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Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $34,400  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Supporting Lifelong Learning When it was founded in 1879, the Art Institute of Chicago was a simple, two-story Beaux-Arts structure. It is now a large complex of eight interconnected, multilevel buildings, filled with world-class permanent collections in 10 curatorial departments. The museum campus spans more than 100 years of planning and construction and includes 151 permanent collection galleries. A new wing, slated for completion in 2007, will add 60,000 square feet of gallery space to showcase important new holdings in modern and contemporary art, objects from the architecture collection, and one of the nation's finest collections of Himalayan works. This building will serve as a second major entrance to the museum and will include a large educational suite where many visitors will begin their tours. In focus groups and visitor surveys, a large percentage of respondents have reported getting lost or feeling overwhelmed at the Art Institute, a feeling that presents a major barrier to their use and enjoyment of a collection of encyclopedic scope and quality. This grant will support the museum's Navigation Master Planning Project, which will create a plan for a fully integrated and coherent navigation system that will reduce wayfinding confusion for the Art Institute's 1.3 million annual visitors and substantially improve the overall visitor experience.

Burpee Museum of Natural History – Rockford, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $73,500  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Supporting Lifelong Learning In the summer of 2001, the Burpee Museum led a family fossil trip to the Hell Creek Formation of southwestern Montana to search for dinosaur fossils. Two of the amateur team members discovered portions of a skeleton weathering out from a shale and sandstone butte. In 2002, Burpee staff and volunteers returned to the area with an excavation permit and set about uncovering, mapping, and identifying the bones that had been found. On the basis of a preliminary review of the evidence, the Burpee's opinion is that the skeleton, nicknamed "Jane," is of a 67-million-year-old Nanotyrannus. This dinosaur is often referenced in the scientific literature with a question mark, because there is a dispute over whether Nanotyrannus is a valid genus or a juvenile T. rex. The museum is developing a 2,200-square-foot permanent exhibit, "The Story of Jane," that will open in June 2005. This grant will support the development of technology-based elements of the exhibit, including intuitive user interfaces; interfaces that allow for multiple users, thereby increasing group learning and social interactions; extensive use of audio-image integration that will minimize the reliance on reading, making these elements appealing to nonreaders and visitors with vision impairments; and high-quality computer animations.

Chicago Historical Society – Chicago, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $150,000  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Sustaining Cultural Heritage The Chicago Historical Society (CHS) will complete retrospective conversion of cataloging for its library holdings of monographs and serials from catalog cards to electronic records and will make these records available to staff and the general public through an online public access catalog. The library collection is the heart of CHS's research resources. It provides data central to the management of all CHS collections and provides context and meaning for researchers who are seeking information on other artifacts in the collections. The records conversion project will create new online records for approximately 83 percent of the library holdings currently described only on cards, including approximately 25,000 monographs and serials. The goals of the project are (1) to assist staff and the public in researching relationships among museum artifacts and library documentation; (2) to allow staff to manage library holdings more efficiently; (3) to make a superb catalog of publications related to the history of the Chicago metropolitan area available online; and (4) to share copies of these records with other repositories through the Online Computer Library Center.

Evanston Historical Society – Evanston, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $85,900  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Sustaining Cultural Heritage The Evanston Historical Society (EHS) is the only museum in Evanston, Illinois, created specifically to collect and interpret the city's material culture and history. Since its inception in 1989, the society has built a strong collection that provides a deeper understanding of local history for the people who live in Evanston. The board and staff of the museum addressed pressing space issues and supported ambitious programming initiatives with a new research room and a new, separate permanent gallery, which were included in the strategic plan. The museum has completed the research room and costume gallery and is ready to design and install a permanent exhibition on the history of Evanston. The exhibit will provide visitors with an interactive multimedia experience. Over a 10-month period, the historical society will work with an exhibition designer, who will provide guidance, advice, and design work on matters relating to museum planning, exhibition development, and exhibit design. The fabrication and construction of the exhibit will be done onsite by local contractors, supervised by EHS staff and the exhibit designer.

Field Museum – Chicago, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $149,959  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Sustaining Cultural Heritage The Field Museum's collections of 22 million specimens and artifacts are a national treasure. Scholars from all fields have recognized and made use of the tremendous potential of these natural history collections, including the only records of many extinct species. These collections contain a vast amount of information and ancillary specimen data. The museum's strategic plan specifies the need for a uniform information architecture to consolidate all existing reference collection databases and computerize all collections data now recorded in a variety of formats, from handwritten labels to ledgers and file cards. This grant will support the migration of the museum's fishes specimen collection to the advanced collections management database system, KE EMu, which is the museum's new standard. This project will ensure that the collection remains available in the future for the many and varied research, education, and conservation purposes to which it regularly and significantly contributes to advance scientific understanding and sustain the world's natural heritage. The fishes collection will be among the first to move to the museum's new Collections Resource Center, which is currently under construction.

John G. Shedd Aquarium – Chicago, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $105,190  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Serving as Centers of Community Engagement The John G. Shedd Aquarium will use this grant to help implement its community engagement strategy on the city's south side through the South Chicago Neighborhood Initiative. The aquarium seeks to reach multigenerational audiences in South Chicago who are isolated from the resources and conservation messages of the aquarium because of various access barriers, such as language, culture, previous museum experiences, and economics. The initiative has six components: (1) research (identify potential communities and partners); (2) trust building through outreach efforts; (3) program partnership (implementing multivisit programs that address the missions of partnering organizations); (4) expansion (developing relationships with community organizations); (5) communitywide stewardship (bringing people together in local conservation projects); and (6) self-sufficiency (providing community-based organizations with the tools they need to continue a dialogue about aquatic science and conservation). Aquarium educators will develop a multifaceted program of representative activities, such as a lakeshore biology program, trips to the aquarium and other conservation centers, and a variety of aquatic science workshops.

Kohl Children's Museum – Wilmette, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $99,995  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Supporting Lifelong Learning Four integrated exhibits designed for a new facility at Kohl Children's Museum of Greater Chicago aim to plant the seeds of environmental awareness and scientific exploration and discovery in young children. Nature Explorers, scheduled to open in October 2005, integrates indoor and outdoor exhibit space around activities specifically geared to very young children. In addition to educating children, the activities in the Nature Explorers exhibits will encourage parents and caregivers to become environmentally literate as they interact with children to interpret exhibit information. Nature Explorers will feature an indoor nature area of 1,600 square feet with two exhibits-the Big Backyard and Fantasy Forest-that eventually will be connected to and integrated with a large, landscaped outdoor exploration environment of 1.28 acres. In addition to exhibit design and fabrication, the museum will develop four field trip programs for school children that are specifically related to Nature Explorers. Topics of the field trips will be how animals adapt to their environment through physical and behavioral changes; how children can reduce, reuse, and recycle waste; animal homes and habitat; and how sun, water, and wind act as energy sources.

McLean County Museum of History – Bloomington, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $116,193  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Serving as Centers of Community Engagement The McLean County Museum of History will serve as a center for community engagement by hiring a program coordinator (PC) to develop a new initiative to deliver museum education services directly to schools and to better incorporate museum resources into local curricula. The PC will train teachers and educate students in McLean, Livingston, and DeWitt counties, extending the museum's outreach to the entire tri-county region, which includes 95 schools in 26 public school districts, six educational agencies, 15 parochial and nonpublic schools, a variety of professional educator associations, and targeted civic groups. The PC will expand the use of 12 educational loan kits already available for outreach by conducting teacher workshops for Continuing Professional Development credits according to Illinois Professional Teaching Standards. The PC will also visit classrooms and targeted groups to present students with educational activities that conform to Illinois State Learning Standards. In addition to these collections-related presentations, the PC will develop Web services, including interactive lessons and outcome-based evaluations.

Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum – Chicago, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $123,546  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Serving as Centers of Community Engagement The Chicago Academy of Sciences will make technology upgrades in the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum that will allow the museum to expand its educational services and build public access to better serve the community. The museum will alter the way it attracts and serves visitors and will integrate all audience information. Specifically, this project will (1) increase the museum's ability to provide outstanding educational programs by allowing educators to register online for professional development and field trip programs, targeting underserved schools; (2) communicate regularly with audiences, thereby increasing public attendance and access; (3) capture visitor information and track museum use to increase its ability to attract visitors, build member and donor bases, and tie programs to community interests; (4) link databases to increase the efficiency of data entry in all areas of museum operations, including report processing, donor/member communication, solicitation, and front desk sales and service; and (5) enable visitors to purchase tickets, register for programs, donate to the museum, and renew memberships online. These enhancements will enable the museum to meet the operating standards of comparable institutions.

Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago – Chicago, IL
Year: 2004
Amount: $150,000  
Grant: Museums for America
Purpose: Sustaining Cultural Heritage As a noncollecting museum, the Renaissance Society's contribution to the museum field resides in the documentation of its exhibitions and events. The museum runs an active publishing program and has published dozens of catalogs that document singular exhibitions and are designed to provide social and art historical context for the works shown. New technologies and the rapid ascent of the Internet as a mainstream information tool provide unprecedented opportunities for the museum to fulfill its essential mission-to encourage the growth and understanding of contemporary art-through dissemination of current programming and archival materials. In a three-part project, the society will expand and enhance the museum's Web site, addressing how it disseminates programming and materials and how it meets the needs of its varied users. Phase 1 of the project (already under way) involves restructuring the Web site to include a searchable database and to accommodate audio and video clips. Phase 2 involves determining the Web site's content beyond the current scope-reviewing documentation of exhibitions between 1975 and 1996 and selecting material for the Web site, and digitizing microfilm archives documenting 1915 through 1975. In phase 3, the Web site will be promoted and marketed to broaden and diversify its audiences.

An * indicates that the grant is statewide.