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NEH & Louisiana

Between 2008 and 2012, institutions and individuals in Louisiana received $6.4 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities for projects that explore the human endeavor and preserve our cultural heritage. Below are some examples of projects since 2006.

  • Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, seventeen chairman’s grants totaling $476,500 were awarded for disaster relief to Louisiana cultural institutions. Funds were used to prevent mold damage to the rare-Bible collection at Notre Dame Seminary Library, New Orleans; to conserve and recover art at the New Orleans Museum of Art; and to move New Orleans jazz holdings, papers of colonial governors, and other collections from the historic Old U.S. Mint to a climate-controlled Baton Rouge facility. Other assistance recipients included Fort Jackson, Longue Vue House and Gardens, the Acadian Heritage and Culture Foundation, and the New Orleans Notarial Archives.
  • As part of the National Digital Newspaper Project, an NEH–Library of Congress partnership, about 100,000 pages of historic newspapers from 1860 to 1922, including the Natchitoches Times and the Feliciana Sentinel, are being digitized at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, with support from a $351,380 grant.
  • Tulane University, New Orleans, received $368,500 for roof repairs, shelving, ventilation, and temperature control for the archives and library of the Newcomb Center for Research on Women, which was badly damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
  • Prime Time Family Reading Time, developed by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and supported by numerous NEH grants over the years, works to break the cycle of intergenerational illiteracy. The program has reached nearly 40,000 at-risk children and their parents and guardians in Louisiana and thirty-eight other states since 1991. A recent study showed participants outperforming their peers on state achievement tests.
  • A $75,000 grant to Grambling State University made possible a one-month program on Homer, Shakespeare, and other writers in the Western humanities canon for faculty of historically black colleges and universities.
  • In 2011, libraries at Xavier University, New Orleans, and Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, plus the Assumption Parish Library, Napoleonville, displayed “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War,” a National Constitution Center exhibit on constitutional challenges posed by secession, slavery, and wartime threats to civil liberties. The libraries were among fifty nationally that received grants of $2,500 each for the project.
  • Louisiana State University, Alexandria, received a $6,000 grant to have a Southeast Library Network consultant lead a disaster planning workshop for library and archive staff.
  • KnowLA, an online state encyclopedia, was launched by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 2010. Within a year, it included more than 300 peer-reviewed entries, plus approximately 1,000 images.
  • All Over But to Cry, a documentary funded by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, won a regional Emmy. It tells the story of Hurricane Audrey, which smashed southwestern Louisiana in 1957, claiming more than 500 lives.