Public humanities programs enable millions of Americans to explore significant humanities works, ideas, and events. They offer new insights into familiar subjects and invite reflection upon important questions about human life. The division supports a wide range of public humanities programs that reach large and diverse public audiences. These programs make use of a variety of formats—interpretation at historic sites, television and radio productions, museum exhibitions, Web sites and other digital media. Examples of funded projects include Ken Burns’s Civil War documentary, which increased public understanding of a pivotal point in American history; the Walters Art Museum exhibition The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible, which gave visitors insights into the role of religion in the Middle Ages; and the reinterpretation of Historic Hudson Valley’s Phillipsburg Manor, an eighteenth-century New York mill site, through which visitors learn about the contributions of enslaved African Americans in the North.

Tom Phelps is the Director of the Division of Public Programs. He holds degrees in fine arts from Utah State University and an MLS in Library and Information Science from the University of Oregon. Before coming to NEH, Tom served as the Deputy Director of and the Director of Public Relations and Programming at the Salt Lake City Public Library. Tom also teaches classes in library administration and management at the University of Maryland College of Library and Information Services.

Prizes won by NEH-supported television and radio documentaries, exhibitions, site interpretations, Web sites, and other public programs since 1979

  10       Emmy^® awards

  10       George Foster Peabody awards for excellence in
              broadcasting

    2       GRAMMY^® awards

Other statistics:

152       NEH-supported television and film programs broadcast,
              1994-2009

139       NEH-supported long-term exhibitions opened,
              1987-2009

216       NEH-supported traveling exhibitions opened,
              1991-2009