A project to support accessibility upgrades and theater renovations to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and studio from 1937 until his death in 1959.  The project would also support the design of comprehensive engineering plans for the replacement of the site’s failing water and sewage infrastructure.

Taliesin West is internationally recognized as one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s master works. The arts, including performing arts, were an important part of life for everyone at Taliesin West.  Special venues designed by Wright for live music and dance performances are used today for educational presentations and are featured as part of the public tour program for 110,000 guests each year.   Unfortunately, use of the theaters as performance venues is limited due to accessibility and infrastructure challenges. One major goal of this project is to support accessibility upgrades with an accessibility assessment and construction of two accessible restrooms. The second project component is to upgrade theater systems. The third is to create comprehensive engineering plans for the replacement of our 75-year-old water and sewer infrastructure, which is well beyond the end of its service life and in varying states of failure. Addressing these issues will allow us to better serve the community.

The construction of a new public library branch to expand library service and deliver more humanities programming to the Barboursville, West Virginia, community.

The project will replace the Barboursville (WV) branch library of the Cabell County Public Library system with a new 14,000 square-foot facility. The current building is deteriorating and molding via water damage from cracked underground drainage pipes and water runoff from uphill parking lots. Usage statistics show that in 2017 Barboursville Branch generated 32% of the materials circulation of the seven library branches combined, and it is regularly visited by twenty-five elementary school classes. Barboursville computer usage, wireless Internet use, program attendance, notary transactions, and number of people entering the facility also significantly exceeds the other branches. The new larger building (on a parcel of land donated by the city) will not only house a larger materials collection, but will also support more extensive humanities programming, as it will have additional meeting rooms, one with an external entrance, providing after-hours access to the building.

Construction of a new Juneau Arts and Culture Center in downtown Juneau, Alaska.

The New Juneau Arts and Culture Center: Strengthening the Humanities in Alaska Project will result in a state of the art facility in Alaska’s Capital City, designed and equipped to significantly expand humanities and arts programming, and, through its partners, create access for humanities programs in communities across Alaska. The Juneau Arts and Humanities Council launched the design and construction planning in 2013, and through extensive community engagement and volunteer board activities, has raised 16% of the $26 million construction budget. Juneau is the only state capital in America without a dedicated arts and culture center, purposed to present and preserve the cultures, arts, history and community life of local citizens. This project will correct that situation and expand humanities content and knowledge exponentially. The Project Director is Nancy Decherney, Executive Director of the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.

Design and construction of a new Jewish museum in Washington, D.C., including relocation and renovation of a historic 1876 synagogue.

The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington (JHSGW) requests a Challenge Grant to  support the design and construction of a new museum that explores the past, present, and future of Jewish Washington and its interconnectedness with other DC communities. Jewish and non-Jewish families, school groups, and adults will learn how DC’s Jewish community has shaped and been shaped by its location in the nation’s capital. A core exhibition will focus on local spaces related to immigration, cultural identity, and social activism. Changing exhibitions will explore additional themes and objects, and a community lab will stimulate discussion and debate. The museum will make available its rich collections, the basis for all exhibitions and programming. It will impact visitors by deepening their understanding of American history and other humanities issues, and empowering them to make connections to their own lives. A capital campaign will raise the matching funds for the project.

The renovation of the historic 1928 main building of the Philadelphia Museum of Art leading to increase gallery space to display its permanent collection of early American Art, which encompasses nearly 12,000 objects ranging in date from the colonial period through the mid-1800s.

The proposed Challenge Grant will support the first expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s American art galleries since 1977. Ten new galleries will open in fall 2020, increasing the exhibition space for this nationally significant collection by 61%, by renovating 11,500 square feet within the main building. The new galleries will feature American art from the colonial period to the mid-1800s. The project will establish the capacity for the Museum to fully activate this collection for humanities learning by accommodating more than 200 objects with richer interpretation. It will help the Museum achieve a milestone in its Facilities Master Plan and complete the first major renovation of its main building since it opened in 1928. Proposed support represents the first federal investment in a $525 million comprehensive campaign designed to strengthen the institution. It will benefit 800,000 to one million visitors each year, from every state in the nation, for decades to come.

Renovation of a university property to house the museum’s collections as well as a research and study center.

The Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara (AD&AM) has built an international reputation through its Architecture and Design Collection. Encompassing the history of Southern California architecture, landscape design, and urbanism from the late 19th to the early 21st century, this still growing collection is the essential archival resource for the study of Southern California through the prism of the built environment. The AD&AM requests $326,593 as part of a $1,306,371 NEH Challenge grant to enhance the Museum’s infrastructure for collection preservation, access and growth by supporting the renovation of a new Collection Preservation and Study Center. The Center is needed to preserve and enable growth of the collection, and to foster intensive and innovative use of the collection by students and scholars through on-site visits and online access. Funds will be raised from foundations, individual and corporate donors.

Fabrication and Installation of Exhibition Infrastructure in the New Burke Museum.  The grant would support casework, graphic panels, physical interactives, models, dioramas, lighting, and electrical elements.

The Burke is nearing completion of a new $104-million facility opening in 2019. At 113,000 square feet the new building is 66% larger with space for collections storage, public programs, and research. We are requesting a $500,000 Challenge Grant to complete one of the last remaining unfunded components of the project: the fabrication and installation of exhibition infrastructure. The grant will help cover casework, graphic panels, physical interactives, models, dioramas, lighting, and electrical. The three long-term humanities exhibits to be supported by the grant are being developed with source communities; all will emphasize the importance of museum collections as bearers of cultural knowledge. Complementing the museum’s architectural design—in which visible collections storage and working labs are adjacent to galleries—the exhibitions will challenge expectations and expand visitors’ understanding of the many ways in which cultural collections are important today.

The renovation of Arizona Western College’s library to include a digital humanities center that supports the college as well as three other public universities.

PROJECT IMPACT will build infrastructure and increase capacity-building at the sole academic library in Southwest Arizona that serves scholars at Arizona Western College and Arizona’s 3 public university.  NEH Challenge Grant funding will establish a Digital Humanities Center that will support intellectually transformative thoughts and behaviors that will continue to grow over time. The development of the Conservation Lab will allow scholars to practice the craft of arts preservation and cataloging while preserving local art collections.  The establishment of a Digital Humanities Center will provide a large population of low-income, first-generation, Hispanic scholars access to multimedia, multidisciplinary learning space dedicated to preserving the region’s unique intellectual content of materials, disseminating local knowledge to a wider audience, and acting as a transformational tool to produce new ways of interacting, expressing, and creating knowledge.

Renovations to the library’s special collections division to update environmental and structural conditions for optimal preservation, to create a space for improved scholarly and public access to the materials, and to implement informal educational programming designed to engage students with the collections.

An Infrastructure and Capacity Building grant of $450,000 would support critical capital improvements to Providence Public Library’s (PPL) Special Collections Department, including a holistic facilities renovation that will result in our Special Collections being housed in a more user friendly, inviting, easily monitored, and climate controlled space. An NEH grant will help ensure that these invaluable humanities resources are properly preserved and openly accessible to the public and researchers for decades to come. PPL’s Special Collections department, located in our 1953 library building at 150 Empire St. in Providence, RI, houses the most unique and valuable items in the library, which provide unparalleled insight into a variety of humanities subjects of national historical and cultural significance and are valued in the tens of millions of dollars. An NEH grant would enable PPL to address pressing preservation needs and ensure continued access.

Expansion of digital scholarship infrastructure and technical capacity through the creation of four new staff positions to undertake technical development, documentation, and integration using five pilot projects.

The Digital Scholarship Group at the Northeastern University Library is now completing a five-year startup phase that powerfully reflects the institution’s commitment to digital scholarship, experiential education, and organizational innovation. DSG’s applied research agenda focuses on the technologies, standards, and expertise needed to realize, publish, and curate these new forms of scholarship. The group’s first five years of operation have focused on developing an initial core infrastructure, building staff capacity, establishing policies and practices, and creating a strategic plan for DSG’s role in the library and at the university that reflects our commitment to sustainable, scalable ways to innovate in digital scholarship. We now seek funding to expand and solidify the organization’s infrastructure of staff and technical capacity to fully meet the institution’s digital scholarship needs.

The development of a digital asset management system, the improvement of a public access website, and the digital conversion of 83,000 audiovisual recordings in the WGBH Media Library and Archives.

WGBH, a leading producer of humanities programming for public media, seeks to build digital capacity and infrastructure in its Media Library and Archives (MLA) so that archived assets can be preserved and made more accessible and useful to scholars, educators, media producers, and the public. As a result of these activities, we anticipate increased use of MLA assets to create and enrich new humanities publications and media productions.

The renovation of climate control systems in a history museum along with the restoration of several associated historic structures, which together document the history of the Mississippi River and of the people who lived on its banks.

Dubuque County Historical Society's Preservation & Restoration through Campus Improvements project will focus on preserving and maintaining our historical structures and intellectual property, expanding the river story that relates directly to history and innovation, and reinvigorating our interpretation model to provide the 21st century learner with real-world, vital, interdisciplinary, and design-based learning that relates directly to the humanities.

A systematic review of the Brooklyn Museum’s onsite and offsite storage in order to facilitate collection sharing, expand humanistic knowledge, improve the preservation and visibility of holdings, and accommodate a new collection gallery and additional onsite storage.

The Brooklyn Museum respectfully requests funding in the amount of $750,000 to support our initiative: Mobilizing Collections through Storage Assessment. This institutional priority will facilitate collection sharing, expand humanistic knowledge, improve the preservation and visibility of our holdings, and open much needed square footage to accommodate a new collection gallery and additional onsite storage space. Carried out over a period of 68 months, this project aligns closely with the Museum’s mission, strategic plan and collection management policy, all of which have been adopted in the past year.

The renovation of an existing space within the college’s Fintel Library to create a flexible, multimedia classroom and lecture venue for the humanities, with technology upgrades that will align with 21^st-century teaching and learning methods.

Roanoke College’s Fintel Library proposes to renovate its ground floor classroom and technology infrastructure to better support the pedagogies and learning styles of humanities faculty and students. The classroom will evolve into a space that enriches collaboration and civil discourse and accommodates a variety of teaching pedagogies and learning and study styles critical for advancing a liberal education and humanistic principles. Renovation will facilitate flexible arrangement to support individual learning, small group activities, and lecture-style seminars, classes, or film screenings. Technology upgrades--state-of-the art multi-media displays, lighting, and controls--will improve multi-media presentations, use of personal devices, and projection and enhance creation, analysis and presentation of digital humanities projects. Funding will help transform the classroom into a center of engagement supportive of the 21st century liberal education that Roanoke College offers.

The architectural design phase of CasaCuba, a 50,000-square foot humanities center that would host lectures, academic conferences, community events, and digital and physical exhibits intended to further the study and public understanding of Cuban and Cuban American heritage.

CasaCuba, an initiative of Florida International University, requests $750,000 to secure one-to-one matching funds. This funding will allow CasaCuba to cover the costs of the design phase towards construction of a premier center that will foster global understanding and collaboration on Cuban and Cuban American affairs and culture. This support will broadly impact our ability to offer our students, faculty and the community, in South Florida and the nation at large, the academic, cultural and research resources to engage deeply with the rich Cuban heritage.

A project to expand research and educational facilities in a new campus that would enhance accessibility to the Museum’s art and archival collections, which hold the work of American artists, Australian aboriginal painters, landscape photographers, eco-artists, and which total approximately 3,000 fine art objects, 7,500 library books, and 1,000,000 archival items.

Building upon an existing global focus on art and environment, the Nevada Museum of Art is working with architect Rem Koolhaas’s Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) to expand its research and education facilities to better serve our communities and to lead our region into a future driven by creative innovation. The Museum seeks to establish a new campus known as the Atlas, a radically accessible education and research hub where art catalyzes interdisciplinary inquiry and curiosity about our changing world. The Atlas will use the Museum’s unique art, archives, and library collections to enable visitors to experience those collections rhizomatically, i.e., driven by their own interests, impulses, and ideas. Boundaries between galleries, learning laboratories, storage areas, social spaces, and the outdoors will be porous. This challenge grant will support Phase Two of the project’s conception and design, the goal of which is a unified programmatic and architectural design.

Facility renovations and improvements to the production and broadcast technologies used by Nevada Public Radio.

Nevada Public Radio (NVPR) is requesting a $500,000 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant towards a critical $2M technical upgrade of the studio facilities and broadcast infrastructure that serves the state of Nevada. This once-in-20-year upgrade will secure the delivery of the humanities “at scale” with broadcast, online and published content that empowers people to respond to their world and engage with their community. NVPR has a 38-year history of combining renowned NPR programming with a deep commitment to creating original content. More than $500,000 is invested annually in content production that reflects the humanities in partnership with scholars. Additional partnerships reflect marketing and community engagement activities that amplify the work of scholars and humanities related institutions across the state of Nevada. Fundraising to match an NEH Challenge Grant is already under way through the “Give Voice” Major Gift Initiative.

The construction of a new education center to offer enhanced humanities programming, particularly for school-age audiences, at the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Maine.

This project seeks a $95,000 challenge grant to complete capital fundraising for a new education center to be built within the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Maine. The center will transform the museum's already well-regarded educational work by giving it important new capacities and versatility. The center will provide essential specially-designed space and technologies to allow museum educators to better deliver humanities-based, interactive 21st century learning opportunities to some 50,000 visitors annually.

Renovation of a historic building to create an Arts and Humanities Center. The center would expand access to resources for both on- and off-campus communities by co-locating faculty and offices for humanities initiatives and constructing a seminar room, lecture hall, and digital exhibit space.

Indiana University requests funding to create an Arts and Humanities Center at the main entrance of its campus. Located in historic Maxwell Hall, near the edge of downtown Bloomington, the center will provide students, scholars, and community members with access to the campus’s rich array of arts and humanities collections, archives, and activities. It will house the offices of the Arts and Humanities Council, the College Arts and Humanities Institute, and the Arts and Humanities Student Guild as well as a seminar room, a multi-use lecture hall, and exhibition resources for campus collections and archives. Co-locating key humanities offices will serve to organize and showcase the campus’s investments in humanities-based initiatives and collections. Funding to rehabilitatethe site and construct the research center will advance the campus as a cultural hub for the region and a world-class arts and humanities research institution.

Construction of a new library unit, as part of a larger renovation of the Anthology Film Archives (AFA), to improve preservation and provide access to rare printed materials and unique archival collections documenting the history of American and international experimental cinema.

Anthology Film Archives (AFA) is requesting a $750,000 NEH Challenge Grant to support the construction of a new, publicly accessible library. The library is the centerpiece of a major capital project to expand and renovate AFA’s facilities—for 30 years housed in Manhattan’s 1919 former Second Avenue Courthouse building—which will nearly double AFA’s overall space from 20,000 to 35,000 square feet. The total project budget is $15.3 million with $10.5M raised to date. AFA has received cash donations and pledges from foundations and individuals totaling $5.5M; the City of New York has committed $4.5M; and an additional $4.8M remains to be raised, $3.75M of which will be dedicated to the library. Major outcomes for the project will be to improve conditions for the preservation, study, and exhibition of artist-made film and media, enabling AFA to serve significantly more visitors and ensure its invaluable collections are preserved at the highest standards and more broadly accessible to all.

The purchase and installation of modular glass object casework to display approximately 1,000 artifacts and works of art in newly re-conceived and installed Native American galleries.

The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art requests a $300,000 direct challenge grant to be matched by $900,000 to support the complete reinstallation of the Native American galleries and the Great Lakes Initiative. This three year challenge grant will support essential components of the Eiteljorg’s new approach to voice, exhibitions and engagement, which lays the groundwork for long-term relationship and audience development. The 11,000 square foot gallery space will be dynamic, flexible, changing, interactive and lively spaces featuring state-of-the-art design combining customary and contemporary art, graphics, video, state-of-the-art casework, interactives, interpretive media and innovative technologies. Great Lakes tribal member partners are essential to this new direction.

Renovations that would improve environmental conditions and security systems at the center’s five museums, including roof repairs at two of the facilities.

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, is applying to the NEH Division of Preservation and Access for an Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant to install new security systems; replace an aging steam boiler with atomizer humidifiers, install a new chiller and cooling tower; retrofit air handlers in exhibition and storage areas; install building management systems to ensure environmental conditions that are the best for the collections are maintained; and replace aging roof systems to ensure collections protection. Some of this work will be in structures that are more than 50 years old. The five-year cost of the highest-priority projects is $2,047,000. With this application, we are asking for $500,000 to be used over the five years. Trustees and staff are committed to raising the $1.5 million match as well as the additional funds needed to complete the projects outlined.

Development of detailed design documents for renovating the Tudor Place Garage and Mower House to serve as collections storage, staff workspace, an education discovery center, and mechanical support for the main house.

This project entails the final two phases of design for the renovation of the Garage and Mower House and mechanical upgrades to the Main House. Following the completion of schematic design, these final two phases will ultimately produce documentation for the construction and renovation work. The project will require lead consultant, Hartman-Cox Architects, to work collaboratively with mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, structural, civil, and landscape consultants as well as Tudor Place staff members. The Garage addition will house a collections and archive storage facility, additional workspace for gardens staff, a greenhouse, the Education Discovery Center, rotating exhibition space, and a mechanical plant that will serve both the Garage and the Main House. The heating and cooling system for both buildings will be powered by geothermal energy, an efficient and cost-effective system that will support Tudor Place’s sustainability efforts. A water mist fire suppression

Design, construction, and purchase of audiovisual equipment for an expansion to the Museum of the Coastal Bend, creating space for an additional permanent exhibit and increased programming capacity.

Victoria College will design, construct, and equip an addition to the Museum of the Coastal Bend. Audience engagement at the museum’s prior ranching exhibits, as well as the attendance at humanities programming that has outgrown the museum’s gallery space, support the need for an addition. The addition will house the museum’s expanded permanent exhibit content. Museum staff will collaborate with former curators and an external contractor to create Where Texas Ranching Began. The addition will also create larger, dedicated space for humanities programming. The space will be outfitted with additional seating and state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment for lectures and activities. The museum’s exhibits and programming serve a geographically isolated and economically disadvantaged population. By appealing to the region’s deep-rooted ranching families, the addition will generate increased public satisfaction and visitation, increasing the museum’s member and donor base.

Restoration of the copper roof and replacement of the existing rubber membrane within the roof and under the walkway of the loggia on the west façade of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, to preserve the historic 1905 building and protect the museum’s extensive collection of modern and contemporary art.

The 1905 building is the nerve center of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s extensive cultural and humanities events and programming. A white marble structure built of the same stone as the Washington Monument, the building is widely recognized as the crown jewel of the Albright-Knox campus and Buffalo’s finest example of classical architecture built with a civic purpose. With symptoms of the aging building in mind, the Board of Directors of the Albright-Knox launched the campus expansion project AK360 in late 2015. An essential element of this is a $155 million capital campaign, funds from which will be used to match the support of the NEH. The grant would be directed toward the most critical functional element of the 1905 building: the roof. We will replace the existing roof with a new, more robust system that will provide superior protection for the foreseeable future while maintaining the historical integrity of the structure.