Between 2006 and 2010, institutions and individuals in Illinois received $37 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Illinois Humanities Council for projects that explore the human endeavor and preserve our cultural heritage. Below are some examples.
- The Papers of Abraham Lincoln are being digitized by the Illinois Historic Preservation Society with $370,000 in grants to make them freely accessible online by 2015.
- The one-hundredth anniversary of architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago was the reason for $299,000 in grants to produce a 60-minute television documentary, an online and panel exhibition, and the Virtual Burnham Initiative—a multimedia online resource that transforms a selection of flat images from the 1909 Plan of Chicago into 3D models accessible through the website.
- With the fall of the Qing dynasty, the ancient Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiantangshan were plundered. In 2010, after a painstaking global search to find and scan these far-flung works of art, the temples’ contents were digitally reunited and made viewable in situ at the Smart Museum of the University of Chicago, assisted by grants totaling $310,000.
- In 1889, Progressive Movement pioneer Jane Addams, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, founded the Hull-House social settlement in Chicago. With a $350,000 grant, the Hull-House Museum substantially expanded its exhibit space. Workshops for eighty schoolteachers were supported by a $150,000 grant in 2005 to the University of Illinois at Chicago.
- Between 2010 and 2012, thirty libraries across the state will receive $2,500 each to hold reading, viewing, and discussion programs about the NEH-supported documentary and biography Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women.
- With a $65,000 grant, the Society of Architectural Historians in Chicago plans to develop the electronic infrastructure for Buildings of the United States Online, the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive online database of American architectural history.
- One hundred thousand pages of historic newspapers such as the Chicago Eagle and the Day Book from 1860 to 1922 are being digitized at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign thanks to a $398,000 grant.
- In recent summers, grants totaling $440,000 have brought two hundred and sixty schoolteachers to Springfield for week-long workshops titled Abraham Lincoln and the Forging of Modern America.
- The exhibition titled “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music” recently toured the state making stops in six rural communities. The twelve-year partnership between the Illinois Humanities Council and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Services has brought exhibitions to 70 small towns in Illinois since 1998.
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Illinois’s Meaning of Service program works with thousands of young people to help them understand the nature and rewards of volunteerism. The program is active in eight AmeriCorps sites in Illinois.