Funded Projects Query Form
46 matches

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 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.

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 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 for an exhibit that examines the impact of French Orientalism depictions of the American west in art, literature, and popular culture.

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) will conduct curatorial planning and research for an exhibition, The Near East to the Far West: French Orientalism and the American Frontier (working title), to debut at the DAM in February 2023. This major traveling exhibition will include public programs, a catalog, and symposium, with input from multidisciplinary humanities scholars and Indigenous-, Muslim-, and Arab-American voices. Curated by the DAM’s associate curator of western American art Jennifer R. Henneman, Ph.D., the exhibition will reach wide audiences in Denver and additional venues in the United States. The Near East to the Far West explores how the style and substance of French Orientalism directly influenced representations of the people, wildlife, and landscapes of the American West in art, literature, and popular culture during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, representations that continue to impact American attitudes towards history, identity, and place.

A planning grant to support a traveling exhibition about natural disasters.

The purpose of obtaining this planning grant is to develop the exhibit that will cultivate diverse humanities discussions at different sites and test the feasibility of a collaborative approach for traveling exhibits. Project outcomes will include a four-panel physical display, a web presence for the exhibit that integrates the local content from each installation, a story map illustrating the exhibit’s evolution, and assessment data for this pilot project to inform future implementation.

Planning for a 1,000-square-foot permanent exhibition on the global history of genocide and mass atrocities.

Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center seeks funding to support planning for a permanent exhibition which will explore the global history of genocide and mass atrocities; the underlying conditions and patterns that lead to these events; and the roles of organizations, world leaders and citizens in preventing genocide. The Genocide Exhibition will incorporate survivor and eyewitness testimony, photographs, objects, and other primary sources to show how genocides have followed similar patterns of structural, escalatory, and triggering factors; and how transitional justice processes have contributed to the rebuilding and stabilizing of societies after genocide. The exhibition will illustrate the devastating impact of genocide on individual lives and reveal similarities across cultures and experiences. Viewers will gain a deeper understanding of our common humanity and knowledge of ways to stay informed and engaged in genocide prevention issues.

Planning of an 800- to 1,000-square-foot traveling exhibition that would celebrate the 50th year of Hmong resettlement in the U.S.

Cia Siab (Hope) in Wisconsin: A HMoob (Hmong) Story is a traveling exhibit that will launch in 2025 to celebrate the 50th year of Hmong resettlement in the U.S. It is a community-based project that brings together Hmong community voices, humanities scholars, and museum experts to create an immersive traveling exhibit that utilizes the arts, audio, Hmong narratives, and interactive media to illustrate the historical trauma and resilience of Wisconsin’s Hmong rural and urban communities. This project employs community-based participatory research alongside arts-based and trauma-informed methods with Hmong women, youth, elders, and LGBTQ individuals. The proposed activities will be conducted in five cities with a large Hmong population: Eau Claire, La Crosse, Madison, Milwaukee and Wausau. This exhibit’s goal is to foster intergenerational and cross-cultural connection, empathy, and dialogue.

Planning for a reinterpretation of the museum’s permanent exhibition on the history of Texas.

The Witte Museum seeks a $75,000 Public Humanities Projects Planning Grant to support the reinterpretation, reimagining, planning and concept design for a new permanent exhibition, Tejas to Texas, a presentation on what we now call Texas. The current exhibition, A Wild and Vivid Land: Stories of South Texas, prototyped in 2006 and opened in 2012, is the permanent exhibition for the Robert J. and Helen C. Kleberg South Texas Heritage Center. Since then, the Witte’s award-winning South Texas Heritage Center has welcomed over 2.5 million visitors. As the Witte prepares for the Center’s 10th anniversary, the museum has embarked on a reexamination of the central exhibition, armed with goals for reinterpretation derived from community conversations and new scholarship.

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.

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.

Development of a traveling exhibition of artworks from multiple traditions and periods featuring birds.

The Sabiha Al Khemir Foundation (SAKF) requests a $75,000 planning grant from the NEH to support the development of a traveling exhibition that prompts dialogue about the presence of birds in cultural narratives across time and place—Under the Same Sky: Birds in Art and Myth. This exhibition will focus on the intersections between birds and humanity—what birds mean to us on an emotional and spiritual level, and how we express those connections through art and literature. It will feature approximately 100 works from U.S. museum collections combined with narrative video, multi-sensory immersive experiences. Works will be organized into thematic areas that bring to light the key human associations attributed to birds and their essential characteristics - their color, songs, diversity, and unique abilities - that have inspired humankind for generations as expressed in art and myth. The exhibition will include a catalog and educational programs and guides.

Planning of a traveling exhibition about Himalayan art, history, religion, and culture.

Himalayan Art: Journeys of Discoveries is a multi-venue traveling exhibition that will become a primary resource for the understanding of the art, culture, religion, traditions, and practices of this important cultural sphere that connects South Asia, Central Asia, and Inner Asia. This educational initiative, based on scholarship, will explore a region that once influenced much of Asia and whose ideas are still relevant today. By integrating select objects, narrative descriptions, contextual photographs, audio tours, videos, digital animations, and installations, the exhibition will open to viewers the fundamental art forms and humanities ideas represented in Himalayan visual culture. Himalayan Art: Journeys of Discovery seeks to inform, educate, and inspire students, faculty members, and the interested public about a lesser known area of art and culture necessary for a holistic understanding of Asian art and history.

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 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 of a temporary exhibition and public programs exploring the role of Staten Island in the creation and passage of the 19^th Amendment.

The Staten Island Museum requests a $40,000 grant to support planning for Arise Women of the Nation: Staten Islanders in the Fight for Women’s Right to Vote, a single-site temporary exhibition in 2020 to mark the National Centennial of the 19th Constitutional Amendment. This exhibition will highlight the ingenuity and dedication of Staten Island suffragists in both the national and regional movement. The Staten Island Museum seeks to convene a panel of five experts who will examine the contributions of Staten Island’s suffragists and refine the exhibition themes in the context of the broader suffrage narrative; activate exhibition design; and inform visitors about the historic movement’s pertinence to today’s civic engagement. The advisers will present their findings in a public panel discussion in March 2020 for Women’s History Month.

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.