2007 21st Century Museum Professionals Grant Announcement

Alaska  |  District of Columbia  |  Massachusetts  |  Missouri  |  New Jersey  |  New York  |  Vermont  

Alaska

Alaska State Museum - Juneau, AK
Award Amount: $163,275; Matching Amount: $180,358

Contact: Mr. Scott Carrlee
Curator of Museum Services
907-465-4806; scott_carrlee@eed.state.ak.us

Project Title: "Alaska State Museums Internship Program"
The Museum Services Office of the Alaska State Museums will partner with the statewide professional association, Museums Alaska, to initiate an internship program for small museums and Native-run cultural centers. Eighteen interns will be recruited nationwide to provide assistance to 20 host institutions, many of which are in isolated locations throughout the state. Two retired museum directors will be hired to serve as professional mentors to provide technical assistance with project-specific activities during 10-week summer internships at each museum. The project will benefit the professional development of both the interns and the host institutions by merging the theoretical knowledge of recent graduates with the practical experience of professional mentors within the day-to-day operations of small museums.

District of Columbia

Association of Children's Museums - Washington, DC
Award Amount: $220,000; Matching Amount: $233,835

Contact: Ms. Janet Rice-Elman
Executive Director
202-898-1080 ext. 14; jelman@childrensmuseums.org

Project Title: "Growing Healthy Museums"
The Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) will launch the “Growing Healthy Museums” project to increase museums’ institutional capacity, knowledge, and skills as leaders in promoting health and wellness in their communities. Building on ACM’s national initiative, Good to Grow!, this new project will specifically help museum leaders, educators, exhibit developers, and program managers to address the national crisis of childhood obesity. Funding will support three major activities: an institutional self-study and recognition program to help children’s museums infuse healthy practices throughout their operations; the publication of a “cookbook” of best practices of effective health-related programs and practices; and a conference and resource materials focused on building healthy community partnerships.

Massachusetts

Boston Children's Museum - Boston, MA
Award Amount: $423,214; Matching Amount: $464,759

Contact: Dr. Louis Casagrande
President and CEO
617-426-6500 ext. 321; casagrande@bostonchildrensmuseum.org

Project Title: "Training Museum Professionals to Facilitate Family Learning"
The Boston Children’s Museum will partner with the Chicago Children’s Museum to incorporate family learning research into staff training. Building on audience research findings, the project will facilitate more effective learning environments for multigenerational families by strengthening the role of children’s museum staff as resources for adult visitors. IMLS funding will support the development, testing, and implementation of standards of engagement and core curriculum modules targeted at program managers, educators, and front-line staff who have daily contact with visitors. Upon completion of training activities within the two museums, the final tools will be broadly disseminated through professional associations and workshops on family learning in practice at various national conferences.

Missouri

Mid-America Arts Alliance - Kansas City, MO
Award Amount: $400,000; Matching Amount: $579,678

Contact: Ms. Edana McSweeney
Director of Professional Development
816-421-1388 ext. 21; edana@maaa.org

Project Title: "Hands-on Experiential Learning Project (HELP) Governance Training"
The Mid-America Arts Alliance will partner with three state arts agencies to provide governance training for the trustees of 60 small, rural museums. Volunteer trustees are often unprepared to fully understand and manage the legal, ethical, and fiscal responsibilities involved with the management of nonprofit organizations. Mid-America Arts will engage both staff and trustees at these museums in activities to measure and improve their governing capacity. Funding will support cooperative workshops, online tutorials, on-site assistance from technical experts, and participation at museum conferences, as well as a rigorous system of locally controlled assessment, goal-setting, and self-evaluation. Project results will be disseminated through brochures and conference presentations.

New Jersey

Costume Society of America - Hillsborough, NJ
Award Amount: $50,529; Matching Amount: $60,000

Contact: Ms. Patricia Wesp

757-221-2668; pmwesp@wm.edu

Project Title: "Education and Preservation: The Costume Society of America's Museum Professionals Preservation Training Workshops and Angels Project"
The Costume Society of America (CSA) will present a series of intensive training programs focused on the specialized care and preservation of costume and textile collections in small museums and historical societies. CSA will offer annual preservation training workshops for 150 museum professionals over three years at sites in New Orleans, Phoenix, and Kansas City. The one-day workshops will provide needed access to information, demonstrations, publications, specialized procedures, and practical applications. Additionally, in each host city, 20 highly experienced professionals—the CSA Angels—will donate their services to a single institution for a full workday, assisting the staff of a small museum to tackle a specific project such as identification, documentation, repair, stabilization, or appropriate storage solutions within their collections.

Seton Hall University - South Orange, NJ
Award Amount: $209,487; Matching Amount: $226,385

Contact: Dr. Janet Marstine
Assistant Professor
973-275-2908; marstija@shu.edu

Project Title: "Seton Hall's Institute of Museum Ethics: Advocating for a More Transparent, Accountable, and Socially Responsible Museum"
The newly founded Institute of Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University will launch a range of educational initiatives designed to help museum professionals create more transparent, accountable, and socially responsible institutions. Funding will support the introduction of two new courses on museum ethics in association with the University’s M.A. program in Museum Professions that will be open to both graduate students and working professionals; a national conference on museum ethics; public lectures; workshops for University faculty on infusing ethics across the museum studies curriculum; and the design and launch of a unique web portal that will become a national resource featuring an ethics listserv, media feeds, and bibliographies and other tools to help museum professionals incorporate ethics into ongoing operations.

New York

Essex County Historical Society - Elizabethtown, NY
Award Amount: $338,585; Matching Amount: $355,574

Contact: Ms. Margaret Gibbs
Director
518-873-6466; mgibbs@adkhistorycenter.org

Project Title: "Training to Sustain Heritage Center Operations"
Staff and volunteers of eight heritage centers within the Lakes to Locks Passage corridor of northern New York will receive training in best practices for museum operations in this comprehensive program coordinated by the Essex County Historical Society. The three-year project will include eleven workshops on leadership and organizational structure, staff and volunteer training, mission and planning, collections care, and financial stability. Funding will also support hiring two “circuit riders” to help the heritage centers implement and reinforce the training and develop cultural heritage programming for visitors throughout the Lake Champlain region. Sixty cultural organizations in the surrounding region will be invited to participate in the training workshops, potentially improving skills and capacity building for over 200 museum professionals.

International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience - New York, NY
Award Amount: $162,029; Matching Amount: $162,647

Contact: Ms. Liz Sevcenko
Director
212-431-0233 ext. 230; lsevcenko@tenement.org

Project Title: "International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience"
This project will build the capacity of 12 immigration history museums—including the Japanese American National Museum, Ellis Island National Monument, and the Levine Museum of the New South—to design and facilitate public dialogue programs on immigration issues of concern to their communities. Recognizing the growing role of museums as new centers for civic engagement, the “Immigration Sites of Conscience Network” will assist this pilot group of museums to create concrete and balanced methodologies and practices for using history and dialogue to explore contemporary immigration issues from multiple perspectives. Funding will support professional development for over 30 senior education and program staff in dialogue facilitation, programming, evaluation tools, and training in contemporary immigration issues. The project will create ongoing support through Web conferences and an online resource center.

Art Education for the Blind - New York, NY
Award Amount: $77,050; Matching Amount: $193,400

Contact: Dr. Nina Levent
Associate Director
212-334-8721; director@artbeyondsight.org

Project Title: "AEB Handbook for Museum and Educators Pilot Program"
Art Education for the Blind (AEB) will complete the production and online launch of its “Handbook for Museums and Educators,” a practical guide designed to facilitate the process of creating accessible programming for people with visual impairments or other disabilities. AEB will work with over ten museums to pilot and evaluate tools involving the development of accessible art education programs, disability awareness training for museum staff, and the creation of employment opportunities for persons with disabilities. Available both online and in CD format, the handbook’s multimedia features will offer effective, user-friendly teaching tools, enabling users to select, download, and customize information and components most pertinent to their institutions’ needs.

Vermont

Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance - Vergennes, VT
Award Amount: $29,848; Matching Amount: $51,100

Contact: Ms. Eileen Corcoran
Director
802-475-2022; vccp@sover.net

Project Title: "Building Accomplished Museums: Collections Stewardship"
The Vermont Museum & Gallery Alliance will select eight museums, historical societies, and galleries throughout Vermont to participate in an intensive collections care management program. The participating institutions will benefit from a series of workshops, followed by a self-assessment of specific needs in their own facilities. A graduate-level intern and the Project Director will then work with each organization on site-specific projects. Information and resources will be shared through an e-mail group and results of the projects will be shared more broadly through conference presentations. The three-year project will provide hands-on training and job skills for museum professionals and result in eight small institutional models in collections care, exhibition, and documentation techniques.