Challenge Grant for Library Construction and Humanities Endowment

FAIN: CH-50158-05

American Academy in Rome (New York, NY 10021-4905)
Adele Chatfield-Taylor (Project Director: May 2004 to December 2008)

Renovation of the Academy's library and endowment for a staff position and lecture program.

The American Academy in Rome requests a challenge grant in the amount of $750,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an amount the Academy will match 4:1 (for a total project of $3,750,000). These funds will make possible a much-needed renovation of the Academy's Library and will begin an endowment in support of humanities programming. Specifically, the renovation will enhance the Academy's service to scholars and other Library readers. The endowment will expand and support intellectual exchange and the Academy's outreach efforts in Italy and the United States by funding in perpetuity both the salary of one mid-level staff person responsible for implementing programs and a public lecture in the humanities, which may be named the NEH Lecture. In accomplishing these goals, the NEH challenge will provide a long-term benefit to the humanities, scholarly research and public programming in the humanities. It will expand the Academy's outreach to American scholars including through its member institutions nationwide and will also perform a powerful role in the Academy's forthcoming campaign to increase the Academy's endowment by c. 50%, especially in support of the humanities, by helping the Academy to secure private funds.