Planning of a traveling exhibition, public programs, and a catalog examining Japanese immigration and life in rural California and Hiroshima through the photographs of Wakaji Matsumoto (1889­–1965). 

The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) is seeking support for the design and development of a timely and historically important travelling exhibition Wakaji Matsumoto: An Artist in Two Worlds, Los Angeles and Hiroshima, 1917-1944. Taking place at JANM in 2020, this exhibition will present a selection of historically important photographs never before seen in the United States. Taken by photographer Wakaji Matsumoto, these panoramas and black and white photographs offer the public a rare glimpse into the lives and accomplishments of Japanese immigrants from Hiroshima, Japan to Los Angeles, California in the early 1900s. Together with accompanying interpretive narrative, this exhibition will help visitors better understand life in Hiroshima before WWII and Japanese immigration in the Los Angeles area prior to extensive urbanization.

Planning meetings, curatorial travel and research, and audience evaluation for developing an exhibition on the reflection of the supernatural in American art over the decades.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) seeks funding to support planning efforts to organize and present the touring exhibition “Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art,” the first museum exhibition and its related publication to explore the persistent presence of the supernatural and paranormal in American art. Curated by Robert Cozzolino, Ph.D., Patrick and Aimee Butler Curator of Paintings at Mia, this is an ambitious interdisciplinary project in which the humanities inform the selection of art and the presentation of the subject matter. American art history has barely scratched the surface of this topic, and Mia aspires for this to become the new standard study in the field. Through approximately 160 objects, the exhibition examine this topic broadly and deeply, relying on scholarship in parallel disciplines of anthropology, critical theory, film studies, history, literature, music, philosophy, religion, and sociology.

Planning an exhibition that would relate the history of Brooklyn and Brooklynites over time through a climbing structure.

Brooklyn Children’s Museum (BCM) requests a $66,150 Exhibitions Planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the BK History Climber, a permanent exhibition developed in partnership with Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) that will be sited on the second floor of BCM’s iconic Crown Heights, Brooklyn building. A multi-level climbing and physical play structure, the BK History Climber unites the kinetic energy of a jungle gym with the intellectual core of a history exhibition. Built using stacked shipping containers, water towers, or another material that allows for creation of discrete rooms, the Climber will consist of eight chambers furnished with set pieces; backdrops; objects; primary sources such as journals, memoirs and interviews; and, oral histories from the BCM and BHS collections. Each of the eight containers will offer the self-contained story of an historic Brooklyn family or families.

Planning for a traveling exhibition exploring the art of Ethiopia from antiquity to the present.

Ethiopia at the Crossroads is a project to support the planning of a landmark international loan exhibition of Ethiopian art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. This traveling exhibition will celebrate the artistic traditions of Ethiopia from antiquity to the present.

Planning for a traveling exhibition to examine the role of religion in nineteenth-century westward expansion.

The New-York Historical Society respectfully requests a Public Humanities Projects planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a major traveling exhibition and educational initiative titled Religion and the American West. Scheduled to be on view in New York in fall 2021, the project will encompass planning and research for a major history exhibition, a suite of public programs, and educational programming for students and teachers.

Development of a temporary exhibition, associated satellite exhibitions, and a series of public programs exploring the cultural significance of the Acadiana tradition of brown cotton textile production.

The Hilliard Museum will present an exhibition on Acadian brown cotton utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the historical significance and cultural impact of the 250+-year-old Acadian brown cotton textile tradition, unique to the southwestern region of Louisiana known as Acadiana. The Hilliard will employ interpretive text, soundscapes, video, photography, archival documentation and a wide variety of textiles to highlight the exhibition’s primary themes of how traditions persist and are transmitted, as well as geography’s influence on culture. The exhibition will also produce new research on community mapping, genealogy, and the tradition’s origins in early modern France. This is a community-focused project; more than a dozen satellite venues in rural areas around Acadiana will concurrently mount small, pop-up style exhibitions of brown cotton textiles and tools from their permanent collections.

Planning for the reinterpretation of an encyclopedic glass exhibition. 

The Corning Museum of Glass – the world’s preeminent institution devoted to one material: glass -- is embarking on a journey of organizational self-discovery. Re-imaging 35 Centuries of Glass is undertaking not just a re-fresh and re-arrangement of our permanent collection galleries, but rather a Museum-wide strategic initiative aimed at examining and presenting our collections in entirely new ways. Our intent is to probe other ways of knowing through interdisciplinary investigation, and other ways of representing by engaging and revealing the stories of humanity across time and the world. We aim to explore the social dynamics of glass – what’s included and what’s not – in order to reveal to our audiences the diversity of peoples who created, used, and/or exploited glass in their times and places, and whose work continues to resonate and explain our world today.

Planning of a traveling exhibition on the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s collection of Hopi Katsina dolls. 

The Brooklyn Museum requests funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a 12-month planning grant as we develop "Katsinam: Spirits of the Hopi World" (working title), a large-scale exhibition and accompanying publication built around our extraordinary collection of Hopi katsina dolls, dating from the nineteenth century to the present. Beginning in fall 2022, the exhibition will travel to three venues for 12–16 weeks each, before its final presentation at the Brooklyn Museum (tentatively scheduled for winter/spring 2023), accompanied by a suite of public and educational programs for our general audiences of nearly 700,000 each year.

Planning of an exhibition that illustrates how mapping and the shared experience of travel has shaped the American identity.

The Newberry Library requests $39,950 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support planning of the exhibition, Crossings: Mapping, Migration, and Tourism in the United States. Using maps, guidebooks, and travel accounts, Crossings will present a historical and geographic panorama of Americans “on the road” and illustrate how mapping and the shared experience of travel on four enduring pathways, or “crossings,” has shaped their American identity. The exhibition will be on view at the library in Spring 2022. NEH funding will provide partial support for planning the exhibition, associated publications and web resources, public programs, and programs for K-12 educators and students. This planning grant will enable the curator to engage three consulting scholars and two educational consultants; finalize the exhibition checklist; draft the exhibition script; work with exhibition designers; and plan for producing a gallery guide, web resources, and curricular materials.

Planning for a 2,950 square-foot temporary exhibition, a catalog, and a website exploring the life and work of multidisciplinary artist Gordon Parks (1912–2006) and his relationship with his home state of Kansas.

The proposed exhibition and related digital archive examine two important moments when the artist Gordon Parks reconnected with his home state of Kansas and fashioned his artistic vision: a gift of photos to Kansas State University and the filming of his novel The Learning Tree.

Planning of a permanent, immersive exhibition on the history of Brooklyn, utilizing unused spaces in the museum’s historic building.

Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) seeks a $75,000 Public Humanities Projects Planning Grant to support concept design, formative evaluation, research, and scholarly honoraria for its newest public history project, A People’s History of Brooklyn. This new building-wide, multi-floor public history initiative will revolutionize the visitor experience within BHS’s historic headquarters in Brooklyn Heights, and for the first time in the building’s nearly 140-year history, fully activate the space that houses our world-renowned collections in service of BHS’s mission—to tell Brooklyn’s diverse history and utilize Brooklyn’s past to understand its present. Imagined as a constellation of interpretive experiences, project components will feature innovative permanent installations that incorporate BHS’s collections, including newly processed and conserved artifacts; immersive audio experiences; and an introductory film.

Planning a temporary exhibition on astronomical knowledge and practice of southwestern U.S. Native tribes.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) in Santa Fe, New Mexico requests a grant to support planning of a temporary exhibition, Celestial Bodies: Native Astronomy of the US Southwest. This exhibition is significant as it will highlight the intellectual sophistication and awareness that Native people in the Southwest have—and have had for millennia—for the sky and its celestial bodies and events. While centered on the Southwest’s distinctive expressions and cultural contexts, Celestial Bodies also will demonstrate the commonality of astronomical thinking worldwide, across time and cultures. The participation of a diverse array of humanities scholars and Native consultants ensures that the exhibition’s content, format, and interpretive approach will bring humanities ideas and insights to life for general audiences.

Planning for an exhibit centered on the life, work, and impact of American science fiction writer Octavia Butler.

THE EARTH(S)EED ARCHIVE is a planned exhibit at The New Children’s Museum (San Diego) for 2023. It will be the first child-focused exhibit on the life/work of American science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006). Butler was the first Black woman to win widespread recognition in the sci-fi genre and among the first artists of any genre to include climate research in her output. The exhibit proposes that we need diverse writers, poets and other artists who can consider current climate science and help us create stories of alternative futures where our country is more fair, just and hopeful. Butler biographer Dr. Ayana Jamieson and other scholars will help the Museum plan this exhibit as follows: research Butler via her literary archive; create a rough prototype of the exhibit; invite community engagement through a writing workshop that will consider current climate research and collectively envision our world 31 years into the future; and develop exhibit implementation plans.

Planning of an exhibition on the history and culture of hip-hop music and its relationship to the media.

The Paley Center for Media undertakes an exhibition that looks at the intersections of Hip-Hop and media: at how they interacted to fuel the explosive expansion of Hip-Hop culture over the decades, leading to seismic shifts in American culture. The exhibition will analyze Hip-Hop culture’s innovative uses of media formats such as television, radio, and social media platforms, as well as Hip-Hop’s role as a media platform in and of itself. As famously stated by artist Chuck D, “Rap music is the invisible TV station that Black people have never had.” Hip-Hop’s messages and contributions to society through the prism of media have not been fully analyzed or recognized by humanities scholars nor the American public. This project seeks to add to the body of critical work and acknowledgement of this movement, through a thoroughly engaging and accessible exhibition and accompanying resources.

Planning for a traveling exhibition, a catalog, and public programs exploring the contemporary arts of masquerade in four West African countries.

Masquerade has long stood as the iconic “African” performance genre, and yet the artists who create masquerades are often unacknowledged and under-represented in exhibitions and publications. New Masks Now: Artists Innovating Masquerade in Contemporary West Africa - a nationally and internationally traveling exhibition, scholarly publication, and a series of public engagement programs - will showcase the artworks and voices of individual creators and offer a fresh take on the vitality of masquerade arts. New Masks Now makes clear that creativity in African masking is fundamentally contemporary. The project challenges both the widely held ideas of the “anonymous African artist” and assumptions that masquerade is an unchanging, static artform solely rooted to the distant past. This project is rooted in humanist ideas, questions, ethical methods, and a concerted effort to foster meaningful engagements with public audiences and communities.

Development of a temporary and traveling exhibition on the history and culture of tribes of the Bears Ears region in southeaster Utah.

Bears Ears: Living Land is produced by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. Co-curated by representatives of the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah Ouray, and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, this will be the first exhibition to present the significance of the Bears Ears region—located in southeastern Utah—from the perspective of these Tribes. Bears Ears will show how Indigenous histories are created through the relationships between objects, people, and land, and provide visitors with a view of the region’s cultural richness. Travelling versions of the exhibition unique to each participating Tribe will be displayed in their cultural centers. Grant funds will support compensation for collaborators; development costs for travelling exhibitions; out-of-state research; refinement of the exhibition structure; and preliminary design work.

Planning for the reinterpretation of the Brooklyn Museum’s permanent American art galleries.

The Brooklyn Museum will undertake the planning phase of a major, multiyear permanent reinstallation of our holdings in American art, which we expect to reopen in 2024. This full-scale reinstallation, guided by community input, will elevate and amplify the voices of those traditionally underrepresented in major museum installations.

Planning of a 3,000-square-foot exhibition on the history of the Jewish calendar.

The calendar plays a key role in shaping society, regulating religious practice and economic life, structuring social and professional interaction, and defining communal and personal identity. Though the calendar is central to Jewish culture, it has never been the subject of an exhibition. Shaping Time will present the Jewish calendar as a dynamic system that has evolved over time in response to scientific developments, internal and external disputes, and the vicissitudes of Jewish history. The calendar has played a crucial role in the interactions between various Jewish communities and the surrounding dominant cultures, representing points of influence, exchange, and conflict. The exhibition will explore calendars as agents of societal cohesion and personal identity, and as instigators of debate and platforms for polemic. It will display the calendar as a locus of Jewish creativity and imagination and bring to life the calendars vital role in shaping human experience.

Planning for an exhibition on Japanese Americans’ car culture throughout the twentieth century in California.

The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) is seeking support for the design and development for “Cruising J-Town: Nikkei Car Culture in Southern California”, an exhibition that will explore Nikkei (Japanese emigrants and their descendants who have created communities throughout the world) car culture from the early 1900s, before and after World War II, to the present. The exhibition will examine how Japanese Americans have played a vital role within this culture since the early 20th century. As racers, designers, customizers, and general enthusiasts, Nikkei youth have long embraced the automobile to express creativity, build community and lend their own innovations to the broader culture.

A multiformat exhibition that explores the twentieth-century history of the African American community in Rochester, New York.

An intergenerational partnership of African American youth and elders, along with humanities scholars and preservationists in Greater Rochester, NY, will plan a unique, multi-format exhibition that engages our community in exploring the arts, culture, and policies that shaped our metropolitan region.

Planning of a traveling exhibition that reckons with visual and historical legacies of the American West by placing art by Native American and non-Native American artists in conversation.

The large-scale traveling exhibition, Visual Legacies and the American West: Resilience and Reckoning will feature approximately 100 artworks made by Native American artists of the Plains and Southwest as well as European-American artists from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This exhibition resituates the visual legacies of the American West by prioritizing Native American self-representation and elevating overlooked art by Native American artists, while, at the same time reckoning with the visual legacies of European-American artworks. This is the first major art exhibition to focus deeply on the coexistence of art by diverse Native American peoples and non-Native-American artists. The exhibition themes and checklist will be shaped through a collaborative and interdisciplinary curatorial process. Visual Legacies and the American West seeks a “More Perfect Union” between Native and non-Native art in American art, history, and culture writ large.

Planning for a synchronous multisite exhibition in 2027 to observe the 650th anniversary of the earliest texts printed by movable metal type in Western Europe and East Asia.

From Jikji to Gutenberg will accurately reflect the development of printing from movable type, first in East Asia and then, independently, in Western Europe. The associated international exhibition will address one of humanity’s greatest achievements in 43 synchronized free or very affordable venues. The exhibit’s centerpiece will be each research library’s Gutenberg Bible paired with a pre-Gutenberg Korean printed book (loaned Korean incunabula will be provided, as necessary). A team of 30 scholars, technical researchers and language specialists have collaborated to bring the general public a comprehensive assessment of early Korean printed books juxtaposed with European incunabula. The two-month show opens on the 650th anniversary of the printing of Jikji, the oldest surviving book printed from metal type. The Library of Congress has agreed to participate in the exhibit as it embraces an inclusive narrative of global proportions.

Planning for a traveling exhibition exploring the historical role of Black mariners along the Pacific coast and islands from the sixteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. 

The Maritime Museum of San Diego, in partnership with Dr. Caroline Collins, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Diego, and a variety of relevant scholars, is requesting funds to engage in planning for the public humanities project Black Mariners of the Black Pacific. This new project examines 16th century to mid-20th century maritime practices of people of African descent including whalers, commercial mariners, fisherfolk, explorers, soldiers, and sailors who traveled to and settled along the Pacific Coast of what is now the United States. Black Mariners of the Black Pacific will employ formats including a traveling exhibit, small vessel build, and short documentary film in the service of investigating a less explored oceanography -- the Pacific Ocean -- to extend our understanding of the origins of Black people in America, and the essential nature of the roles they played in the maritime enterprise and American genesis.