Grab Them By The Humanities

Any joy spread by this account was made possible by federal funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, or the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Documenting Modern Living: Digitizing the Miller House and Garden Collection

Organization:  Indianapolis Museum of Art Archives

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities

Grant Program: Preservation and Access Humanities Collections and Reference Resources

Grant Period:  2012-2015

Description: The Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana, is one of the country’s most highly regarded examples of mid-century Modernist residences. The Miller House was designed by Eero Saarinen, with interiors by Alexander Girard and landscape design by Daniel Urban Kiley. In 2009 members of the Miller family donated the house and gardens as well as many of its original furnishings to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. At that same time, the large and comprehensive records of the Miller House and Garden were transferred to the IMA Archives.  In early 2012, the IMA was awarded a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to digitize a large portion of the collection and to make it accessible online.

Indiana State Senators: Joe Donnelly Todd Young

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Nuta’at Mingqusqat: The New Alutiiq Sewer’s Club

Organization: Koniag, Inc. / Alutiiq Museum

Granting Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

Grant Program:  Native American/Native Hawaiian Museum Services Program

Grant Period: 2013-2014

Description: Through a grant from IMLS, the Alutiiq Museum developed Nuta'at Mingqusqat: The New Sewer's Club—a project to educate and recruit developing adult skin sewers, create educational resources on skin sewing, and enrich community knowledge of the art. The Alaska Native art of skin sewing—in which Alutiiq garments are carefully and elaborately embellished with intricate handwork—has not been widely practiced on Kodiak since the early twentieth century. Alaska had few preserved examples of ancestral clothing to guide the group. On October 30, 2014, at the tribal Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, Alaska, museum staff and a sewing group unveiled a caribou skin parka which the sewers constructed by hand and lovingly call "Little Lady." One of the sewers, Hanna Sholl, danced in the garment while others sang Alaska Native Alutiiq songs to welcome the garment to the museum.

Alaska State Senators: Lisa Murkowski Dan Sullivan

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project:  David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora

Organization:  University of Maryland College Park -  David C. Driskell Center

Granting Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services

Grant Program:  Museum Grants for African American History and Culture

Grant Period: 2014-2016

Description: Located at the University of Maryland in College Park, the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora is a lasting tribute to the life and work of Professor David C. Driskell—an artist, university professor emeritus of art, art historian, curator, and collector who has devoted his career to the study and presentation of African American art. The IMLS grant will provide support for documenting Professor Driskell’s one-of-a-kind archive, assembled over more than six decades and consisting of an estimated 50,000 objects. Accessibility to the archives will be enhanced through an online presence, thus increasing outreach and exchange of ideas with the surrounding community as well as with researchers and art professionals both nationally and internationally.

Maryland State Senators: Benjamin L. Cardin Chris Van Hollen

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Creative Art Therapy at Fort Belvoir

Organization: Fort Belvoir Community Hospital Brain Wellness Center

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Arts

Grant Program: Military Healing Arts Partnerships

Grant Period: 2013-present

Description: The National Endowment for the Arts is at the forefront of a national effort to support arts and health in the military. The NEA Military Healing Arts Partnership supports creative art therapy programs to help our nation’s wounded, ill, and injured service members and their families in their recovery, reintegration or transition to civilian life.

Virginia State Senators: Tim Kaine Mark R. Warner

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Visit the Moab Music Festival

Promotional video for the MMF made in 2013.

Project: Moab Music Festival

Organization: Moab Music Festival, Inc.

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Arts

Grant Program: Art Works, Challenge America, American Masterpieces, Arts Learning

Grant Period: 2001-2018

Description: Every September, the award-winning Moab Music Festival brings world-class musicians to stunning red rock venues around Moab, Utah for a feast of chamber music, jazz, and traditional music concerts. We call it "music in concert with the landscape™," celebrating old and new chamber music, jazz with a Latin flavor, and traditional music from around the globe. These festivals have been supported by NEA funds since 2001. 

Utah State Senators: Mike Lee Orrin G. Hatch

[nypl]

In honor of New York City Restaurant Week (which is celebrating its 20th anniversary and starts Monday) here is a Caturday with a culinary twist - it’s a 1900 menu from the Au Chat Noir Hotel and Restaurant, which had locations on both 28th Street and West Broadway. Purrrrfect, right? It also gives us an opportunity to send you to our newly redesigned What’s On The Menu page, where you can transcribe menus just like this one from our extensive collection to make the information more accessible to researchers. Oh, wait, one more thing. We also have a food-related exhibition at our 42nd Street building right now - Lunch Hour NYC. It’s free and fabulous - just ask the Times. Learn more about it in this new piece by Edible Manhattan. Anyone else hungry?

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: What’s on the Menu

Organization: New York Public Library

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities and Institute of Museum and Library Services

Grant Program:  Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants (NEH) and  Sparks! Ignition Grants for Libraries (IMLS)

Grant Period: 2011-2012

Description: NYPL digitized and created  crowd sourcing software to transcribe their collection of over 45,000 menus with funding from NEH and IMLS. The NYPL’s restaurant menu collection is one of the largest in the world, used by historians, chefs, novelists and everyday food enthusiasts.

New York State Senators: Charles E. Schumer Kirsten E. Gillibrand

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Preserving, Digitizing, and Providing Access to the Keith/Albee Vaudeville Theater Collection

Organization: University of Iowa Special Collections

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities

Grant Program: Humanities Collections and Reference Resources

Grant Period: 2013-2017

Description:  The conservation treatment, digitization, and preparation for crowdsourced transcription of 150 oversize scrapbooks documenting the Benjamin Keith and Edward Albee vaudeville theater circuit.

Iowa State Senators: Joni Ernst Chuck Grassley

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Sanctuary and Sustenance: The Story of Many Journeys

Organization: ART WORKS Projects

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Arts

Grant Program: Art Works - Visual Arts

Grant Period: 2014-2016

Description: Sanctuary/Sustenance: The Story of Many Journeys was designed to highlight global refugee issues, by combining images by photographers Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, and Ron Haviv with film, spoken narratives, and music that reveals refugee family stories of displacement and reintegration.  The multimedia projection of photography, film, music, and words launched on June 20, 2013 in honor of World Refugee Day in cities around the world. The installation was projected on the facades of community and civic centers, houses of worship, places of learning and other locales that have historically opened their doors as places of welcome and shelter. 

Illinois State Senators: Tammy Duckworth Richard J. Durbin

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Aids Memorial Quilt Digitization and Mobile Applications

Organization: New School

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities

Grant Program: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants; Digital Humanities Implementation Grants;  Digital Projects for the Public: Discovery Grants

Grant Period: 2011-2017

Description: The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, often abbreviated to AIDS Memorial Quilt, is an enormous quilt made as a memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded the New School (New York) three separate grants to make the quilt more accessible to audiences around the world, giving the quilt a far broader reach than the headquarters of NAMES in Atlanta, GA. The digitization of the AIDS Memorial Quilt makes the quilt and the stories of the individuals commemorated in its panels accessible online, on tablets and by mobile app.

Georgia State Senators: Johnny Isakson David Perdue

New York State Senators: Kirsten E. Gillibrand Charles E. Schumer

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Glidden Parker Mural Project

Organization: City of Jackson, Michigan and the  Arts and Cultural Alliance of Jackson County

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Arts

Grant Program: Our Town

Grant Period: 2014-2017

Description: To support the preservation and relocation of the historic Consumers Power Lighted Glass Mural. The mural panels will be reassembled and the incandescent lighting sequence reconstructed and replaced with LED lights before installation in a new city park. Commissioned by the Consumers Power Company in 1969, the 28-foot-long mural depicting the story of electricity was designed and fabricated by the Glassart Studio in Scottsdale, Arizona, under the direction of artist Glidden Parker. The mural will be installed in a climate-controlled structure in a new central city park developed on the site of the former Consumers building downtown. The City of Jackson will partner with the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Jackson County to promote the project. This project became fully funded in October 2015, with groundbreaking taking place soon after and the installation of the mural began in January 2017.

Michigan State Senators: Gary C. Peters Debbie Stabenow

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Sotto Voce by Nilo Cruz

Organization: Arca Images, Inc.

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Arts

Grant Program: Art Works: Theater & Musical Theater

Grant Period: 2017

Description: To support performances of "Sotto Voce"by Nilo Cruz, which was shown previously by Arca Images, Inc. in 2014.  The play recounts the 1939 journey of the St. Louis, a ship that carried Jewish emigres escaping Nazi Germany. The refugees were refused entry as asylum seekers in several international ports and after several attempts, found refuge in four Western European countries. Only the passengers sent to England survived the Holocaust. Based on this historical incident and set both in the past and present, "Sotto Voce" addresses challenging issues pertaining to human migration. The play will be performed in Spanish with English interpretation.

Florida State Senators: Bill Nelson Marco Rubio

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project

Organization: Ballet Austin

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Arts

Grant Program: Access to Artistic Excellence: Dance

Grant Period: 2005

Description: Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project is an evening-length ballet that explores the issues surrounding the Holocaust. The piece is constructed in five sections each exploring the process of and response to extreme degradation, suffering and genocide. And while the work will explore the human ability to survive and triumph it also attempts to be a warning that nobody is immune to hatred and discrimination. Since its world premiere in Austin in April 2005, Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project has traveled to Pittsburgh in 2009, returning to Austin in 2012. The City of Miami hosted the project next in late 2012 followed by Denver, Colorado in 2013. In the fall of 2015, Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project traveled to a yet another community, bringing its important message of understanding, compassion and tolerance to audiences at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Texas State Senators: John Cornyn Ted Cruz

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Freedom on the Move

Organization: Cornell University

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities

Grant Program: Digital Humanities Implementation Grants

Grant Period: 2015-2017

Description:  Freedom on the Move (FOTM) creates a digital resource from an estimated 100,000 runaway slave advertisements from pre-1865 U.S. newspapers. Placed by enslavers when enslaved people attempted to escape, these ads included extensive information about fugitives. They comprise the richest source of information about enslaved individuals in the United States, yet no comprehensive collection of them exists. FOTM will collect these ads and use crowdsourcing to parse their data into a database, enabling sophisticated new analyses of the history of U.S. slavery. 

New York State Senators: Charles E. Schumer  Kirsten E. Gillibrand

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: Mosaic Program

Organizations: Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and Society of American Archivists (SAA)

Granting Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services

Grant Program: Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program

Grant Period: 2013-

Description: The professional workforce of librarians and archivists does not reflect society's diversity. With this three-year award, the Association of Research Libraries and the Society of American Archivists extends the successful ARL/SAA Mosaic Program, recruiting and supporting nine students from historically underrepresented groups. Mosaic's robust design provides participants with financial support for graduate-level archival education or special collections librarianship, emphasizing the development of digital curation and management skills. It also includes a paid internship in a partner ARL archive, a mentoring relationship, cohort building, leadership development, and career placement assistance.

Illinois and Washington, DC Senators: Tammy Duckworth Richard J. Durbin Michael D. Brown (shadow) Paul Strauss (shadow)

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Are You Mexican or American?

Students from West Marin Elementary School, Pt. Reyes, CA discuss identity. Produced by Los Cenzontles. www.loscenzontles.com

Project: Roots of Resilience 

Organization: Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Arts

Grant Program: Art Works

Grant Period: 2013-2016

Description: A series of traditional and contemporary live performances, web-based videos, and recordings will highlight the immigration experience, illuminating how personal and collective resilience have guided individuals and families through the challenging transitions particular to Mexican-American communities. Some performances will be supplemented with workshops, lecture-demonstrations, film screenings, and discussions.

California State Senators: Dianne Feinstein Kamala D. Harris

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Project: STEM Pillars

Organization: Pennsylvania State University

Granting Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services

Grant Program: STEM Expert Facilitation of Family Learning in Libraries and Museums (STEMEX)

Grant Period: 2016-

Description: Researchers from Penn State's College of Education, in partnership with the Schlow Centre Region Library, the Centre County Library, Discovery Space of Central Pennsylvania, and Shaver's Creek Environmental Center will explore approaches to working with STEM experts from Penn State University, local businesses, and a rural county agency. The project will use design-based research to iteratively develop family workshops on five personally relevant science themes that foster science conversations and inter-generational learning.

Pennsylvania State Senators: Robert P. Casey, Jr. Patrick J. Toomey

[grabthembythehumanities-blog]

Visit Original Link

Project: American Experience: John & Abigail Adams

Organization:  WGBH Educational Foundation/PBS

Granting Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities

Grant Program: Humanities Projects in Media

Grant Period:  2003-2006

Description:  Browse selected letters from three decades of correspondence between John and Abigail Adams chronicling their extraordinary political marriage and the birth of the American nation.  American Experience found actors Simon Russell Beale and Linda Emond to bring the Adamses to life in the television program. Here on the Web, listen to the actors read the famous words of a fascinating couple.

Massachusetts State Senators: Edward J. Markey Elizabeth Warren