Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

Recipient: Dackerman, Susan (Cambridge, MA 02138 USA) in affiliation with Harvard University

Goal: Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a colloquium, a catalog, an interactive website, and educational and public programs exploring the alliance between printmakers and scientists in the 16th century.

Description: The Harvard Art Museum will organize, present, and circulate a groundbreaking interpretive exhibition that will transform traditional assumptions about the role of artists in the production of new forms of knowledge during the Renaissance???s Scientific Revolution. The museum requests funds for the implementation of the major traveling exhibition, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, and for support of its related publications and public programming. The exhibition, which opens jointly at Harvard???s Sackler Museum and Wellesley College???s Davis Art Museum, addresses the participation of such celebrated northern European artists as Albrecht D??rer, Hendrick Goltzius, and Hans Holbein in the scientific inquiries of the sixteenth century, especially as manifested in their printed works. Such an investigation reveals the previously unexamined close working relationships between the artistic and scientific communities, and the exchanges of influence between them.

Grant: 194753 / GI-50097-10,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: America's Historical & Cultural Organizations Implementation,   Year Awarded: 2010

Teti Library General Preservation Assessment

Recipient: Ray, Michelle (Manchester, NH 03101 USA) in affiliation with New Hampshire Institute of Art (Manchester, NH 03104 USA)

Goal: A preservation assessment of the library's general collection, Special Collections, and Archives, with particular attention to materials in the history of photography. The Teti Library serves as a regional art library for academic institutions and the general public.

Description: New Hampshire Institute of Art's Teti Library is seeking funding to support a general preservation assessment of the main library, Special Collections and Institute archives. This funding will support a site visit conducted by a Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) consultant who will assess facility issues, library policy, and material condition and housing. The consultant will create a written report that will help the library prepare a short-, medium-, and long-term preservation plan for the collections. Using this information as a point of departure, the library will prepare a formal preservation policy and conduct materials re-housing and other preservation measures as prescribed by the consultant.

Grant: 199820 / PG-51076-10,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

Evaluating and Improving Light Levels at the Block Museum of Art

Recipient: Robertson, David Alan (Evanston, IL 60208-2410 USA) in affiliation with Northwestern University (Evanston, IL 60208 USA)

Goal: Funding supports the purchase of environmental monitoring equipment recommended by a 2006 Conservation Assessment Program report. Northwestern University's Block Museum of Art features a large collection of works on paper including the architectural drawings of Marion Mahony Griffen and Walter Burley Griffen, prints and drawings from the 15th century to the present, and computer-generated works on paper.

Description: The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art seeks funding to purchase a UV monitor, humidity calibration kit, and IrDA serial port adapter (for uploading readings into the computer). Based on a recent Conservation Assessment Program (CAP) grant, the Block learned that higher than acceptable UV and visible light levels were measured in a gallery, work, and artwork storage space of the Museum; similar UV and light levels are suspected in our other galleries. Since the majority of the Museum's collection, as well as the artwork in exhibitions we host or organize, consists of works of art on paper and is sensitive to light, we will use the environmental monitoring equipment to track light readings during the grant period. Following a few months of data collection, we will conduct an ongoing evaluation of the readings to determine an action plan for the improvement of lighting conditions at the Block Museum.

Grant: 199758 / PG-51014-10,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Preservation Assistance Grants,   Year Awarded: 2010

NEH on the Road: Lee and Grant

Recipient: Phillips, Bryan (Texarkana, TX 75501 USA) in affiliation with Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council

Goal: Ancillary public humanities programs to accompany the NEH on the Road: Lee and Grant traveling exhibition.

Description: A traveling visual arts exhibit from Mid-America Arts Alliance and NEH on the Road that showcases the two Civil War Generals, Lee and Grant.

Grant: 201078 / MR-50070-10,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: NEH on the Road,   Year Awarded: 2010

For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights

Recipient: Berger, Maurice (New York, NY 10025 USA) in affiliation with University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD 21250 USA)

Goal: Implementation of a traveling exhibition with a catalog, a website, and public and school programs about how photographs and media images were used to influence attitudes toward racial equality and African American culture during the fight to achieve civil rights.

Description: Organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) in partnership with the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights represents the first comprehensive exhibition and publication to analyze the historical role played by visual images in shaping, influencing, and transforming the fight for civil rights in the United States. It will explore the ways this imagery represented race in order to perpetuate the status quo, stimulate dialogue, or change prevailing beliefs and attitudes. It will examine the extent to which the birth of the modern civil rights movement was coextensive with the birth of television and the rise of picture magazines and other forms of visual mass media, effectively capitalizing on the power of visual images to alter perceptions about race.

Grant: 197007 / GI-50135-09,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: America's Historical & Cultural Organizations Implementation,   Year Awarded: 2009

Picturing Early America: People, Places, and Events 1770-1870

Recipient: Johnston, Patricia A (Salem, MA 01970 USA) in affiliation with Salem State College (Salem, MA 01970-5353 USA)

Goal: A four-week school teacher institute for twenty-five participants focusing on interpreting and teaching early American art as an aspect of the nation's history and culture.

Description: Salem State College proposes to hold a four-week Summer Institute, from July 4 to July 30, 2010, for 25 school teachers on interpreting and teaching early American art. This interdisciplinary institute will appeal to teachers of history, English, art, and other subjects. The institute explores the period from British colonial settlement to the aftermath of the Civil War, and will be divided into three units based on the primary pictorial forms of the period: portraiture, history painting, and landscapes. Each unit will include a particular focus on what we are calling "spotlight" works-art included in NEH's Picturing America series. Teachers will come to understand American art works in their historical contexts and develop creative ways to teach their disciplines while using the Picturing America images.

Grant: 197477 / ES-50309-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2009

West, Copley, Trumbull: American Revolutionary Paintings in a Transatlantic World

Recipient: Neff, Emily Ballew (Houston, TX 77005-1803 USA) in affiliation with Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX 77265 USA)

Goal: Planning for a traveling exhibition, a symposium, a website, and related public and educational programs exploring the history painting of West, Copley, and Trumbull in an Atlantic context.

Description: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) requests $40,000 to plan West, Copley, Trumbull: American Revolutionary Paintings in a Transatlantic World (working title), the first major exhibition on the subject of modern history painting and its American innovators. Opening in Houston in the spring of 2012, the exhibition will reexamine Benjamin West (1738-1820), John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), and John Trumbull (1756-1843), and their work, challenging audiences to rethink long-standing perspectives that limit these artists??? contributions to colonial or early American culture. The exhibition and interpretive programs and materials will help audiences to learn about the multiple ways in which these works, which may seem familiar and known, can be newly studied and appreciated.

Grant: 194623 / GE-50110-09,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: America's Historical and Cultural Organizations Planning,   Year Awarded: 2009

Picturing Early America: People, Places, and Events 1770-1870

Recipient: Johnston, Patricia A (Salem, MA 01970 USA) in affiliation with Salem State College (Salem, MA 01970-5353 USA)

Goal: A four-week institute for twenty-five school teachers on interpreting and teaching American art.

Description: Salem State College proposes to hold a four-week Summer Institute, from July 5 to July 31, 2009, for 25 school teachers on interpreting and teaching early American art. The institute explores the period from British colonial settlement to the aftermath of the Civil War, and will be divided into three units based on the primary pictorial forms of the period: portraiture, history painting, and landscapes. Each unit will include a particular focus on what we are calling "spotlight" works--art included in NEH's Picturing America series. Through the institute, participants will come to a deeper understanding of the approaches and methodologies of the disciplines of history and art history, and develop ways to incorporate visual culture into their classrooms.

Grant: 191986 / ES-50224-08,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2008

A Sense of Place: Picturing Delaware

Recipient: Whittington, Marilyn P (Wilmington, DE 19801 USA) in affiliation with Delaware Humanities Forum

Goal: To support Delaware-based activities related to Picturing America, including a kick-off event in October 2008; a series of discussions about Delaware's past, present and future; a collection of existing images of Delaware for an online archive and a print publication; and special programs in each of the state's three counties.

Description: The Delaware Humanities Forum will use this We the People grant to help Delawareans explore their own backyard. Through a series of small regrants; a major project in each county; bus trips; readings; publications and discussions, we will look at how Delaware has been pictured by past generations, by today's residents, and our aspirations for Delaware's future image.

Grant: 192456 / BC-50431-08,   Division: Federal/State Partnership,   Program: Grants for State Humanities Councils,   Year Awarded: 2008

Paris: The Luminous Years

Recipient: Halper, Andy (New York, NY 10001 USA) in affiliation with Educational Broadcasting Corporation

Goal: Production of a two-part, two-hour documentary film series about art and culture in Paris between 1905 and 1930.

Description: PARIS: THE LUMINOUS YEARS is a two-part, two-hour series for public-television broadcast in 2008. Its subjects are Modernism and the birth of 20th-century culture. Between 1905 and 1930, Paris was regarded as the artistic center of the Western world, the locus of much that was innovative in the arts as the avant-garde there overthrew centuries of academic tradition in nearly every artistic discipline. Twentieth-century art and culture are thought to have been born -- or at least significantly advanced -- in Paris, but their lineage is international. To the artists who lived and worked there during these luminous years, Paris-as-Place was all-important. The significance of place is therefore the organizing theme of this visually rich documentary that asks, Why Paris?

Grant: 186439 / TI-50071-07,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Media TV Production,   Year Awarded: 2007

Permanent Interpretive Exhibition at the Home and Studio of Thomas Cole, Founder of the Hudson River School of Art

Recipient: Jacks, Elizabeth Bond (Catskill, NY 12414 USA) in affiliation with Greene County Historical Society, Thomas Cole Site

Goal: Implementation of a permanent interpretation of Thomas Cole's studio, including a film, docent tours, a web site, multimedia stations, publications, and public and educational programs exploring how Cole worked and his contribution to American art.

Description: The project will establish a new permanent exhibition at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, delivered through a range of elements ? an audiovisual presentation, interpretive panels, thematic displays of collection objects, interactive computer stations, printed educational materials, docent tours, and public programs ? that bring audiences new insights into America's cultural history through the seminal nineteenth-century artist Thomas Cole, who is considered the founder of the Hudson River School of art. The exhibition will focus on Cole's creative process, and will enable the visitor to experience it first hand, from hikes to the views in the nearby Catskill Mountains to a visit to the studio where the compositions came together. The exhibition will advance the public's knowledge of the origins of an art movement that dominated American visual arts between 1825 and 1875 -- a movement that formulated several of the underlying themes that still define America's cultural identity.

Grant: 186843 / BR-50027-07,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Interpreting America's Historic Places Implementation,   Year Awarded: 2007

If These Walls Could Talk: The Native American Plains Tipi

Recipient: Morrow, Nancy Rosoff (Brooklyn, NY 11238 USA) in affiliation with Brooklyn Museum of Art (Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052 USA)

Goal: Planning for a traveling exhibition, a catalog, and supporting educational and public programs examining the Native American tipi as a center of Plains Indian culture.

Description: The Brooklyn Museum seeks support for the planning of *If These Walls Could Talk: The Native American Plains Tipi* (working title), a major exhibition that will be presented at the Museum in Fall 2009 and at other venues thereafter. Drawing on the Museum's distinguished holdings of Plains Native material as well as loans from other collections, this will be the first major exhibition to take the tipi as its primary subject, and as a means of understanding Plains Native culture. The exhibition will encompass more than 150 objects, including several full-scale tipis. The project is being planned in cooperation with members of the Plains Native community. A Planning Grant from the NEH would support two day-long planning meetings with humanities consultants at the Brooklyn Museum.

Grant: 184983 / MP-50049-07,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums Planning,   Year Awarded: 2007

The Fiery Pool: The Maritime World of the Ancient Maya

Recipient: Finamore, Daniel (Salem, MA 01970-3783 USA) in affiliation with Peabody Essex Museum

Goal: Consultation and curatorial traveling for an exhibition, a catalog, and educational and public programs that would explore the influence of the sea on the ancient Maya people.

Description: The Fiery Pool: The Maritime World of the Ancient Maya is an international loan exhibition highlighting the relationship between the Maya and the sea. Covering a wide spectrum of Maya art, this will be the first major exhibition to explore how Maya society developed a distinctive world-view of the sea, including its dangers, possibilities, and precious resources. Since the role of the sea in Maya civilization has been largely overlooked by art historians and archaeologists, this exhibition will constitute a major reorientation of Maya art and culture, elucidating the multitude of marine references and their cultural significance.

Grant: 184946 / MC-50068-07,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums Consultation,   Year Awarded: 2007

Hall of Echoing Caves: Re-imaging the Ancient Buddhist Caves of Xiangtangshan

Recipient: Hirschel, Anthony (Chicago, IL 60637 USA) in affiliation with University of Chicago

Goal: Consultation and early planning for an exhibition exploring a cave complex of sixth-century Buddhist tombs and temples created during China's Northern Qi dynasty (550-577 A.D.).

Description: "Hall of Echoing Caves: Re-imaging the Ancient Buddhist Caves of Xiangtangshan" is a major traveling exhibition that explores the past, present, and future of the Xiangtangshan caves, an elaborate complex of sixth century Buddhist temples that have suffered a century of despoliation and dispersal. The caves were created during the Northern Qi dynasty (550-577), an overlooked period in China's history that recent archeological finds have shown was characterized by remarkable cultural exchange and artistic innovation. As the crowning cultural achievement of the period, the caves reveal how the Northern Qi set the stage for the flowering of a truly cosmopolitan Chinese culture traditionally associated with later dynasties of China's "Golden Age." Reconstructing the caves through traditional and innovative digital displays, the exhibition will increase understanding of the Northern Qi's rich visual culture and introduce the new technologies being used to capture an otherwise lost past.

Grant: 184943 / MC-50065-07,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums Consultation,   Year Awarded: 2007

Preserving Art Collections of the Walker Art Center

Recipient: Bitz, Gwen (Minneapolis, MN 55403 USA) in affiliation with Walker Art Center

Goal: The purchase of storage furniture and rehousing of paintings, sculpture, and archival collections that document the development of contemporary art in America.

Description: The Walker Art Center respectfully requests a $292,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities Stabilization of Humanities Collections Grant Program to support the protection and stabilization of objects in the Permanent Collection and irreplaceable, historically significant archival materials. The proposed project covers the acquisition and installation of painting screens, moving textile storage units, object storage cabinets, and high-density storage unit for archival materials, enabling the Walker to account for 30 years of continued growth in its collections. By increasing its storage capacity, the Walker will improve accessibility to and the safety of works in these collections.

Grant: 180908 / PZ-50020-06,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Stabilization Grants,   Year Awarded: 2006

Muses of the Avant Garde: Sara and Gerald Murphy and their Circle

Recipient: Rothschild, Deborah M (Williamstown, MA 01267 USA) in affiliation with Williams College

Goal: Implementation of a traveling exhibition with a catalog and a public symposium about a remarkable American couple living well in France in the 1920s-30s, who influenced the trans-Atlantic exchange of ideas about modern art and music.

Description: "Muses of the Avante-Garde: Sara and Gerald Murphy and their Circle" is an exhibition with accompanying programs and catalogue that will open the Williams College Museum of Art in July 2007 and then travel to the Yale University Art Gallery and Dallas Museum of Art in 2008. This interdisciplinary exhibition will convey Gerald and Sara Murphy's gift for weaving brilliant innovators of diverse backgrounds, nationalities, and talents into the distinctive fabric of their everyday life, an intertwining that promoted Euro-American dialogue so important to the development of modern culture as we know it. The exhibition will feature over 100 works of art, many examples of literature, dance, music, film, design, costume, and ballet sets and a rich treasure trove of ephemera such as letters, photographs, home movies, and audio reminiscences.

Grant: 181904 / MI-50020-06,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums Implementation,   Year Awarded: 2006

The Performance of the Great Baga D'mba

Recipient: Lamp, Frederick (New Haven, CT 06520-8271 USA) in affiliation with Yale University (New Haven, CT 06520 USA)

Goal: Library research, travel preparation, and a planning conference prior to undertaking field research in Guinea, West Africa on the masquerade character and performance piece known among the Baga people as D'mba. This is to be followed by a final conference to present the results of the collaboration and the plan for the book along with an exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery. (18 months)

Description: The goals of The Performance of the Great Baga D’mba are 1) to conduct interdisciplinary collaborative field research in Guinea, West Africa on the masquerade character and performance piece known among the Baga as D’mba; 2) to create a model for future study of African art; and 3) to disseminate the collaborative findings through a publication, DVD, and an exhibition. This project will address the concerns: 1) that a holistic and integrated art as conceived and viewed in Africa continues to be presented in the West in a compartmentalized and fragmentary way, 2) that the study of African art needs an expanded interdisciplinary vocabulary and theory, and 3) that exhaustive studies are needed on specific art forms.

Grant: 181535 / RZ-50588-06,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2006

Seeing the City: Sloan's New York

Recipient: Schiller, Joyce K (Wilmington, DE 19806 USA) in affiliation with Delaware Art Museum

Goal: Planning for a traveling exhibition, a catalog, and related educational and public programs exploring the New York art of John Sloan (1871-1951).

Description: A $40,000 NEH Planning Grant will support the organization and interpretation of an exhibition and related catalogue focusing on works by John Sloan (1871-1951), an American realist painter and illustrator best known for his scenes of life in New York City. Entitled "Seeing the City: Sloan's New York," the exhibition will open at the Delaware Art Museum and then travel to two or three additional venues. By bringing together a wealth of media from a broad range of dates (1900-1946), "Seeing the City" will be the first major traveling exhibition to focus on Sloan's images of New York and the first since the 1970s to present significant new scholarship on the artist.

Grant: 179903 / MP-50015-06,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums Planning,   Year Awarded: 2006

S’abadeb (The Gifts): Coast Salish Art and Artists

Recipient: Brotherton, Barbara (Seattle, WA 98101 USA) in affiliation with Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA 98112 USA)

Goal: Planning of a traveling exhibition with a catalog, a website, and public programs about Salish Indian art as a reflection of history and culture from prehistory to the present.

Description: An exhibition of the art and culture of the Native Coast Salish peoples,is tentatively entitled S’abadeb (The Gifts):Coast Salish Art and Artists. It involves the collaboration of several museums located in traditional Salish territories and will be explicated by the people whose lives and cultures are featured. Our principal goal is to provide a broad general public with a unique opportunity to experience and interact firsthand with Native peoples whose rich cultural past has served as a springboard for the recent regeneration of language, oral traditions, and the arts. Interpretation will be multi-layered, designed to inspire and deepen understanding, while creating a foundation for further self-directed learning.

Grant: 179913 / MP-50025-06,   Division: Public Programs,   Program: Museums Planning,   Year Awarded: 2006

Repairs to Climate Control HURRICANE KATRINA EMERGENCY GRANT

Recipient: Petty-Johnson, Gayle (Ocean Springs, MS 39564-4632 USA) in affiliation with Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Inc. (Ocean Springs, MS 39566 USA)

Goal: The Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, preserves the art of Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965), known for his depictions of the plants, animals, and people of the Gulf Coast. The museum also collects the work of his brothers, Peter Anderson (1901-1984), master potter and founder of Shearwater Pottery; and James McConnell Anderson (1907-1998), noted painter and ceramic artist. The 800 items in the permanent collection include watercolors, drawings, oils, block prints, ceramics, and carvings by the three Anderson brothers. The rain and sea spray during Hurricane Katrina caused damage to the museum's climate control system, and high relative humidity and temperatures threatened the collection.

Grant: 184875 / PC-50203-06,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Grants to Preserve & Create Access to Humanities Collections,   Year Awarded: 2006