Tag Archive for: oklahoma historical society

Kudos Affiliates!! Summer 2022

Kudos to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.

FUNDING 

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

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

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

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

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

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

AWARDS & RECOGNITION 

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

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

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

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP 

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

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!! November 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

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced $87.8 million in American Rescue Plan funding to cultural and educational institutions to help them recover from the economic impact of the pandemic, retain and rehire workers, and reopen sites, facilities, and programs including these Affiliate organizations:

History Colorado (Denver, CO)-$500,000-the continuation of adult and youth humanities programs, an installation of new exhibits, and new technology infrastructure, the retention of five positions and creation of six new contract positions.

Kona Historical Society (Kealakekua, HI)-$50,000- the creatation of a collections assistant position to increase the collections department’s capacity to catalog, digitize, house, and store a photograph collection documenting Hawaiian local history that is not currently accessible to the public.

Dubuque Museum of Art (Dubuque, IA)-$50,000-the development and implementation of an oral history exhibition Vietnam: The Real War and The Things They Carried and the retention of 10 positions.

B & O Railroad Museum (Baltimore, MD)-$200,000-the implementation of the African American Railroad Oral Archives project, retaining eight jobs and creating three part-time positions.

USS Constitution Museum, Inc. (Boston, MA)-$199,676-the creation of “hands on” museum experiences and virtual
programming for children about the historic navy ship, the retention of seven staff positions and the restoration of four part-time positions.

Framingham State University (Framingham, MA)-$192,306-the creation of six digital humanities fellowships cut due to the pandemic, and the development of a digital humanities center.

Springfield Museums (Springfield, MA)-$117,655-updating the depiction of the history of the Native American people, retaining five jobs and creating six new contract positions.

Arab American National Museum (Dearborn, MI)-$200,000-the rehiring of a community history specialist to oversee the oral history collection project and the partial funding of six other staff positions.

Mississippi Department of Archives and History (Jackson, MS)-$458,007- to support ten positions for educational programming, My Mississippi: Virtual Visits and Shared Storytelling, at the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York, NY)-$199,510-the retention of five staff members to digitize and provide online access to the Vilna Territorial Collection, the Records of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Council, and the Jewish Customs Collection.

Cincinnati Museum Center (Cincinnati, OH)-$499,424-the creation of three curatorial and exhibition positions, as well as the retention of four archives and collections positions, for a cross-organizational project between the Cincinnati Museum Center and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati, OH) OURstory: Making History Relevant for New Generations that would build collections management and exhibition development capacity.

Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK)-$93,442-the digitization of the Oklahoma Historical Society’s African American collections and retaining two jobs.

High Desert Museum (Bend, OR)-$187,487-the development of archival work and public programming on the history and culture of Central Oregon, focusing on the Plateau tribes in the region.

Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor, Inc.-($87,928)-to research and develop an exhibition on the historical contributions of women and African Americans to the Delaware and Lehigh Canal region, sustaining two staff positions and creating one additional position.

Whatcom Museum Foundation (Bellingham, WA)-$158,477-to support three staff positions and consultants to deepen scholarship and enhance a core exhibit about Coastal Native people, as well as the production of an educational video and establishment of an apprenticeship program related to historical totem poles to be exhibited and preserved.

Burke Museum (Seattle, WA)-$129,677-to develop K–12 educational materials and programming on Indigenous knowledge and perspectives.

Wing Luke Memorial Foundation (Seattle, WA)-$149,468-the retention of three core humanities staff positions to support curriculum development, teacher workshops, and live-virtual and in-person school field trips.

Buffalo Bill Memorial Association (Cody, WY)-$121,272-the retention of five staff members to further develop and
implement a teacher-training program in Native American studies.

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (Sarasota, FL) and Gulf Coast Community Foundation announced an expansion of their long-standing partnership.  During 2022, Gulf Coast will provide grant support for a variety of programs at Selby Gardens including the Jean & Alfred Goldstein Exhibition Series signature exhibition, Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith: Flowers, Poetry, and Light; the My Garden membership program; and Seeing the Invisible: An Augmented Reality Contemporary Art Exhibition.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence, RI) has officially completed the return of sacred land to the Narragansett Indian Tribe. The land is believed to be the site of the “Great Swamp Massacre.” Tribe members lit three fires representing the past, present and future, and recognized the return of five acres of sacred land.

LEADERSHIP

The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs announced that Margaret M. Marino, executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (Albuquerque, NM), will retire effective Oct. 22, 2021. Marino was appointed in November 2015. A search for the Museum’s new executive director will begin immediately. Deputy Director Gary Romero will serve as acting director.

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

Coming Up in Affiliateland in February 2021

Welcome to a new year of collaboration!

NATIONWIDE
Eight Affiliates present two more opportunities to view the Pandemic Perspectives: Stories through Collections virtual programs in collaboration with the National Museum of American History:
Race and Place: Yellow Fever and the Free African Society in Philadelphia on 2.2.21
Essential Workers: Prestige Versus Pay on 2.16.21

The eight participating Affiliates are:

Professional tennis player Althea Gibson in full motion hitting a difficult tennis shot.

RHODE ISLAND
The International Tennis Hall of Fame (Newport) will present a talk by Dr. Damion Thomas, Curator of Sports at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, on Althea Gibson and the History of Tennis on 2.24.21. Register here.

MASSACHUSETTS

The Springfield Museums (Springfield) will feature Dr. Dorothy Moss, Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery in a conversation with artists about their artistic processes as learning experiences, 2.11.21.  Later in the month, the Museums feature Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony, Curator at the National Air and Space Museum to discuss her new book, Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo on 2.25.21.

WISCONSIN

The Civil War Museum, part of Kenosha Public Museums (Kenosha) will host Doretha Williams, Program Manager for the Robert F. Smith Fund at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, for a virtual program in collaboration with the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative about Black Women in the Central Plains 1890-1920.

 

Kudos Affiliates!! December 2020

Congratulations to these Affiliates on their recent accomplishments! Do you have kudos to share? Please send potential entries to Aaron Glavas, GlavasC@si.edu.
FUNDING

The International Museum of Art & Science (IMAS in McAllen, TX) was awarded two grants to support future programs. IMAS received a $5,500 grant from BBVA Compass Bank for “Afterschool Adventures with IMAS,” STEAM virtual programming for K-12 students.  The program features seasonal-themed topics, hands-on learning and free workshop kits for participating children. In addition, IMAS was awarded a $15,000 grant from H-E-B Helping Here to remove the financial barrier for unique informal, family learning experiences. Programs include a virtual Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) program, free admission days and monthly virtual Workshop Wednesday programming with free supply kits.

Putnam Museum and Science Center (Davenport, IA) received three grants from local charities and foundations. Putnam was awarded a $7,500 COVID-19 Rebuilding Fund grant from the United Way Quad Cities to support essential needs for students that have resulted from the pandemic. Arconic Foundation awarded $25,000 to the museum to boost its STEM offerings and for COVID-19 relief. Finally, the Putnam received $38,500 from the Regional Development Authority to create programs to improve access and representation at the museum.

Students in the Putnam’s IMMERSE program explore the periodic table exhibit, OMG! Elements of Surprise with President/CEO, Rachael Mullins. The Putnam recently received a grant for its STEM programming from the Arconic Foundation. Credit-Putnam Museum

Humanities Nebraska provided relief grants to three Affiliates to battle the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic:

Michael “Mike” Mayo Macke donated $750,000 to the Tellus Science Museum (Cartersville, GA) as part of a long-range plan to sustain the programs and activities at the museum. Tellus honored Macke by renaming its Great Hall the “Michael Mayo Macke Great Hall.”

The Carolyn Watson Rural Oklahoma Community Foundation awarded Science Museum Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, OK) a $15,000 grant through its Community Grant program to enhance STEM experiences at the regional public libraries. Science Museum Oklahoma will develop hands-on science programming as well as professional development and other activities.

The National Canal Museum, part of the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (Easton, PA), received a $58,923 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to expand its digital offerings.

The Center for Jewish History (New York, NY) received a donation of approximately $1 million from Sir Len Blavatnik to support general operating expenses at the organization.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Plimoth Patuxet  (Plymouth, MA) announced that Mayflower II, its historic tall ship, has been named to the National Register of Historic Places. Mayflower II is deemed historically significant for its association with the founding story of the United States and as a full-scale ship that embodies the distinctive characteristics of a 17th-century English merchant vessel.

Credit Plimoth Patuxet 

Ellen Noel Art Museum of the Permian Basin (Odessa, TX) and Historic Arkansas Museum (Little Rock, AR) were reaccredited during the recent American Alliance of Museums meeting of the Accreditation Commission.

LEADERSHIP

Jay D. Vogt announced that he is retiring as director of the South Dakota State Historical Society (Pierre, SD), effective December 8. 

After a yearlong search, Trait Thompson has been selected to succeed Bob Blackburn as executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK).  Thompson will start his tenure on January 4. For the past six years, Thompson had been the project manager for the Oklahoma Capitol Restoration Project, shepherding the preservation and restoration of the state Capitol.