Development of a site interpretive plan exploring the impact of Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith on the Underground Railroad in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the Reconstruction Amendments.

To celebrate the significant contributions of Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, LancasterHistory.org (formerly known as the Lancaster County Historical Society) will undertake a project to restore the home and law office of Congressman Stevens as well as to create an adjacent interpretive museum that will celebrate the legacy of Lydia Hamilton Smith, confidante to Mr. Stevens, and tell the extensive story of the Underground Railroad in Lancaster County. The overall site will situate Mr. Stevens' political and personal contributions, including his dedication to the causes of emancipation, education, and civil rights, within the broader context of 19th-century America and the unique situation of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A planning grant will provide resources for us to carefully construct an interpretive plan that will share the legacy of Mr. Stevens with the world while engaging citizens of and visitors to Lancaster in meaningful dialogue about issues of civil rights and civic literacy.

Planning for a new interpretive plan and public programs at the home of poet Emily Dickinson (1830–86).

The Emily Dickinson Museum (EDM) seeks funding of $63,025 through the NEH public humanities projects grant for historic places at the planning level. Having achieved major master plan goals in its 15-year history, the EDM is now focused on uniting its historic spaces, collections, and narratives to serve a growing contemporary audience. A new mission, completed infrastructure work, and past and impending restoration all highlight the stark need for an interpretive plan. The planning process will incorporate current scholarship to revise the EDM interpretation goals, themes, and methods. This grant will result in a written plan that considers multiple approaches and methods and takes an inclusive approach to audience engagement.

Planning a new exhibition and three new tours exploring the lasting impact of the Declaration of Independence and its founding principles of freedom and equality.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF), which owns and operates Monticello, Jefferson’s plantation home and UNESCO World Heritage Site, seeks a $75,000 Historic Places Planning Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support the development of a new, innovative interpretative plan for the visitor experience at Monticello - centered on the themes of freedom and equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence - to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

Development of five walking path tours and an educational visitor center to interpret the historical relationship between people and the environment in Vermont.

The Retreat Farm, in Brattleboro, Vermont, is developing a new outdoor museum employing a humanities approach to connect, teach and enrich public understanding of Vermont’s iconic landscape as a microcosm of our human place on the earth. Five thematic walking paths will tell stories of landscape change on this ground over time, while a culminating landscape learning center extracts the lessons of environmental degradation and redemption. This historic and strategic site is exceptionally rich in stories of indigenous peoples, international warfare, New England settlement, natural healing, and agricultural history. Our plan is to use the power of the humanities to instill a deeper understanding of the worlds we build around us.

Planning for a historical interpretation of the home of civil rights activist Golden Frinks (1920–2004) in Edenton, North Carolina.

The Edenton State Historic Site, part of the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, seeks a $74,415.00 Public Humanities planning grant to develop a thorough approach for a successful interpretive project that discusses the Civil Rights Movement at the home of activist Golden Frinks (1920-2004) in Edenton, North Carolina. The resulting exhibition plan will have multiple layers of diverse audiences, careful and respectful attention to detail, and using a variety of exhibition formats blended with a traditional furnishing plan featuring artifacts, images, and documents from Frinks’ life and work. We are planning to host several community listening sessions to seek input and information from veterans of the Civil Rights Movement as well as the resident community to create a plan to interpret the house in the most sensitive, forthright, and honest way possible. Project work will include consultation with an exhibit design firm and staff training.

A planning grant to reinterpret the colonial Old North Church in Boston and its congregation’s ties to slavery from the American Revolution to the Civil War.

Old North Church & Historic Site requests a Historic Places planning grant in the amount of $75,000 to support 1) a campus-wide interpretive plan that traces the theme of active citizenship from the church’s founding in 1723 to present day, including the seminal story of Paul Revere as well as other examples of civic engagement; 2) a second thematic component of the interpretive plan will include exploration of the paradoxical truth of Old North’s complicated history with slavery; and 3) as part of the plan, the design of an outdoor exhibit that weaves together these themes through a critical examination of Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride,” a poem and story that is familiar to many of our guests.

The creation of a ten-year interpretive plan for the Over-the-Rhine Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Over-the-Rhine Museum seeks $75,000 in Historic Places planning funds to conduct research and convene a panel of humanities experts to create an ambitious ten-year interpretive plan. We will bring ten scholars to Cincinnati for two planning workshops and support them as they research and write portions of the interpretive plan based on their expertise. The plan will help bring our vacant tenement building to life as a hub for urban history and civic engagement based on our mission. The Over-the-Rhine Museum is a six-year-old nonprofit dedicated to uncovering, preserving, and celebrating all the stories of our rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. We have recently purchased a nineteenth-century tenement building in Cincinnati’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood and plan to use tenement apartments to immerse visitors in specific moments in the history of the building and the neighborhood as a way to connect local and personal histories to the larger themes of American History.

Planning for a tour and orientation exhibit that incorporates new research and scholarship on Cherry Hill, a historic home in Albany, New York.

In 2020-2021, with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Historic Cherry Hill initiated an interpretive planning process that culminated in the Design Concept for a new visitor experience. The proposed project, We Carry It Within Us: Reinterpretation at Historic Cherry Hill, will build on this work—and on a body of scholarly and audience research performed over 2020-2021—to complete the final planning phases of Schematic Design and Design Development. The new tour and orientation exhibition will be dialogic, immersive, and inclusive, sharing the complex stories of the diverse members of the Cherry Hill household and exploring themes, such as race, privilege, wealth, inequality, and social justice, themes identified in focus groups to be important to our target audiences: heritage tourists, millennials and residents of our immediate community.