Awards List - March Council 2021

Public Humanities Projects

Planning

Reflections in Lafayette Park: Reimagining an Urban Oasis
Heart of Los Angeles Youth, Inc.
Los Angeles, CA
Award: Outright; $40,000
Planning to design three temporary exhibitions with public programs examining the history of Lafayette Park in Los Angeles.

Bears Ears: Living Land
Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation
Los Angeles, CA
Award: Outright; $75,000
Development of a temporary and traveling exhibition on the history and culture of tribes of the Bears Ears region in southeaster Utah.

Updating the Amache Interpretation Plan: Reframing Interpretation at a WWII Japanese Incarceration Site
Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, CA
Award: Outright; $40,000
Development of a master interpretive plan for exhibitions, site interpretation, and public programs for the Granada Relocation Center National Historic Landmark, known as Amache, and the Amache Museum.

The Earth(S)eed Archive: Science Fiction Creates the Future
New Children's Museum
San Diego, CA
Award: Outright; $58,425
Planning for an exhibit centered on the life, work, and impact of American science fiction writer Octavia Butler.

Curatorial Planning and Research for an Exhibition: The Near East to the Far West: French Orientalism and the American Frontier, at the Denver Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
Denver, CO
Award: Outright; $50,000
Planning for an exhibit that examines the impact of French Orientalism depictions of the American west in art, literature, and popular culture.

The Business of Addiction: The Economic and Moral Complexities of the Opium Trade
Captain Forbes House Museum
Milton, MA
Award: Outright; $40,000
Development of a temporary exhibition, including virtual elements, a teacher workshop, and public programing, examining the legacy of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opium trade.

The Power of Place: Interpreting a Freedom House
NC Dept. Natural & Cultural Resources:Historic Edenton
Edenton, NC
Award: Outright; $74,415
Planning for a historical interpretation of the home of civil rights activist Golden Frinks (1920–2004) in Edenton, North Carolina.

New Masks Now: Artists Innovating Masquerade in Contemporary West Africa
North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.
Raleigh, NC
Award: Outright; $69,023
Planning for a traveling exhibition, a catalog, and public programs exploring the contemporary arts of masquerade in four West African countries.

Sharing Stories of Community Resilience to Disasters: Designing a New Model for Collaborative Traveling Exhibits
North Dakota State University
Fargo, ND
Award: Match; $16,421
A planning grant to support a traveling exhibition about natural disasters.

Celestial Bodies: Native Astronomy of the US Southwest
Museum of New Mexico Foundation
Santa Fe, NM
Award: Outright; $40,000
Planning a temporary exhibition at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on astronomical knowledge and practice of southwestern U.S. Native tribes.

Turning the Tables: Hip-Hop and Media, From Fringe to Global Phenomenon
Paley Center for Media
New York, NY
Award: Outright; $40,000
Planning of an exhibition on the history and culture of hip-hop music and its relationship to the media.

Lost Labor of Love: The CETA Art and Humanities Project
City Lore, Inc.
New York, NY
Award: Outright; $75,000
Planning for a traveling exhibit about the 1970s Federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), that provided work for artists.

Historias del Westside: Museo del Westside Inaugural Exhibition
Esperanza Peace and Justice Center
San Antonio, TX
Award: Outright; $75,000
Planning a permanent exhibition for the Museo del Westside and tours of the eleven-building complex comprising the Mexican-American historic district on San Antonio’s Westside.

Implementation

Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971
Academy Foundation
Beverly Hills, CA
Award: Outright; $100,000
Implementation of an exhibition exploring the history of African American representation in cinema.

Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting at the Islamic Courts
Museum Associates
Los Angeles, CA
Award: Outright; $400,000
Implementation of a traveling exhibition on the arts of Islamic courtly dining culture from the eighth through the nineteenth centuries, including a catalog and public programs.

The Sand Creek Massacre Exhibition
State Historical Society of Colorado
Denver, CO
Award: Outright; $400,000
Implementation of a permanent exhibition about the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal members.

Let’s Talk About It: Women’s Suffrage
American Library Association
Chicago, IL
Award: Outright; $249,999
Resources and training for a nationwide reading and discussion program focused on the history of suffrage and its aftermath.

Fire! The Great Chicago Fire at 150
Chicago Historical Society
Chicago, IL
Award: Outright; $376,503
Implementation of a permanent exhibition and accompanying public programs analyzing how the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 shaped the city.

Emmett Till's Journey Home: A Story of Racism that Shocked a Nation
Children's Museum of Indianapolis
Indianapolis, IN
Award: Outright; $400,000
Implementation of a traveling exhibition on Emmett Till, whose lynching at the age of fourteen in 1955 was a major turning point in the civil rights movement.

Revisioning the Spencer Museum of Art’s Collection Galleries
University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc.
Lawrence, KS
Award: Outright; $400,000
Implementation of a thematic reinstallation of the permanent collection at the Spencer Museum of Art.

Implementation of the Worcester Art Museum's Arms and Armor Galleries
Worcester Art Museum
Worcester, MA
Award: Outright; $400,000
Implementation of the reinstallation of a permanent collection of medieval arms and armor, including open storage, a visible conservation lab, and a study center.

Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art
Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts
Minneapolis, MN
Award: Outright; $400,000
Implementation of a traveling exhibit examining the expression of supernatural and otherworldly ideas in American art.

Humanities Discussions
Warrior Chorus: American Democracy
Aquila Theatre Company Inc.
New York, NY
Award: Outright; $399,980
Public programs led by veterans and scholars based on classical Greek and American historical texts to address the meaning of democracy.

Revisiting New York: 1962–64
Jewish Museum
New York, NY
Award: Outright; $100,000
Implementation of a temporary exhibition exploring the cultural, historical, and aesthetic shifts in American art from 1962–64.

Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West National Traveling Exhibition
New-York Historical Society
New York, NY
Award: Outright; $650,000
Implementation of a traveling exhibition on the religious aspects of westward expansion in the nineteenth century.

Flora Borinqueniana: Three Centuries of Botanical Illustrations
Para la Naturaleza, Inc.
San Juan, PR
Award: Outright; $290,750
Implementation of a traveling exhibition on the history, science, and politics of botanical illustrations of Puerto Rican flora.

Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America
University of Texas, Austin
Austin, TX
Award: Outright; $99,999
Implementation of a single-site, temporary exhibition on the relationships between secular and liturgical garments and the art of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Latin America.

Media Programs

Development

TEZUKA: God of Manga
Catticus Corporation
Berkeley, CA
Award: Outright; $75,000
Development of an eighty-two-minute documentary on the artist and writer Osamu Tezuka (1928–89), a key figure in the development and popularization of Japanese comics and animation.

Media Projects Production
Lost Highways Podcast
State Historical Society of Colorado
Denver, CO
Award: Outright; $310,536
Production of eight episodes of a podcast series on Colorado and Western history.

Our Mr. Matsura
Center for Independent Documentary, Inc.
Boston, MA
Award: Outright; $74,791
Development of a feature-length documentary on Sakae “Frank” Matsura (1873–1913), a Japanese photographer who came to live in the Pacific Northwest in the early twentieth century.

Kaboom! How Comics Changed America
Filmmakers Collaborative, Inc.
Melrose, MA
Award: Outright; $75,000
Development of three, sixty-minute films exploring the history of comics in American culture.

Canada Lee, Native Son
Documentary Educational Resources
Watertown, MA
Award: Outright; $75,000
Development of a feature length documentary examining the life of influential actor, athlete, musician, and civil rights activist Canada Lee (1907–52).

Sun Ra from Saturn
New York Foundation for the Arts
Brooklyn, NY
Award: Outright; $74,970
Development of a sixty-minute documentary film examining the life and work of jazz musician and forerunner of Afrofuturism Sun Ra (1914–93).

Production

The Audio History Project
Radio Diaries
Brooklyn, NY
Award: Outright; $250,000
Match; $100,000
Production of fifteen documentaries for radio and podcast on twentieth-century American history and culture.

Storming Caesar's Palace
Women Make Movies, Inc.
New York, NY
Award: Outright; $500,000
A feature-length documentary about the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in Las Vegas in the 1970s.

One Person, One Vote?
Women Make Movies, Inc.
New York, NY
Award: Outright; $500,000
A feature-length documentary examining the history of the Electoral College with a focus on how race and slavery shaped the voting process.

Genealogies of Modernity Podcast
Forbes Avenue Foundation
Pittsburgh, PA
Award: Outright; $299,900
Production of a podcast series on the meaning and origins of modernity, as well as supplementary components including a website, colloquia, and animated videos.

Short Documentaries

American Muslim
Filmmakers Collaborative, Inc.
Melrose, MA
Award: Outright; $300,000
Production of a series of six short films about the history of Muslims in the United States.

The Bigger Picture
WNET
New York, NY
Award: Outright; $300,000
Production of a series of seven short films examining photographs that have shaped American history and culture.