and those working at the intersection of science and engineering. Busalacchi was elected for his contributions to “understanding of tropical oceans in coupled climate systems via remotely sensed observations and for international leadership of climate prediction/projection research.”

The Arab American National Museum’s (AANM) founding director, Dr. Anan Ameri, has been selected for induction into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame. Ameri is one of nine women chosen, from among more than 110 nominees, to receive the honor  as a member of the 33rd class of the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame, part of the Michigan Women’s Historical Center in Lansing.

The Greensboro Historical Museum has received a national award from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) for the exhibition “Warnersville: Our Home, Our Neighborhood, Our Stories.” The Leadership in History Award is the most prestigious form of recognition for achievement in the preservation and interpretation of state and local history.

 

Kudos- July/August 2016

Congrats to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments!

Funding

The San Diego Air & Space Museum (San Diego, CA) recently selected 13 graduating seniors from San Diego County high schools to receive a total of $51,000 in scholarships. These scholarships are awarded annually to inspire young people to tackle the challenges of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics academic disciplines, and to make a difference in tomorrow’s world through an innovative, adventurous spirit.

Framingham State University (Framingham, MA) received $7,800 from The MetroWest Health Foundation for the development of programs and resources related to sexual violence education and prevention.

Duke Energy Foundation has awarded a $15,000 grant to Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN) to help establish a new maker’s program set to debut in phases starting later this year. The grant will help Conner Prairie develop and prototype programming, create temporary venues to implement and evaluate its programs and provide continued learning opportunities for teachers that focus on how the making movement supports STEM learning. The grant will also help the museum build a permanent maker space that will feature year-round programming and maker-oriented school programs that meet or exceed Indiana’s educational standards.

Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs through the Historical Resource Development Program awarded Dubuque Museum of Art (Dubuque, IA) $14,500 to help the museum conserve and exhibit a set of historic architectural drawings, created by renowned landscape architect Alfred Caldwell, of Eagle Point Park.

The Flushing Council on Culture and Arts, based in Flushing Town Hall (Flushing, NY), received nearly $600,000 in capital funding from the borough of Queens.

The Connecticut Humanities Council announced that Mystic Seaport (Mystic, CT) is the recipient of a $9,979 grant that will help the maritime museum establish two training programs for the museum staff. One program will explore methods of producing interpretive techniques while the other will encourage the use of evaluation for continuous improvement.

Awards and Recognition

The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) announced the winners of the 71st annual Leadership in History Awards including the following Affiliate initiatives:

California African American Museum (Los Angeles, CA), Stephanie DeLancey, and dewdropstudios: for the exhibit Coloring Independently: 1940s African American Film Stills from the Collection of the California African American Museum.

HistoryMiami (Miami, FL) for the exhibit Operation Pedro Pan: The Cuban Children’s Exodus.

Indiana Historical Society (Indianapolis, IN) for the project Indiana History for the Secondary Classroom.

Montana Historical Society (Helena, MT) for the exhibit Forgotten Pioneers: The Chinese in Montana.

North Carolina Museum of History (Raleigh, NC) for the exhibit Starring North Carolina!

Greensboro Historical Museum (Greensboro, NC) for the exhibit Warnersville: Our Home, Our Neighborhood, Our Stories.

Senator John Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA) for the exhibit We Can Do It! WWII.

Birthplace of Country Music Museum (Bristol, TN) for the Birthplace of Country Music Museum permanent exhibits.

Museum of History & Industry (Seattle, WA) for the exhibit The Legacy of Seattle Hip-Hop.

The Antique Automobile Club of America Museum (Hershey, PA) received six NAAMY Awards during the National Association of Automobile Museums (NAAM) Conference in the following categories:

Second Place – Division II Newsletters & Magazines for the Reflections Newsletter publication intended to share information about the AACA Museum exhibits and activities with our members and donors.

Second Place – Division II Events & Public Promotions for the Back to the Future 30th Anniversary Tribute Car & Future Day promotional event.

Second Place – Division II Film & Video for the Motorbikes for the Masses exhibit promotional video hosted on the AACA Museum website and social media channels.

Second Place – Division II Educational Programs for the grade specific educational materials created by Lebanon Valley College Masters students inspired by AACA Museum exhibits.

Third Place – Division II Events and Public Promotions related to the 6th Annual Wedding Showcase event held in February.

Third Place – Division II Films & Video for the Lotus: The Art of Lightness video to promote the exhibit to visitors of the AACA Museum website.

The readers of Miami New Times have named The Wolfsonian (Miami Beach, FL) as Miami’s Best Museum of 2016!

The Honorable Dennis Ross (Florida) recognized in the Congressional Record, the Polk Museum of Art (Lakeland, FL) for its’ 50 years of service to the community.

The Mid-America Science Museum (Hot Springs, AR) is one of 10 recipients of the 2016 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries for service to the community. For 22 years, the award has celebrated institutions that respond to societal needs in innovative ways, making a difference for individuals, families, and their communities.

Leadership and Staff Changes

Best wishes to President and chief executive, Stuart Ashman of the Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA) who announced he will be stepping down from his position in July to take a leadership position at the Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe in New Mexico.

Kudos Affiliates! for October 2015

Affiliates continue to demonstrate significant impact, all over the country. Congratulations to all!

FUNDING

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced grants for 217 museum projects awarded through the highly competitive Museums for America and National Leadership Grants for Museums programs including the following Affiliates:

The San Diego Natural History Museum will improve the management and accessibility of data for more than 1.2 million specimens in its paleontology research collection by upgrading its current database to “Specify 6,” a database designed specifically for natural history collections.

The Denver Art Museum will develop a Latino artist-in-residence program to better reflect the full diversity of the community. The museum will create a series of one-month Latino artist residencies, bringing Latino artists of local, national, and international stature to the museum.

The Denver Art Museum will conduct a first-ever detailed conservation survey of 604 three-dimensional objects in its Architecture, Design, and Graphics collection. The project will advance institutional long-range goals for strengthening collections management by improving curatorial knowledge of the collection condition in anticipation of heightened exhibition, rotation, and program activity.

History Colorado seeks to improve the stewardship of a collection of 6,187 historic objects and more than 50,000 archaeological artifacts through relocation of the items to a new storage facility. Relocation to an 15 environmentally stable and readily accessible facility will allow History Colorado to more effectively preserve and manage its collections.

  • Mystic Seaport  (Mystic, CT) – Award Amount: $149,318;

The Mystic Seaport Museum will improve the physical state of the 1908 steamboat, Sabino, a National Historic Landmark vessel and the last remaining wooden, coal-fired, operating steamboat in the United States.

The Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art will undertake two video projects to help visitors better understand the museum and earth science, and to provide an incentive for more school-driven visits. The museum plans to update its welcoming video, and a second video will focus on earth science with STEM-related material.

Conner Prairie Museum will implement a series of on-going maker programs using the tools, materials, and philosophy of the modern maker movement by drawing inspiration from the historic crafts and trades visitors experience at the museum.  

  • Abbe Museum (Bar Harbor, ME) – Award Amount: $150,000;

The Abbe Museum will design, fabricate, and install a permanent exhibit showcasing the history and culture of Maine’s native Wabanaki people. The exhibit will include content, artifacts, images, and interactive elements informed by the museum’s interpretive framework, its Native Advisory Council, and Native advisors.

The USS Constitution Museum will create an online collections, research, and interpretive portal for educators and information seekers of all ages offering free and unlimited access to the museum’s nationally significant collection of manuscripts, rare books, artifacts, and artwork capturing the role of the Constitution during the War of 1812.

  • Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI)-Award Amount: $59,898;

The Michigan State University Museum will preserve an important collection of rare and fragile barn models located for decades in substandard space, by rehousing them in the museum’s cultural collections resource center, a climate-controlled repository.

The Senator John Heinz History Center will develop, fabricate, and tour a traveling exhibit that will use life figures, modular panels, hands-on objects, cases with artifacts, oral histories, and video components to help audiences at small local museums explore how World War II transformed the lives of Pennsylvania residents.  

The Museum of History and Industry will launch a two-year project designed to engage participants, pre-K through adult learners, through a coordinated set of museum, classroom, and community experiences in exploring the region’s legacy of innovation, collaboration, experimentation, and perseverance skills.

The Wing Luke Asian Museum will expand and strengthen its guided neighborhood walking tours to provide opportunities for members of the Asian Pacific American community to share their stories, to stimulate the local economy by fostering partnerships with neighborhood businesses and organizations, and to promote the historic and cultural appeal of the Chinatown International District.

Madison Children’s Museum will model a creative approach to behavioral change encouraging increased physical activity by redesigning stairwells in its historic building and by producing related programming to counteract decreased activity and a rise in obesity among Wisconsin children. During the two-year initiative, the museum will produce three examples of stairwell transformation.

Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA) and Framingham State University (Framingham, MA) have been selected to receive a competitive Latino Americans: 500 Years of History grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association. As two of 203 grant recipients selected from across the country, both will receive a cash grant of $3,000 to hold public programming – such as public film screenings, discussion groups, oral history initiatives, local history exhibitions, multi-media projects or performances – about Latino history and culture.

The Abbe Museum (Bar Harbor, ME) has received a grant from Grants to Green Maine to provide an energy efficiency audit for the museum’s historic downtown location. The grant complements the museum’s Greening the Abbe Initiative and the near completion of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded projects that have helped reduce the Abbe’s carbon footprint and operating costs.

PNC’s Grow Up Great program has awarded a $30,000 grant to The Works: Ohio Center for History, Art and Technology (Newark, OH) to provide early childhood science education this coming school year. The programs will feature classroom instruction, field trips and family nights at the Works. New this year will be a teacher professional development day at the Works facilitated by an instructor from the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center.

The Witte Museum (San Antonio, TX) announced the beginning stages of construction for the H-E-B Lantern, the entrance to the New Witte and home to a Pterosaur, “Quetzy” through a generous donation of $2 million on behalf of H-E-B to the New Witte.


LEADERHIP AND STAFF CHANGES
 

Susan J. Weller, former executive director and curator at the J.F. Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota, has been named director of the University of Nebraska State Museum (Lincoln, NE). She succeeds Priscilla Grew, who has directed the museum since 2003.

Fundraising professional Karrie Zuccarello of Indianapolis has been named chief development officer at Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN). She joins the museum from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, where she was director of development since 2011.

The Denver Art Museum (Denver, Colorado) has named fashion and art historian and curator Florence Müller as its next Avenir Foundation Curator of Textile Art, Curator of Fashion.

 

 

kudos affiliates! for April 2015

Congrats to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments.

FUNDING

The National Archives awarded $2,186,024 in grants to assist in numerous history projects across the country including the following Affiliates:nhprc_logo-th

Ohio History Connection (Columbus, OH)  Amount-$23,361
To support the state historical records advisory board and its electronic records training, History Day, and statewide regrant programs.

San Diego Air and Space Museum (San Diego, CA)  Amount-$99,000
To support a project to process approximately 165,000 images from the Convair/General Dynamics collection of the Atlas rocket program from its inception in the 1950s through the mid-1980s. Approximately 50,000 images will be digitized and available online.

History Colorado (Denver, CO)  Amount-$48,044
To support a two-year project to arrange and describe four large photograph collections documenting the development of modern Colorado and the American West in the mid-20th century. The museum will also digitize and post online 800 photographs that staff will select for their research value and potential research use.

The PPG Industries Foundation announced the donation of $10,000 to the Frontiers of Flight Museum (Dallas, TX) to support a Young Women’s STEM Leadership Initiative, a new science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education program for 6th- through 12th-grade students from two public all-girls schools in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Through the new initiative, more than 600 students will participate in guided tours of the Frontiers of Flight Museum;  and includes paid internship opportunities for 10 upper-class students to assist teachers with spring break camp and 16 internships and 10 scholarships for the museum’s Flight School Summer Camp.


ACHIEVEMENTS AND RECOGNITION

George Guastello will receive the Nonprofit Connect nonprofit professional award for his work as president and chief executive of Union Station Kansas City (Kansas City, MO), which has stabilized funding, programming and occupants during his tenure.

Chabot Space & Science Center (Oakland, CA) and the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science (Miami, FL) have been named finalists for the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in recognition of exceptional service to the community and for making a difference in the lives of individuals, families, and communities.

 

WELCOME NEW AFFILIATE COLLEAGUES

Cayetana S. Gómez, new President and CEO of the Mexican Museum in San Francisco.

Cayetana S. Gómez, new President and CEO of the Mexican Museum in San FrancisLEADERSHIP CHANGES

The Mexican Museum (San Francisco, CA) announced that Cayetana S. Gómez has been hired as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Using field trips to promote critical thinking

Many thanks to Dr. Jodi Kearns, Digital Projects Manager at the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology for this guest post.  The Cummings Center has been a Smithsonian Affiliate since 2002 and is located at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio.

CCHP_pic_4

The Cummings Center for the History of Psychology houses exhibition galleries and extensive archives at its site in Akron.

The mission of the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology (CCHP) is to promote the history of psychology and related human sciences to the broadest community possible. Integral to this mission is offering structured educational opportunities to empower critical thinking about primary source materials held in the CCHP archives. As such, CCHP staff set a goal to make field trips both effortless for local high school teachers and useful to their students in order to encourage teachers from any subject area to bring their classes to the CCHP Museum of Psychology, which exhibits artifacts and documents from the CCHP archives. Organized, well-planned field trips to museums and archives as structured, free-choice learning environments can foster learning experiences that are self-directed and hands-on (Kisiel, 2006). To gain a better understanding of teachers’ perspectives, CCHP staff sent a survey to all high school teachers in the Akron Public Schools in Akron, Ohio during Spring 2012. Results indicated that all of the responding teachers rated field trips as moderately to very important for student learning. When asked to rate the potential helpfulness of various field trip resources for teachers, they rated all the proposed resources–pre- and post-trip activities, onsite activities, learning objectives mapped to curriculum standards, and teacher’s guides to the exhibits–as very helpful.

Local teachers participate in a professional development workshop at CCHP.

Local teachers participate in a professional development workshop at CCHP.

In response to the local educational community’s need for focused field trips identified in the survey, CCHP staff held a free workshop in Fall 2013 for teachers interested in providing more in-depth perspectives of field trips and moderating CCHP staff lesson plan building. This collaborative partnership has resulted in robust three-part lesson plans adaptable to all high school grade levels and mapped to state and core academic content standards in mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts. Each lesson plan suggests activities and materials in which teachers can engage students before, during, and after the field trip. Upon lesson completion, students will have had hands-on engagement with archival materials spanning CCHP collections, including artifacts, photographs, films, rare books, and historical tests. The lesson plans are part of the complete Teachers Resource Package that also includes gallery maps, behavioral guidelines for visits within archives and museums, guides to gallery content, and chaperone guides with instructions for facilitating on-site dialogue around the student-guided gallery guides. Further, archival materials not on display in the public gallery have been placed in the CCHP’s online repository (OCLC’s CONTENTdm) where teachers can access supporting materials from their classrooms for before and after activities.

CCHP's new Measuring the Mind exhibition, funded in part by IMLS.

CCHP’s new Measuring the Mind exhibition, funded in part by IMLS.

This project is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Museums for America grant, which enabled the installation of a new interactive museum exhibit called Measuring the Mind to capture interest of high school (and other) visitors. Measuring the Mind features artifacts, tests, photographs, and film from CCHP collections and takes museum visitors through some history of testing aptitude, personality, intelligence, and interest.

If you would like to learn more about how to incorporate materials from the history of psychology into your lesson plans or professional development for teachers, or if you know a teacher who might be interested in using our resources, please contact ahap@uakron.edu for more information.

High school students on a field trip to CCHP marvel at the artifacts on view.

High school students on a field trip to CCHP marvel at the artifacts on view.

Kisiel, J. (2006). An examination of fieldtrip strategies and their implementation within a natural history museum. Science Education, 90 (3), 434-452.

 

An example of one of the project's new lesson plans.

An example of one of the project’s new lesson plans.