FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
January 5, 2007
Press Contacts
202-653-4628
Kevin O'Connell, koconnell@imls.gov
Mamie Bittner, mbittner@imls.gov
Save America’s Treasures Awards $7.6 million in
Grants
Washington, DC--The President’s
Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), National
Park Service (NPS), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA),
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and Institute
of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) jointly announced
the awarding of $7.6 million in federal Save America’s
Treasures (SAT) grants. With these funds 42 organizations
and agencies will act to conserve some of America’s
most significant cultural treasures, which illustrate,
interpret, and embody the great events, ideas, and individuals
that contribute to our nation’s history and culture.
Through the congressionally-appropriated SAT program,
awards were made to 23 historic properties and sites and
19 nationally significant collections of artifacts, documents
and artistic works.
Save America’s Treasures competitive
awards preserve the nation’s most significant endangered
intellectual and cultural artifacts, historic structures
and historic sites. The range of this year’s awards
covers the breadth of American history and culture-- from
preserving the Nellie L. Byrd, one of the Chesapeake Bay’s
few remaining skipjacks, to saving Birmingham’s
16th Street Baptist Church, a Civil Rights landmark. Other
grants will restore the Gettysburg Cyclorama and the letters
and journals of prominent leaders of the American Revolution.
“Save America’s Treasures grants
help address the very real threats to our nation’s
historic and cultural treasures, a legacy held in trust
by all Americans,” said Mrs. Laura Bush, Honorary
Chairman of the President’s Committee on the Arts
and the Humanities. “Through this program President
Bush and I want to encourage public and private efforts
to carry forward the work of generations in keeping these
vital pieces of the nation alive for our children and
their children.”
Click
here for a complete project list (PDF, 38KB) and highlights
of this year’s awards follows:
2006 Project Highlights
This year’s Save America’s Treasures awards:
A) Cover a diverse range of subject matter
and American themes
· Colonial History: While his
farm in Concord, Massachusetts was being searched for
arms by British troops, Colonel James Barrett had assembled
the militia who would fire the shots that ignited the
American Revolution. Preservation of his home, which remains
relatively unchanged, provides a living link to the American
Revolution.
· Civil Rights Movement: Birmingham’s
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was a focal point for
African-American life in the South, serving as a lecture
hall, gathering place and headquarters for the Civil Rights
rallies and meetings. In 1963, a bomb exploded during
Sunday school killing four young girls—forever linking
this tragic event and the church as a symbol of the struggle
for civil rights.
· Maritime History: Maryland’s
skipjacks, sleek sailing ships that harvested oysters
in the Chesapeake Bay, helped drive America’s prosperity
in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today only a few of these
boats exist. The Nellie Byrd will be restored to serve
as working boat, teaching the next generation about the
contribution of these ships to the growth of our nation.
B) Serve as keystones for scholars and future
historians to tell our nation’s story
· Nebraska State Historical Society
Native American Collection touches on almost the whole
history of the Plains Indians Tribes from before contact
with Europeans to the present day. It provides an irreplaceable
understanding of the cultural life of these people.
· Hearst Metrotone Newsreel Collection
represents a priceless public archive that highlights
the broad patterns of 20th-century U.S. history through
the eyes of journalists reporting on American and world
history, scientific and medical breakthroughs, popular
culture and hundreds of other stories.
C) Represent a wide range of American communities
· Sheridan Inn in Sheridan, Wyoming,
was developed by Buffalo Bill Cody with the railroad company
and served both hunters and authors who were the seeking
the Wild West.
· Farnsworth House on the outskirts
of Chicago was designed by Mies van der Rohe and is considered
one of the country’s premier architectural treasures.
· National Bank Building, Galveston,
Texas, is one of the pillars of the city’s National
Historic Landmark District, which encompasses examples
of 19th- and early 20th-century architecture.
D) Contribute to the preservation of American
culture, identity and heritage
· Alcatraz Island Garden was
created by those who lived on the island during its military
and prison eras. Sustaining this unique cultural landscape,
its history, horticulture and cultural significance, is
a critical piece of this National Historic Landmark’s
interpretation for visitors.
· World Trade Center 9/11 Collection
includes more than several hundred thousand artifacts,
ranging from the legacy of thoughts and memorials to the
fragments of buildings, vehicles and other pieces from
the site, all of them framing a defining moment in modern
American history.
· Gettysburg Cyclorama is one
of the last surviving examples of its type and depicts
Pickett’s Charge the climatic clash of this epic
battle. It is 359 feet long, 27 feet high and weighs an
estimated 3 tons and presents a host of challenges to
conservators in the restoration of this fragile 19th-century
work.
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