Endowment of the Office of the Curator of Asian Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College

FAIN: CH-51133-13

Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH 44074-1057)
Andria Derstine (Project Director: May 2012 to November 2017)

Endowment for a humanities curator and related programming for the Allen Memorial Art Museum.

Oberlin College requests an NEH challenge grant of $500,000 to be matched on a 3:1 basis to endow funding for a curator of Asian art and Asian art programming at the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM). Considered one of the finest college or university art museums in the U.S., the AMAM is free and open to the public and receives over 40,000 visitors annually. By increasing the AMAM’s expertise and staffing, the curator will strengthen and expand teaching and research with the Asian collections across a broad range of humanities disciplines in Oberlin’s College of Arts and Sciences and Conservatory of Music, as well as expand scholarship on the AMAM’s significant Asian holdings. The endowment will also enrich the museum’s extensive outreach activities for K-12 and adult audiences, provide specialized expertise to steward and build the collection, expand offerings on Asian art at Oberlin, and deepen student engagement with and knowledge of Asia.