Tag Archive for: michigan science center

Kudos Affiliates!! Spring 2024

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

History Colorado (Denver, CO) has been awarded a $58,798 Underrepresented Community Grant from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by the National Park Service. The funding will be used by the State Historic Preservation Office to survey 25 properties associated with the LGBTQ+ community in Colorado and designate three of these properties to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Hubbell-Waterman Foundation has granted $140,000 to the Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) as part of a multi-year grant for capital construction to advance its vision of a growing, thriving, inclusive community through investments in innovation and accessibility.

The Colorado Department of Local Affairs awarded the Pinhead Institute (Telluride, CO) $30,000 to assist historically marginalized communities statewide through educational programs.

Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN) received $5,000 from Indiana Landmarks to support efforts, including architectural assessments and repairs at historic structures, workshops, and digital walking tours promoting preservation and heritage. 

Denver bankers, Donald and Susan Sturm, have donated $20 million to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (Denver, CO). The gift will be used for the renovation of the museum’s theater, its east wing, and its outdoor spaces as part of an effort to expand the museum’s ability to develop new education and community programs.

Union Station, Kansas City, Inc. (Kansas City, MO) received a grant for $20,000 from Bayer Fund. This grant will be used towards building a better future by helping provide scholarships for local students to visit both Science City and the Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium. The program is for students in grades K-12 at public or charter schools in the Kansas City metro area as well as non-profit community groups that serve individuals from historically underrepresented communities.

Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA) was awarded $10,000 from Americana Corner’s Preserving America Grant Program. The awarded funds will be used for the acquisition of reproduction items and materials needed to update the 17th-Century English Village’s palisade.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

The following Affiliates (Category & Place) were recognized in the final 2024 USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards:

B

Best Free Museum

No. 3: Saint Louis Science Center (St. Louis, MO)

Best History Museum

No. 1: Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA)

No. 2: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati, OH)

No. 3: Cincinnati History Museum (Cincinnati, OH)

No. 4: Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (Jackson, MS)

No. 8: National Museum of the Pacific War (Fredericksburg, TX)

Best Music Museum

No. 8: Birthplace of Country Music Museum (Bristol, VA)

No. 9: Musical Instrument Museum (Phoenix, AZ)

Best Open Air Museum

No. 1: Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA)

No. 2: Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT)

No. 8: Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN)

No. 9: Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE)

Best Science Museum

No. 1: The Wild Center (Tupper Lake, NY)

No. 3: Michigan Science Center (Detroit, MI)

No. 4: Tellus Science Museum (Cartersville, GA)

No. 5: Saint Louis Science Center (St. Louis, MO)

L

Kudos Affiliates!! September 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

Michigan Science Center (Detroit, MI) has been awarded nearly $800,000 over three years from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as part of NASA’s Next Generation STEM initiative. Called NASA’s TEAM II Program, the initiative aims to highlight space and STEM and bring the excitement of space science to communities.

Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ) received a $222,320 grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts to support key initiatives in economic and community development, arts education and lifelong learning, artist services and equity and access.

Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (Fort Worth, TX) was awarded funding from the North Texas Community Foundation through the Fund to Advance Racial Equity. The grant will support exhibitions at the museum that address achieving a more equitable community.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Museum Grants for African American History and Culture (AAHC) to the following Affiliates:

  • The African American Museum in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) ($308,000) to research, design and install a permanent, interactive exhibition telling a more comprehensive history of African Americans. Guided by historical research, expert consultants along with focus group input will inform the development of new content and the selection of artifacts. A curriculum guide for middle-school students will be created for the School District of Philadelphia during school time and the Free Library of Philadelphia for out-of-school time.
  • The National Jazz Museum in Harlem (New York, NY) ($99,935) to diversify and attract new audiences through an online video series highlighting jazz as a uniquely American art form by examining jazz in relationship to place, society, and history. The video series will help visitors gain a deeper understanding of the musical and cultural impact of jazz and its musicians with a focus on the lives of the jazz greats who called and continue to call Harlem their home.
  • Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA) ($500,000) to expand its visual literacy and arts program to provide free classes and museum visits for over 2,900 third- and fourth-grade students from Title I schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Museum will partner with the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) to host workshops, a student literacy and art project, and a showcase of student work.

Also, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded grants through Museums for America, and its special initiatives, Museums Empowered and Inspire! Grants for Small Museums. Museums for America supports projects that strengthen the ability of individual museums to benefit the public by providing high-quality, inclusive learning experiences, maximizing resources to address community needs through partnerships and collaborations, and by preserving and providing access to the collections entrusted to their care. These Affiliate projects were funded through this year’s cycle:

  • Wisconsin Veterans Museum (Madison, WI) ($66,371) to digitize and catalog post-Civil War through World War I still images from its collection, including photographs, scrapbooks, charcoal and pastel portraits, and other images.
  • Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture (Seattle, WA) ($218,146) to catalog and rehouse approximately 9,000 paleobotanical specimens in the collection, including fossil leaves, flowers, seeds, fruits, wood, plant microfossils, and fossil insects, and will undertake data cleanup of approximately 20,000 specimens. Staff will also build new and strengthen existing relationships with regional Tribes through engagement and consultation focused on learning and knowledge sharing of Washington State’s paleontological resources.
  • Museum of the Rockies (Bozeman, MT) ($236,240) to design and launch Discover Science!, a paleontology education initiative that will immerse visitors in processes of scientific inquiry of 71-82 million year old prehistoric environments by engaging them with paleontology specimens. Project activities will include producing K-12 curriculum, developing teacher training programs to be offered virtually and in person, and offering a Pop Up Museum service that will include outreach kits for classrooms and a traveling museum educator.
  • Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience (Seattle, WA) ($249,964) to partner with community service organizations and a neighborhood community advisory committee to provide arts and cultural programs centered on health and well-being for its diverse Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities, the general public, and youth audiences. Informed by recent community surveys, the museum will develop summer arts and music festival events, as well as host two year-long artist residencies to support twenty community clinic-based cultural programs. The museum will also implement an arts training program in which two paid interns are paired with professional artists to work with youth participants to create an art installation.
  • Cincinnati Museum Center (Cincinnati, OH) ($249,685) to develop and design a new permanent exhibition, the Indigenous Peoples Gallery, which will explore the Greater Cincinnati region’s long history of human habitation, from the earliest Native American societies to the Tribal Nations that still call the central Ohio Valley home. This project will build on relationships with seventeen federally recognized Tribal Nations, established through the museum’s ongoing Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) work. Using an interdisciplinary approach and inclusive lens, the Indigenous Peoples Gallery will center and share Indigenous perspectives, feature appropriate cultural resources stewarded by the museum, and communicate the message that Indigenous cultures live and thrive in the Greater Cincinnati today.
  • Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia, PA) ($159,028) to prototype a new methodology for its core exhibition. Using a model that encourages visitors to interact, the exhibition will share the experience of America’s Jewish community and inform the visitor’s thinking about the key values and challenges of a pluralistic society. Project activities will include creating a prototype that models one section of the new design, and testing the prototype at two locations with key target audiences of Jewish Philadelphians, non-Jewish Philadelphians, and national tourists.
  • San Diego Air & Space Museum (San Diego, CA) $250,000 to improve its collection care processes and digital asset management for its collection of artifacts related to air and space history and technology. This project will enable the museum to implement a new integrated Collections Management System (CMS) across all its collections.

Museums Empowered: Professional Development Opportunities for Museum Staff is a special initiative of the Museums for America grant program supporting staff capacity-building projects that use professional development to generate systemic change within a museum.

  • Museum of Us (San Diego, CA) ($249,393) to conduct an internal capacity-building project by offering an assortment of training and professional development opportunities. Project activities include conducting cultural competence training for the museum staff and board; conducting de-escalation training for forward-facing staff; offering ongoing professional development opportunities for staff; recruiting Indigenous staff, trustees, fellows, and partners; implementing a fellowship program; and auditing the employee handbook.
  • Perot Museum of Nature and Science (Dallas, TX) ($209,711) to develop a leadership professional development program to attract talent and help grow the next generation of museum leaders. The program consists of four training categories: a core values academy where participants will learn how to lead with clarity, confidence, and connection; leadership training that develops curious leaders; crucial conversations for mastering dialogue training that helps leaders develop dialogue skills to have important conversations in the moment; and crucial conversations for accountability training that prioritizes the person and not the process through candid coaching, identifying goals, and supporting professional development.

Inspire! Grants for Small Museums, a special initiative of the Museums for America grant program, was designed to reduce the application burden on small museums and help them address priorities identified in their strategic plans.

  • Dennos Museum Center (Traverse City, MI) ($10,110) to conduct a conservation survey of its outdoor sculpture collection. Informed by a Collections Assessment for Preservation (CAP) report, museum staff will work with a conservator to create a plan for object-by-object conservation care. The survey will address the environmental damage of the outdoor sculptures and help the museum staff develop a long-term maintenance and repair plan, organized by highest conservation priorities.
  • International Museum of Art and Science (McAllen, TX) ($37,398) to improve collection stewardship and accessibility for approximately 5,600 works of Mexican and Latin American folk art in its collection. Local and national project advisors will inform research activities and assist staff in reviewing Spanish and English text translations related to the objects. 

U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee passed a bill that allocates $116,000 for the New Mexico Museum of Space History (Alamogordo, NM) to photograph and catalog its object collection and archival records, which will be made accessible on their website.

The Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry (Baltimore, MD), and the University of Maryland School of Dentistry (UMSOD) Department of Dental Public Health (DPH) received a five-year $1.28 million Science Education Partnership Award grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to design innovative online tools that will redefine how young learners are taught about oral health across the country. Entitled A Mouthful of History, the project will provide accessible and easily disseminated online educational modules that combine the health sciences, science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM), and the humanities to create a scaffolded learning experience that starts with Pre-K learners and continues with them until 12th grade.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) announced 27 reaccreditation awards made at the 2023 meeting of the Accreditation Commission, which featured the following Affiliates:

L

Kudos Affiliates!! April 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 

Putnam Museum and Science Center (Dubuque, IA) received a $900,000 grant from Destination Iowa for its multi-year plan called Putnam Reimagined. The plan includes new exhibitions showcasing Quad-Cities history, innovation and material culture, experiences focused on families and how they impact people’s lives, upgraded education and science galleries and improvements in technology and infrastructure.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA) announced one of the largest grants of $8 million for a new Dubuque Museum of Art (Dubuque, IA). The design is to create 45,000 square feet of new space while tearing down the 15,000 square foot current building and making it into a sculpture garden.

University of Oklahoma biomedical engineer Yuan Yang, Ph.D., has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award, known as a CAREER award, from the National Science Foundation to advance the scientific study of brain functional changes after a stroke and pioneer a tailored rehabilitation strategy that fits individual needs. The award will include a collaboration with Science Museum Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, OK) will provide resources on brain science, including the development and donation of posters, toy models and exhibits to “excite and inspire young kids about science, medicine and the brain.”

The Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK) announced a $93,000 federal grant award to identify and digitize collections of African American history found in state archives. The funding will be used to hired a project coordinator and an imaging specialist for a year and purchased a scanner for digitizing.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

The Biden Administration announced William T. Harris, CEO, Space Center Houston (Houston, TX), and Ashley Jordan, President & CEO, African American Museum (Philadelphia,PA) have been appointed members for National Museum and Library Services Board. The National Museum and Library Services Board advises the agency on general policies with respect to the duties, powers, and authority of the Institute of Museum and Library Service relating to museum, library, and information services, as well as the annual selection of National Medals recipients.

The Air Zoo (Portage, MI) the received Historic Preservation Award, in recognition for the aviation museum’s restoration of 2 World War II aircraft rescued from the depths of Lake Michigan. The award was presented by the “Lucinda Hinsdale Stone” Chapter of the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution. About 140 volunteers from the restoration team are currently restoring two planes that were found in Lake Michigan, an FM-2 Wildcat, and an SBD-1 dive bomber.

Irving Archives and Museum (Irving, TX) was awarded the Texas Historical Commission’s (THC) John L. Nau, Ill Award for Excellence in Museums for its exhibit The Irving Story. The award recognizes an individual or institution in the museum field for significant achievement in the areas of historical interpretation, museum education, conservation of collections and/or community involvement. “The Irving Story” features Irving’s story, from its frontier days, through its development into a rapidly growing suburb, and into the modern and diverse city it is today.

The following Affiliates (Category & Place) were recognized in the final 2023 USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards:

Best Art Museum

No. 7: Booth Western Art Museum (Cartersville, GA)

No. 8: Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ)

Best History Museum

No. 1: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati, OH)

No. 2: Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA)

No. 9: Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, WY)

No. 10: The National WWII Museum (New Orleans, LA)

Best Music Museum

No. 6: Birthplace of Country Music Museum (Bristol, VA)

Best Religious Museum

No. 6: National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia, PA)

Best Science Museum

No. 3: Michigan Science Center (Detroit, MI)

No. 4: Tellus Science Museum (Cartersville, GA)

No. 5: Saint Louis Science Center (St. Louis, MO)

No. 10: The Museum of Flight (Seattle, WA)

Best Free Museum

No. 2: Saint Louis Science Center (St. Louis, MO)

L

Kudos Affiliates!! May 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

Kenosha Public Museum (Kenosha, WI) received a $1,000 Creativity by Kids Small Grant from the Kenosha Community Foundation. The funding will support its Artsy Afternoons program for children.

Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) was the largest grant recipient by the Hubbell-Waterman Foundation for the 2022 grant cycle. The museum will receive $140,000 per year over five years to continue a reimagining of the museum, including a long-planned regional history update. Some of the Hubbell-Waterman funds will go to match a $245,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for an ongoing community collaboration exploring regional history.

Science Museum Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, OK) was awarded a $15,000 grant from the Carolyn Watson Rural Oklahoma Community Foundation through its Community Grant program. The grant will assist in developing capacity at the public libraries in Checotah and Westville to deliver educational hands-on science programming.

Amesite, Inc, a leading artificial intelligence software company, is partnering with Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN) to deliver an online Learning Community Environment™ system offering K-12 programs for teachers, parents, life-long learners, and students.

A new project “Equitable Access to the Night Sky” created by Springfield Science Museum, part of Springfield Museums (Springfield, MA), has been approved for a $750,000 federal earmark. The funds will create a full-dome, digital projection system with state-of-the-art software for the planetarium to augment the historical star ball.

Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture (Baltimore, MD) will received $650,000 as part of the fiscal year 2022 omnibus funding legislation. The funds will support the work of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission and construct a permanent exhibit and memorial to educate about these extrajudicial vigilante killings and honor the memories of those whose lives were taken.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

The Michigan Association of Broadcasters named the Science of Grief podcast the winner of the Best Use of New Media award for Public Radio Group 2 during its 2021 Broadcast Excellence Awards ceremony. The Science of Grief podcast is a collaboration between WDET-FM, Detroit’s NPR Station, and Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI). The Broadcast Excellence Awards program recognizes outstanding achievement in broadcasting by commercial and public television and radio stations in Michigan each year.

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) announced reaccreditation awards to the following Affiliates:

USA Today announced the 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards, featuring the following Affiliates in the respective categories:

Winners of Best Science Museum

Winners of Best History Museum

Winners of Best Pop Culture Museum

Winners of Best Art Museum

L

Year End Kudos!

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 North Carolina Museum of History (Raleigh, NC) received a $2.5 million gift from the David R. Hayworth Foundation to create the Dr. David R. Hayworth Children’s Discovery Gallery. The Gallery will have four primary areas focusing on school-age children, preschoolers, a space for live learning, and the Tar Heel Junior Historian Association exhibition.

The Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation announced a $100 million commitment to transform the financial strength and long-term viability of Southeast Michigan’s arts and culture communities through the establishment of an endowment that will support the sector now and forever. The Foundation will gift the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI) $100,000 annually and Michigan Science Center (Detroit, MI) $200,000 annually to support general operating needs. Each organization will also co-design, in partnership with Community Foundation and national consultants, metrics and benchmarks that support their goals and strategic plans.

Kimball Electronics Gives, the employee giving circle of Kimball Electronics, announced Conner Prairie (Fishers, IN) has been awarded a $500 grant to support the purpose of Creating Quality for Life for the communities in which the company operates and where its employees live. 

The Durham Museum (Omaha, NE) received a $35,974 American Rescue Plan federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The museum plans to use the funding to add additional part-time facilitators to its education team. A portion will also be used to expand and enhance both online and on-site educational programming such as the museum’s virtual field trips and award-winning Museum Live! weekly webcast series.

The Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs is distributing $1 million among 118 Iowa arts and cultural groups to encourage people to safely “Re-imagine, Re-engage, Reconnect” with concerts, museums, festivals, and one another. Funds will provide economic relief to organizations challenged by the pandemic. Recipients include:

Union Station, Kansas City, Inc. (Kansas City, MO) received a $5 million gift from the Sunderland Foundation to be used for a wide range of Union Station improvements, including diamond-polishing the granite and marble floors, repairing its ornate ceiling, and completely overhauling its restrooms.

Flushing Town Hall (Flushing, NY) received a $50,000 grant from the Guru Krupa Foundation in support of the cultural institution’s art education programs that cater to the population of Queens and beyond. The grant will fund Flushing Town Hall’s Diwali Festival and help fund artist fees and public programs, along with general operating expenses of Flushing Town Hall. 

Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT) will receive an American Rescue Plan Act grant award of more than $40,000 to support the rebuilding of the museum’s Sustainable Maritime Trades and Skills Program.

The NBA Foundation awarded a grant to the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA) to help create employment opportunities, further career advancement and drive greater economic empowerment for Black youth.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Retired Executive Director Dr. Bob Blackburn of the Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK) received the Governor’s George Nigh Public Service Award for his contributions during 41 years of public service.

The article ‘Not a Tinker’s Damn’: The Politics of Suffrage in the South Dakota Election of 1918, by Gerard Boychuk from the South Dakota History, the quarterly journal of the South Dakota State Historical Society (Pierre, SD), won the Michael P. Malone Award from the Western History Association. The article was part of a special issue on the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted most women equal voting rights.

LEADERSHIP

The Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ) announced it has appointed Andrew Sandall to be the next president & CEO, succeeding Dr. Cleveland Johnson, who will retire at the end of the year. Sandall is currently the Executive Director of the Museum of Arts & Sciences (Daytona Beach, FL).

Kudos Affiliates!! September 2021

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

Framingham State University (Framingham, MA) is part of a six university consortium, as well as the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, to receive a $441,367 grant from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) aimed at increasing the number of college courses utilizing free Open Educational Resources (OER) rather than costly textbooks. The project – Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens (ROTEL): Culturally Relevant Open Textbooks for High Enrollment General Education Courses and Career and Professional Courses at Six Public Massachusetts Colleges – will test the hypothesis that underrepresented students will achieve higher academic outcomes if free, culturally-relevant course materials that reflect their experiences are utilized. Student savings on textbooks over the three-year grant period are projected to be over $800,000, and the goal is to create a new model that provides continued savings long into the future.

The Dubuque Museum of Art (Dubuque, IA) received a $20,000 operational support grant from the Dubuque City Council as a result of the financial impact from the pandemic.

The Infusion Fund awarded Carolinas Aviation Museum (Charlotte, NC) an $80,573 grant to support the museum’s operating budget which was impacted by the pandemic. The Museum also received a $1.5 million gift from Honeywell to catalyze the launch of the The Lift Off Campaign to develop a new state-of-the-art facility in Charlotte.

The National Park Service announced the award of 17 projects of the Underrepresented Community Grant Program which is focused on working towards diversifying the nominations submitted to the National Register of Historic Places:

  • History Colorado (Denver, CO)- $46,930 to conduct a survey and solicit nominations for Women’s Suffrage Sites in Colorado.
  • Ohio History Connection (Columbus, OH)-$50,000 to administer a nomination process for three Green Book sites in Ohio.
  • Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK)-$50,000 for the architectural/historic survey of Oklahoma’s All-Black Towns.

The following Affiliates initiatives were some of the 239 humanities projects awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities:

  • Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA) ($75,000) for planning for Cruising J-Town: Nikkei Car Culture in Southern California, an exhibition on Japanese Americans’ car culture throughout the 20th century in California.
  • Florida International University (Miami, FL) ($250,000) for preparation of a collection of essays on the architecture of the African diaspora in the United States entitled Architecture of the African Diaspora in/of the United States.
  • Florida International University ($349,646) for the rehousing of works on paper, photographs, and textiles from an offsite storage facility to new compact shelving and cold storage at The Wolfsonian.
  • Kona Historical Society (Kealakekua, HI) ($10,000) for the purchase of storage materials and installation of shelves to house a collection of historical photographs, unpublished diaries, journals, letters, family records and memorabilia, land documents, and selected Kona newspapers and articles documenting regional history and vanishing cultural traditions.
  • Krannert Art Museum (Champaign, IL) ($200,000) for implementation of a reinterpretation of the museum’s permanent gallery of Andean art and the creation of a digital portal allowing deeper exploration of the collection.
  • Plimoth Patuxet Museums (Plymouth, MA) ($163,742) to develop a two-week, residential institute Ancient Stories, New Neighbors: Decolonizing Indigenous Homelands and 17th-Century New England for 25 K–12 teachers on the history of Indigenous peoples in southern New England.
  • Montana Historical Society (Helena, MT) ($263,415) for the digitization of 100,000 pages of Montana newspapers to increase geographic coverage, especially of Native American newspapers published on or near reservations, as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program.
  • City Lore, Inc. (New York, NY) ($75,319) for the development of a feature-length film The Colfax Massacre about a Reconstruction-era conflict between southern whites and African Americans and its legal and social legacy.
  • The Witte Museum (San Antonio, TX) ($75,000) for the planning for a reinterpretation of the museum’s permanent exhibition Where Nature, Science and Culture Meet on the history of Texas.
  • Hermitage Museum & Gardens (Norfolk, VA) ($9,366) for a preservation assessment of the collections representing more than 30 global cultures and 5,000 years of world history, from the Neolithic era to the early 1950s.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced grant awards through the agency’s largest competitive grant program, Museums for America, and its special initiatives, Museums Empowered and Inspire! Grants for Small Museums to improve services to their communities:

Museums for America

  • History Colorado ($249,886) to strengthen the implementation of the “Museum of Memory” project by maximizing community-led collective memory work and its contribution to social wellbeing. This public history program brings community together to remember and document their experiences, creating opportunities for those historically impacted by systems of oppression and inequality to explore their past through memory sharing, storytelling, grassroots collecting efforts, and art-based community share backs. 
  • North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, NC) ($250,000) to add a new, permanent paleontology exhibition, Dueling Dinosaurs, and a public lab that will allow middle school students to explore a variety of fossils using hands-on tools and techniques.
  • Anchorage Museum (Anchorage, AK) ($181,143) seeks to decolonize its collection through the dissemination of images and materials related to the Chickaloon Native Village. The project will expand access to collections with digital surrogates and newly created metadata made available online through both the village’s and the museum’s online image databases. The museum will hire an archivist, a collections technician and involve village elders to work on the project. Although this is the first project of this kind undertaken by the museum, it will serve as a model for future relationships with other Alaska Native villages.
  • Wing Luke Museum (Seattle, WA) ($178,311) to develop a new program series, Wing Luke Community Connections, of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) art workshops, art talks, free public readings, film screenings, and discussions. The series will feature a variety of artists, authors, filmmakers, and scholars who have been exploring the diverse AAPI immigrant experience to bring greater understanding to historic roots, heritage and culture, socio-political issues, and ongoing identity formation.
  • Plimoth Patuxet Museums ($212,742) to develop History in a New Light: Reimagining Wampanoag and Indigenous Museum Education, a series of educational programs, resources, and events responding to increasing demand for nuanced and fact-based histories told from indigenous perspectives.
  • Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) ($245,639) to partner with the Science Museum of Minnesota—creators of the Race: Are We So Different? exhibit—for the “Ground on Which We Stand” project. The initiative will distill the themes of the Race exhibit through the lens of local history so that participants can learn about, build pride in, and embrace the collective identity of their diverse community.
  • Museum of the Rockies (Bozeman, MT) ($167,830) to create an exhibit exploring the region’s Native people. “American Indian Voices: Natives of the Northern Plains and Rockies” will examine cultural history, language and storytelling, and contemporary art and voices. The museum also will create a K–12 curriculum in accordance the Montana Office of Public Instruction that will assist teachers in interpreting American Indian culture and prepare students to visit the exhibit.
  • Arizona State Museum (Tucson, AZ) ($190,953) in partnership with The Poetry Center and Center for Digital Humanities will create a digital museum with exhibit locations in diverse areas of Tucson as well as accompanying activities for K-12 classrooms, families, and adults. The collaborative virtual outdoor museum will use geolocation technology and offer augmented reality encounters with curators, educators, poets, and community tradition bearers.
  • Michigan State University Museum (East Lansing, MI) ($170,332) to improve storage conditions for a large and diverse collection of apparel and textiles that are used for teaching and research. 
  • High Desert Museum (Bend, OR) ($217, 350) to develop design plans for a new 4,500 square-foot permanent exhibit entitled “Creating Together”, to help visitors better understand the indigenous plateau region, ancestral homeland of many indigenous communities and plateau tribes.
  • Michigan Science Center (Detroit, MI) ($105,499) to purchase a portable planetarium that will bring planetarium shows to more than 2,000 children through its Traveling Science Program.
  • Connecticut Historical Society (Hartford, CT) ($219,385) to create a new public-facing initiative, the Community Historian Project. This contemporary collecting project—which gathers items of the recent past as well as from events happening today—will develop community historians to identify, document, and preserve their experiences as residents of Connecticut, and share these experiences during a series of community presentations.
  • Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (Spokane, WA) ($249,589) to expand access to its collections of inland northwest history, art, and cultures with a long-term plan and policies for digital preservation of collection materials.
  • History Colorado ($249,725) to create an exhibition on the Sand Creek Massacre. The museum will partner with three tribes: Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Northern Arapaho Tribe, and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. This exhibition will be the first in the U.S. to share the culturally vetted history of the massacre with the general public through the voices of Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal members.
  • Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (Easton, PA) ($120,734) to conduct a wall-to-wall inventory of the museum’s main collections storage facility and physically and digitally improve access to the objects stored there.
  • Museum of Us (San Diego, CA) ($229,940) to reimagine the exhibit, Race: Are We So Different? and provide complementary educational programming to meet community needs. This will expand the museum’s culture of community collaboration and serve as a framework for community-centric activities, tours, workshops, and public programs.

Museums Empowered

  • Denver Museum of Nature and Science (Denver, CO) ($137,930) to develop an evaluation tool that measures the meaningfulness of the visitor experience. Project activities focus on developing, testing, and disseminating a tool to understand what makes visitors choose a museum, how that experience is remembered and shared, and how to create experiences to which visitors will want to return.
  • Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence, RI) ($26,618) to increase organizational capacity to address inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) issues across the museum, building upon existing institutional assessments of programming, interpretation, hiring processes, facilities, and vendor relationships.
  • Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture (Seattle, WA) ($217, 427) to hire a full-time diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI) coordinator who will further the museum’s strategic DEAI goals.

Inspire! Grants for Small Museums

  • The Dennos Museum Center (Traverse City, MI) ($47,100) to address the issue of overcrowding in their collections storage area which was identified through a 2020 Museum Assessment Program (MAP) report.
  • Christa McAuliffe Center for Integrated Science Learning (Framingham, MA) ($49,964) to implement a team mentorship and project-based learning program for local high school students. Program participants are tasked with creating campaigns (exhibits, videos, and presentations) that increase awareness of environmental challenges helping participants to develop knowledge, analytical and communication skills, and ethical viewpoints that guide their actions on local and global environmental issues.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

The Shedd Aquarium (Chicago, IL) and the Greensboro History Museum (Greensboro, NC) were recipients of the Media & Technology MUSE Awards, presented by The Media & Technology Professional Network of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM):

Digital Campaign

GoldAs Shedd Aquarium Closed, Penguins Waddled into the Limelight
Shedd Aquarium

Research and Innovation

GoldPieces of Now: Murals, Masks, Community Stories and Conversations
Greensboro History Museum

2020 Response

SilverPieces of Now: Murals, Masks, Community Stories and Conversations
Greensboro History Museum