Funded Projects Query Form
819 matches

Prototype development of a new digital tool that will allow users to identify and study objects and landscapes appearing in moving image scenes.

We seek Level I funding for planning and early prototype development of the Latent Archive tool, conceived as an immersive media platform for studying moving image archives. The project has been developed in collaboration with MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative (TSI) and MIT Virtual Experience Design Lab (VxD).

A planning project to adapt an existing museum space into an energy-efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective storage area for a 90,000-object collection documenting the history of York County, Pennsylvania.

The goal of the York County History Center’s A-Wing Collections Storage Project is to adapt an existing History Center exhibition space to create climate-controlled storage space for the History Center’s 90,000+ object collection which preserve and tell the rich history of York County and its inhabitants through time. This grant is for the planning phase of this project that would explore passive and mechanical means to adapt the space. It would fund the assistance of professional architects to create a building proposal for the space in preparation for seeking an implementation grant to carry out the renovation of the space.

A two-day workshop and support network to build capacity in digital mapping methods for scholars in Latinx Studies.

We request a Level 1 grant for a two-day workshop at UCLA on August 12-13, 2021. Latinx Studies is built on understanding how spatial struggles shape racial, ethnic, and national identity. As Latinx Studies scholars increasingly use digital mapping in their research and teaching, we will bring scholars, GIS experts, and public and academic research librarians together to: 1) provide technical training to help participants build skills and advance their individual projects; and 2) plan a support network to facilitate the creation of shared data repositories, partnerships with libraries, training and mentoring opportunities, and an online hub of best practices and teaching materials. The workshop will draw on UCLA’s extensive resources and expertise in GIS research. In line with the “A More Perfect Union” initiative, this project will advance digital mapping as a method of increasing understanding of the enduring presence of people of Latin American descent in the history of our nation.

The development and testing of virtual reality-based philosophical thought experiments for both classroom teaching and research.

Philosophers present hypothetical scenarios called “thought experiments” to analyze philosophical concepts. This project modifies, extends, and disseminates ongoing work to develop VR scenarios based on the popular “trolley problem” thought experiment, a hypothetical dilemma involving a choice between five deaths and one death. By presenting thought experiments in VR (instead of written presentations), we can address previous concerns that thought experiments are too abstract to be of much use in theorizing, research, and education, and that they do not accurately reflect widespread philosophical beliefs. The scenarios will be disseminated, along with a pilot study data set, via an online and modifiable repository for VR thought experiments. The project will conclude with a symposium to discuss challenges, opportunities, and recommendations for humanities-based research using VR and to promote the use of and ongoing additions to the repository.

A plan for metadata standards, accessibility, user needs, and long-term strategic planning and sustainability for Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center’s collections, as well as the pilot implementation of a digital collections management system and online collections portal with approximately 1,000 digital items.

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center requests $50,000 to develop a pilot project creating online access to a part of its permanent collection. This will be an invaluable resource for scholars studying Black Mountain College’s history and legacy as it includes the creative output of groundbreaking figures in American culture from 1933 to the present, across visual, performing, and literary arts. Outputs for this planning period will include development and population of the back-end and front-end of a new collections management system, and documents detailing strategies and standards for future implementation. An earlier related phase, funded by the Luce and Windgate Foundations, involved the digitization of BMCM+AC resources which will be used as pilot data and media for the online collections portal. The project will take place from June 2021-September 2022. Full implementation at a later date will entail digitizing and adding the rest of the collection.

A multi-institutional planning project to develop an online portal that would aggregate the personal papers of former members of the United States Congress.

The American Congress Digital Archives Portal Project proposes to digitize and aggregate congressional archives in an online portal that will expand access to collections and increase research value by providing context and linkages among them. Congressional archives are rich resources documenting the history of the legislative branch and illuminating multiple narratives about America’s social, cultural, and political development. The portal would provide scholars with significantly improved access to geographically dispersed collections and provide the general public and teachers access to civically important documents about Congress and public policy. With the expertise of congressional scholars, archivists, and technologists, this Foundations project will establish best practices for contributing materials and provide scope for a larger project by prioritizing materials to be digitized. A prototype digital portal will provide a model for future collaboration and digital practice.

The development of interdisciplinary courses and civic engagement activities focused on the history of the African American community of Quakertown.

Quakertown Stories is an interdisciplinary curricular project with three major goals: 1) To foster civic engagement by creating a series of courses that implement place-based research assignments focused on Quakertown, a displaced freedmen community in Denton, TX; 2) To facilitate dialogue between the university and Denton community about Quakertown and how it has shaped present day Denton through panel discussions and a student-led public Town Hall; 3) To build on previous programs to establish an ongoing working group to support faculty in designing courses that integrate place-based research and other experiential learning opportunities into their classes.

A ?planning project to assess collections storage buildings and develop strategies for a fire suppression system, as well as to improve environmental conditions for a collection of 100,000 objects, photographs, and manuscripts that document an original late-eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Shaker community.

Canterbury Shaker Village (CVS) will develop sustainable preservation strategies for our 100,000 item collection housed in seven historic buildings. An interdisciplinary team will conduct two studies in order to 1) Assess key collection storage buildings and 2) Determine the need and strategy to install fire suppression systems and improve environmental conditions within the collection storage areas. The external team will include a preservation architect, fire systems consultant, and conservator. CSV’s collections are of national significance as one of the largest and most comprehensive bodies of material remaining in an original Shaker community. Four of the collection storage buildings have no fire suppression systems. Additionally, environmental damage from water and humidity is an increasing concern in all buildings.

The creation of architectural, storage, and design plans to complete the second phase of a multiyear project to protect collections and the historic building where they are housed. The work that the Livingston County Historical Society proposes in this application is part of its long-term strategic plan to provide optimal conditions for collections and to act as a responsible steward for the 1838 Cobblestone Schoolhouse, where the Livingston County Historical Society is housed.

The proposed project will support Phase 2 of a multiyear project to protect our collections and the historic building in which they are housed and to improve our ability to serve our community. Under the proposed project, an interdisciplinary team that includes a historic preservation architect, conservator, and museum space planner will collaborate to reorganize existing curatorial and gallery spaces to be more efficient and secure and to plan a new, dedicated storage room that conforms to best museum practices. Sustainable preservation specialists and HVAC engineers will evaluate passive or low-energy options for environmental controls and lighting systems.

Convening a three-day meeting bringing together Chinese language scholars, instructors, and digital technologists to design a free online curriculum for teaching Chinese language in a cultural context. 

Our proposed curriculum intends to advance a pedagogical shift in language teaching by taking up opportunities afforded by Web 2.0 to explore ways to improve communicative competence and develop critical cultural awareness. Three characteristics are: creating an immersive learning environment by pulling in rich resources from the online world; engaging learners by utilizing online engagement tools/platforms and social media; developing critical cultural awareness by taking advantage of the immersion and engagement created. It will serve as a model for curriculum design not only for other less commonly taught languages, but also for language and culture teaching as a whole. A Level 1 grant will enable Allegheny College to convene a conference to collect comments and feedback on experiments and innovations made in classrooms and revise them accordingly. The project will culminate with a white paper and a website delineating if, why, and how the digital curriculum will achieve its goals.

The creation of an interactive online platform to present 3D models of Maya artworks that document the spread of cultural and scholarly knowledge across the region.

This project will develop a web-based platform that will interactively present and publicly curate two in situ artworks of global significance from Maya archaeological sites. The two significant finds are the San Bartolo murals and the Los Árboles temple friezes at Xultun, Guatemala. These artworks are tangible evidence of the hallmarks of Maya civilization that include the invention of writing, complex calendrical knowledge, and governance by divine kingship. However, located in extremely remote jungles and buried by the ancient Maya, these important artifacts of Indigenous Maya cultural heritage are nearly impossible to access and visitors to the sealed tunnels threaten their very preservation. Our innovative digital models will expand virtual tours beyond well-known, highly-traveled sites and bring spectacular buried Maya architectural masterpieces to scholars, students, and the public through an open access, bilingual 3D interface—usable in digital research, teaching, and learning.

The development and release of a beta-level app to improve accessibility of graphic and visual narratives for blind and low-visioned readers, together with a searchable database of encoded visual narratives that will enable analysis by humanities scholars and students.

The Graphic Narrative Accessibility App (GNAA) project will provide an equitable, robust reading experience to help all readers hear, interact and experience comics and graphic novels in a number of fully accessible ways. Drawing on psycholinguistic theory and utilizing haptic (vibratory) computer responses, the app will help blind and visually impaired readers understand page layout and other artistic and spatial design elements previously unavailable. As comics and graphic novels continue to gain in popularity in K-12 and college classrooms, schools must comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 by having an equitable, accessible version of each work taught. All users will enjoy the ability to have parts or whole sections read aloud at one touch, plus each work will come fully translated into several languages. Finally, this novel approach will also use TEI coding to help make comics and graphic novels searchable for research and archival purposes.

The design and testing of teaching modules built in virtual reality for an existing 3-D digital model of Kilcolman Castle, Ireland, home of English poet, Edmund Spencer.

This Level II "Prototype" grant will adapt into Virtual Reality a digital 3-D model of an Irish castle for teaching purposes. Kilcolman Castle, now in ruins, was the adopted home of the early modern English poet and administrator Edmond Spenser (1552-1559). Spencer's career and famous writings, which often focus in controversial ways on his life as a plantation settler in Ireland, make the castle a fascinating subject of study. This grant will focus on Spenser's castle and writings through innovative undergraduate and high school teaching modules in history, architecture, archaeology, Irish studies and English literature. These modules with VR applications will highlight the artistic accomplishments of Spenser as well as the cultural diversity of the castle and its surroundings. Spenser's activity in Ireland is a crucial element in our understanding of the historic impact of colonial imperialism. The project will educate and appeal to both students and the general public alike.

The development of computational methods to analyze formal details in paintings, focusing on cloud studies by John Constable and his emulators, documentary photographs, and fine art photographs.  

“Seeing Constable’s Clouds” proposes to use computer vision and machine learning to better understand the visual cues of 19th-century pictorial realism. Realist landscapes by British artist John Constable (1776-1837) are often split into two phases depending on whether they were made before or after an intense period spent observing and painting clouds in 1821-1822. Contemporaries disagreed about the effect this interlude had on the realism of his work, and art historians continue to debate how his empirical approach influenced his style and technique. The project team will use computer vision to seek formal details that art historians may have overlooked or been unable to discern. We will also use machine learning to discover whether there are formal features that contribute to the verisimilitude of three different types of pictorial realism: Constable’s paintings of clouds, fine art photographs of clouds, and research photographs of clouds made for scientific study.

The creation of a virtual reality experience of a 15th-century illuminated manuscript to allow users to engage with the content of the manuscript and also gain an appreciation for handling rare materials.

In this Level I proposal, we will build a virtual experience of a 15th century illuminated manuscript that is held in USC's Special Collections and place the model in a virtual version of a convent room similar to that in which it was originally used. This unique experience will allow participants to not only explore the manuscript by holding it rather than viewing it in a glass case, but also have the opportunity to learn about the consequences physical use of an object may have for its preservation. Additionally, the virtual version provides an opportunity for the participant to see the details and textures of the manuscript, the parchment, the binding, the ink, the gilding, and the painting at an extraordinary level of detail that cannot be achieved except in the virtual realm.

A planning project to improve climate control, security, and collections storage at Whitehorne House Museum, a Federal-period building on the National Register of Historical Places dedicated to the history and artistry of eighteenth-century Newport furniture. Pairing existing data regularly gathered through current systems and staff observations with an extensive onsite review from a team of expert consultants in a variety of fields, the applicant would develop a plan to recommend more efficient and sustainable preservation practices in order to balance the needs of the collection with more sustainable energy use.

Newport Restoration Foundation requests a $50,000 Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections planning grant to research and develop a plan that will serve as a road map to improve the climate control, security, and collections storage systems at its Whitehorne House Museum in Newport, Rhode Island. Working with an integrated team of outside consultants, we will create a planning document that will make suggestions about the best systems for addressing the museum’s current challenges in climate control, security, and collections storage in an historic building that faces its own preservation needs. The creation of this plan must also help us develop and articulate our preservation plan for the Samuel Whitehorne House itself, a Federal Period building on lower Thames Street that is, simultaneously, a significant historical artifact in its own right (listed on the National Register of Historical Places), and houses our museum and its historically significant collection.

A planning project to study HVAC system optimization for improved climate control in the Cultural Education Center building, which holds the collections of the state museum, library, and archives. Highlights include records of the colonial and state government of New York from 1630 to the present, in both the Dutch and English languages, art collections, significant Shaker collections, and eighteenth-century furniture. The Center also holds contemporary collections, including extensive suffrage materials, as well as the largest collection of artifacts pertaining to September 11, 2001.

The NYS Education Dept. Office of Cultural Education seeks a grant for HVAC optimization planning in the Cultural Center, Albany. Our 2019 on-site environmental assessment identified critical needs, including optimization of selected air handlers serving our most significant and at-risk collections. If funded, we will hire Jeremy Linden of LPS to plan optimization of air handlers serving the entire 3rd floor and the 7th-floor vault in our 11-story, 1.5 million SF building. These areas house museum collections and the most significant treasures of the Library and Archives. The LPS optimization process consists of five steps--documentation, data gathering, data analysis, experimentation and implementation, and assessment and maintenance--designed to gain a holistic understanding of the building operation, which informs strategies for improvement. Linden will work with representatives of administration, collections, and facilities from both NYSED and the Office of General Services.

The development of a comprehensive preventive conservation and disaster response plan to protect the museum’s collections, which document the county’s social, political, and economic development from the 1850s to the 1970s, as well as the region’s archaeological past and its contemporary arts and culture.

This project will result in a Disaster Response Plan that includes a review schedule and can be updated on a regular basis. The assessment should also provide an analysis of vulnerabilities to the collection and a recommendation of practical measures to address those risks. Staff will work collaboratively with the consultant to identify risks, create a formal plan, and locate potential training opportunities.

A planning project to develop recommendations for improving the storage environment at the Amistad Research Center (ARC), an independent archives and manuscripts repository located at Tulane University with extensive holdings on the history of African Americans from the 1780s to the present.

The Amistad Research Center (ARC) seeks to develop a master preservation and conservation plan for infrastructure and systems associated with collection storage at its main facility of Tilton Memorial Hall on the campus of its partner organization, Tulane University. This project will entail collaboration between Center staff and board with conservation experts and Tulane University planning and facilities personnel to document and prioritize conservation and preservation needs to 1) create a strategic plan outlining next steps for a comprehensive implementation plan based on best practices, and 2) develop a projected budget and identify funding sources to address action steps within the strategic plan. The project is guided by ARC’s Collection Development and Management Policies which outline ARC’s primary responsibility to provide a safe and secure environment for all collections and works in its custody.

Two one-week workshops for 72 K-12 educators on the interaction between Native Americans and European settlers in Santa Fe.

The University of New Mexico is seeking a grant award to provide teacher workshops during the summer of 2021. Santa Fe, a city boasting a 400+ year history as the recognized capital will be the site of this workshop. The extensive history of the continuously occupied historic sites offers a rich opportunity for teachers from around the U.S. to study the history and culture of the area by investigating the historic sites of Santa Fe and area Pueblos. The workshops will be structured around the concept of homelands and include the study of historic sites, artifacts and stories in Santa Fe, NM and surrounding communities. The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro and the Palace of the Governors will be interpreted, studied and contrasted with the Pueblo history of the region, including Taos Pueblo, to understand the complexity of historical homelands. Structures, museums, centers and libraries in Santa Fe housing artifact and document collections will be utilized to foster deeper understandings.

Two one-week workshops for 72 school teachers on the history of reform movements in Lowell, MA.

The Tsongas Industrial History Center, a partnership of UMass Lowell's College of Education and Lowell National Historical Park, proposes to engage educators in investigating Lowell’s textile industry as a case study of early 19th-century industrialization and reform. We use the resources of the Park and other cultural/historical sites to examine changes in work, society, and culture between 1820 and 1860, changes that led Lowellians, imbued with the ideals of the natural rights tradition, to engage in labor reform, women’s rights, and antislavery movements. We also look at nativism in this time period as a reactionary reform movement. An industrial city that formed the template for later industrial cities in the U.S., Lowell provides an ideal setting for historical inquiry. Through lectures, discussion, hands-on and field investigations, drama, and close study of primary, secondary, and literary sources, educators gain both useful content knowledge and new pedagogical approaches.

Two one-week workshops for 72 school teachers exploring the history of the slave ship Clotilda and the Africatown community in Mobile, Alabama, from the Civil War to today.

Spring Hill College (SHC) seeks funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for “The Past is Present: From Africa to Africatown,” a new five-day Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop to immerse K-12 educators of all grades in the history of the slave ship Clotilda and the post-Civil War community of Mobile, Alabama’s Africatown.

A one-week institute for 35 K-12 teachers on the First Amendment to be held at the National Constitution Center.

One week intensive institute for k-12 teachers on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment, focusing on the delicate balance between the rights of individuals and the need to govern society and keep it safe. The institute will begin with an historical review and a conceptual discussion of the founding of the United States with an emphasis on important founding documents. The Institute will then move to a study of the issues raised by the incorporation of the First Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause. And finally, it will examine specific issues that emerge out of the First Amendment as seen in major Supreme Court Decisions. The institute will not only explore substantive matters, but also promote the development of critical thinking and the disposition to question. Participants will then discuss how to apply the strong content in their own classrooms.

A two-week institute for 25 6-12 educators to study the history and literature of the borderlands.

The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and in collaboration with the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies (CIBS) and the Institute of Oral History (IOH), non-profit research and education centers at UTEP, propose a Summer Institute for School Teachers from July 18th to August 1st, 2021. Building on the successful participation of 25 Summer Scholars in the 2017 and 2019 Summer Institute for School Teachers titled Tales from the Chihuahuan Desert: Borderlands Narratives about Identity and Binationalism, the proposed Level II 2021 Summer Institute will provide 25 secondary school teachers (NEH Summer Scholars) in grades 6–12 with two weeks of intense, guided exploration of borderlands narratives from the Chihuahuan Desert—a culturally and politically significant region for instructional consideration and critical research encompassing 139,000 square miles across several Mexican states and parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Development of an online Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool and library for conservation and preservation professionals. When completed, this tool and library would help cultural heritage institutions evaluate the environmental and human health impacts of collection management activities, including conservation treatment, storage, loans, and exhibitions.

The Foundation for Advancement in Conservation (FAIC) will conducted Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) that will help collection care professionals to make informed choices that protect health and the environment while continuing to preserve and exhibit humanities collections. 3,500 materials, products, and processes will be researched and made available through an online Tool. Complex processes will captured in an LCA Library to guide collections care decision-making. Research results will be disseminated through articles, blog posts, presentations, workshops, and a traveling exhibit . Key research support will be provided by Northeastern University and the Pratt Institute. Principal Investigators are Matt Eckelman (NEU), Sarah Nunberg (Pratt), Eric Pourchot (FAIC), and Sarah Sutton (Sustainable Museums).