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NEH & Iowa

Between 2006 and 2010, institutions and individuals in Iowa received $4.4 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Iowa Humanities Council for projects that explore the human endeavor and preserve our cultural heritage. Below are some examples.

  • Following the devastating floods of 2008, NEH awarded $116,700 in emergency grants to seven institutions to restore damaged pieces of Iowa’s cultural heritage, including a historic Barton Theatre Organ, materials in the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library, and an 1876 Coralville schoolhouse.
  • Through a $203,880 challenge grant, the Dubuque County Historical Society has raised $611,640 in private funds to support a director of interpretation and humanities programming at its three museums, visited by more than 200,000 people each year.
  • Luther College, Decorah, received $169,586 to sponsor a five-week summer institute for thirty high school teachers on the history and relevance of the Holocaust.
  • The first comprehensive digital Sanskrit lexical reference is being developed by the Maharishi University of Management in Maharishi Vedic City in cooperation with the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon, with help from a $177,872 grant.
  • A permanent exhibition on the Norwegian immigrant experience was supported by a $40,000 planning grant to the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, a complex of 16 buildings in downtown Decorah and the most comprehensive museum in the United States dedicated to a single immigrant group.
  • With two $5,000 grants, the State Historical Society of Iowa ensures that pieces of Iowa’s history, such as battle flags from Iowa volunteers in the Spanish-American War and the papers of former Iowa governor William Larrabee, are kept for future generations.
  • An award of $4,800 supported the provision of training and supplies to improve the care of nineteenth-century photographs and manuscripts in the collections of the Sac and Fox Tribe, used for research, interpretation, and educational outreach at the Meskwaki Cultural Center and Museum, near Tama.
  • The German American Heritage Center, Davenport, received $5,000 to develop a long-range plan to care for its letters, photographs, artifacts, and documents relating to German immigration in the area from 1795 to the present.
  • In 2009, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the Coon Rapids, Iowa, farm of Roswell Garst, Humanities Iowa sponsored a three-day conference and a new play based on that historic meeting and subsequent friendship.
  • More than eight thousand cyclists who come to Iowa every year for RAGBRAI (the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) can also learn about Iowa’s archaeological heritage at sites and small towns across the state, thanks to support from Humanities Iowa provided to the Office of the State Archaeologist.