Connecticut

Keeler Tavern Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, a local headquarters during a 1777 Revolutionary War skirmish between raiding British troops and Patriot forces, recently received a $15,000 grant from 1772 Foundation to help fund exterior restoration work on its Caretaker’s Cottage. The 900 s.f. building was moved to the site in the mid-19th century to provide additional space for lodgers visiting what had become the Resseguie Hotel. Located at the center of the museum’s campus, the Cottage overlooks the picturesque brick-walled garden and Garden House designed by renowned architect Cass Gilbert, who with his family owned the historic property for the first half of the 20th century.

Mystic Seaport announced today it is the recipient of a $150,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support components of the Museum’s new exhibit Voyaging in the Wake of the Whalers. The award is part of the Institute’s Museums for America Learning Experiences program. The new 4,000-square foot exhibit, scheduled to open in the Museum’s Stillman Building in summer 2015, will be an interdisciplinary exploration of America’s historic and contemporary relationship with whales and whaling.

Mystic Seaport and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center received a grant of $30,095 from Connecticut Humanities (CTH) to support a project, Connecticut Indian Whalers:  Work, Community, and Life at Sea. The grant was given through the Connecticut at Work initiative, a program that supports a wide range of community-oriented programs that examine the past, present, and future of work in the lives of Connecticut residents, including The Smithsonian Institutions’ The Way We Worked exhibition as well as dozens of small exhibitions, internet-based applications, lectures, panel discussions, author talks, book and film discussions, and similar programming.

Mystic Arts Center is pleased to announce that it has received a Capacity Building Grant from Connecticut Humanities. Funding from CTH will allow MAC to undertake its first professionally-facilitated strategic planning process during a landmark year, with 2014 marking MAC’s second century since its founding. CTH’s grant of $9,999 helps MAC cover the costs of hiring a professional consultant from TDC in Boston to guide and facilitate the process. Planning at MAC began September 2014 and will end with the completed five-year strategic plan in April 2015. The finished plan will serve to guide MAC's activities for the next five years.

Maine

L.C. Bates Museum at Good Will-Hinckley is pleased to receive two Museums for America grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The $27,994 Museums for America Learning Grant will support the museum in providing 1,700 rural fourth grade students and their families museum-based STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) educational programming. With the IMLS $27,171 Museums for America Collections Stewardship grant, the museum will conserve 63 historically and scientifically significant ornithological taxidermy bird mounts and their associated case housing, and a large blue marlin caught by Ernest Hemingway. The grant will improve the long-term care of these natural history specimens, educate the museum’s visitors, and raise awareness about the importance of collections conservation.

The Seal Cove Auto Museum is working with a math teacher and middle school students at the Tremont School to model cars and car parts with a 3D printer that the school acquired this fall. The students have come to the museum to learn about Brass Ear cars, and start brainstorming automotive items they could potentially model. Over the winter they will learn how to use the printer by designing and printing models of various car parts. When the museum opens again for the season next spring, the students will have ready a display for an exhibit that teaches how a car engine works.

The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) proudly announces that the Saco Museum and Leslie Rounds are the recipients of an Award of Merit from the AASLH Leadership in History Awards for the exhibit "I My Needle Ply with Skill": Maine Schoolgirl Needlework of the Federal Era. The AASLH Leadership in History Awards, now in its 69th year, is the most prestigious recognition for achievement in the preservation and interpretation of state and local history. 

The Maine Photo Project, a statewide photography collaboration in 2015, is pleased to announce that it is the recipient of a $4,200 Project Grant from the Maine Arts Commission. The award—which was made to the Maine Photo Project’s fiscal agent, the Maine Historical Society—will support the collaborative marketing efforts of the Maine Photo Project, including the production of its website and a printed brochure that will be distributed at museums, galleries, cultural centers, and visitor information centers throughout the state. The Maine Photo Project is also pleased to welcome a new participating organization, the Portland Museum of Art, whose related exhibition offering will be Rose Marasco: Index, on view April 10 through August 16, 2015.

The Portland Museum of Art will close for six weeks beginning January 2016 so the staff can reinstall its permanent collection throughout the museum. The museum announced the closing as part of its long-term strategic plan. The plan also includes organizational changes that give contemporary art curator Jessica May the title of chief curator. She will oversee the museum’s collection of 18,000 objects and lead a curatorial team that includes American art curator Karen Sherry and European art curator Andrew Eschelbacher, who recently joined the museum. Diana Greenwold has been hired as a curatorial fellow. The moves fall under the umbrella of a new initiative called PMA 2016: Your Museum, Reimagined. It is designed to position and prepare the PMA for additional growth, said director Mark Bessire.

Massachusetts

Natick Historical Society is proud to announce that it has developed a new brand image and is now applying it to all its marketing and educational materials, such as a traveling kiosk.

The Berkshire Museum has been working in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History to bring Spark!Lab to the Berkshires. Spark!Lab is an interactive active space that provides opportunities for children and families to explore inventive creativity by means of challenges that address real-world problems. The Berkshire Museum’s Spark!Lab is part of a nation-wide initiative to engage young people in the act of invention and innovation, cultivating the next generation of creative problem-solvers. It is the third Spark!Lab in the country.

Historians opened the 113-year-old time capsule inside the Old State House’s golden lion statue on October 9. The time capsule included sealed letters, photographs, and newspaper articles in near-perfect condition. Materials from the time capsule will be on display at the Old State House later this fall. By the end of the month, the society hopes to have compiled a new time capsule to be placed in the lion before it is put back on top of the building.

Plimoth Plantation has opened a renovated crafts center and new bread-making facility. Weaving, furniture inlaying, rug hooking, beer brewing, and scrimshaw are some of the exhibits guests can visit at the crafts center. The Plimoth Bread Company makes bread in a wood-fired clay oven much as it was made in the 17th century.

The Art Complex Museum received two grants: one from the Duxbury Cultural Council for a “Complex Collaboration” with students from The Duxbury Middle School; another from the Plymouth County Development Commission to defray the cost of the museum’s annual newsletter.

The Hull Lifesaving Museum announced that the Point Allerton US Lifesaving Station, which is listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places, has been awarded a $50,000 matching grant from the Massachusetts Preservation Projects Fund through the Massachusetts Historical Commission, William Francis Galvin, Chairman. Together with matching funds raised from private sources over the past several months, this grant will allow the museum to begin restoration work on the station this spring, including replacing damaged siding, window and door restoration, and historically accurate exterior painting. The museum has also just completed the Stony Beach Outdoor Interpretation Project. The goal of the project is to make the history of the area more accessible for casual visitors such as dog walkers and sightseers, and for those who stop by during hours when the museum is not open. The project was funded in part by Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Captain Jackson's Historic Chocolate Shop, located in the historic Clough House on the rear of the Old North Church campus, provides 18th century chocolate making demonstrations by educators in colonial clothing, the only living history demonstration on the Freedom Trail. The popularity of Captain Jackson's has grown tremendously this year, and Yankee Magazine recognized it in the May/June 2014 Travel Guide as an Editor's Choice for "Best Chocolate Fix." Additionally, last fall Old North received a $10,000 grant from Mars, Inc. to create new educational programs, improve products, produce new signage, and increase marketing efforts. Old North's director of education, Erin Wederbrook Yuskaitis, is also currently developing new classroom lesson plans for 3rd-5th grades that connect colonial chocolate making with the Massachusetts Frameworks on history. Old North Executive Director Steve Ayres and Director of Retail Services Pam Bennett will report on the grant funding's outcome at the Colonial Chocolate Society annual conference in November at Monticello. 

A donation of 46 contemporary American prints was given to the University Museum of Contemporary Art (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) collection by Richard Gerrig in memory of his sister Risa Gerrig, a UMass alumna (BA, 1981). These prints represent all manner of special processes and innovative techniques in printmaking, such  as use of linen and cotton pulp, paint, and photo luminescent inks; black and white, and colored lithography; creative integration of collage and cut paper; incorporation of photographic images into digital prints; screen printing; and many others. Artists include Kiki Smith, Richard Artschwager, Polly Apfelbaum, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, and John Wesley, as well as numerous emerging artists.

The EcoTarium has announced its five-year, multi-faceted partnership with one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations, National Geographic. The partnership includes rebranding the EcoTarium’s theater to the Alden Digital Planetarium: A National Geographic Theater, as well as special access to one of the world’s largest and most diverse libraries of award-winning science, nature, and adventure films. The EcoTarium will commit a portion of programming each year exclusively to National Geographic films, a majority of which have been made available for the digital full-dome format to accommodate venues like the Alden Planetarium. Other benefits of the partnership include access to National Geographic’s wide variety of traveling exhibits, access to exciting and innovative educational resources for local programming, and special benefits for EcoTarium members.

In July, Boston Children’s Museum opened a new exhibit, My Sky, funded by NASA and created through a partnership between Boston Children’s Museum and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The exhibit is an immersive and inspiring traveling exhibit designed to engage adults and children, ages 5 – 10, in early investigations of astronomical science. The focus of the exhibit is on interactive explorations of objects and phenomena visible in the sky, encouraging families to “look up” not only when they visit the exhibit, but as a practice they adopt in their everyday lives. My Sky introduces children and adults to foundational science skills such as observation, pattern recognition, prediction, estimation, and creative thinking. My Sky will be at Boston Children’s Museum through January 4, 2015 followed by two installations at other New England children’s museums.

Norman Rockwell Museum announced the receipt of a two-year, $500,000 grant from the George Lucas Family Foundation to expand and re-imagine the museum’s educational programming with 21st century learning tools. The gift supports a larger two-year, $2 million universal access campaign to bring Norman Rockwell’s work, legacy and commitment to human rights to larger and diverse audiences. It will provide the museum with the opportunity to re-imagine its national education offerings, building upon the long-established educational curricula to make it compatible with Common Core and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) standards. In addition, the museum will modernize its online content delivery system to reach a larger and more diverse population of students, teachers, and life-long learners.

The Trustees of Reservations announced a new partnership with the Boston Public Market, due to open next summer, that will bring its experience and expertise in community programming to a wider audience.  The partnership marks the first time The Trustees of Reservations will offer programming on a site that is not located on one of its 113 reservations located across the state. The agreement is the culmination of an ongoing collaboration between the two entities and is the first significant nonprofit partnership announcement for the Boston Public Market, a nonprofit that is a partnership of the Boston Public Market Association, The Trustees, individual and corporate donors, foundations, the City of Boston, and the project’s seed funder, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The following members received Cultural Investment Portfolio Grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council:
Addison Gallery of American Art, $11,300
American Textile History Museum, $15,700
Andover Historical Society, $2,500
Boston Children's Museum, $55,500
Cape Ann Museum, $11,300
Cape Cod Museum of Art, $10,000
Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, $8,300
Concord Art Association, $2,500
Concord Museum, $13,900
Danforth Museum of Art, $11,900
deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, $38,700
EcoTarium, $27,600
Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, $11,300
Fitchburg Art Museum, $10,200
Fruitlands Museums, Inc., $2,500
Fuller Craft Museum, $8,400
Gore Place Society, Inc., $7,400
Hancock Shaker Village, Inc., $18,000
Harvard Art Museums, $11,300
Historic Deerfield, Inc., $28,200
Historic New England , $55,500
Hull Lifesaving Museum, $7,100
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, $55,500
Lowell Parks and Conservation Trust, $3,600
Massachusetts Historical Society, $35,900
Museum of African American History, $12,300
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, $55,500
Museum of Science, $55,500
New Bedford Historical Society, $2,500
New Bedford Whaling Museum, $29,400
New England Museum Association, Inc., $5,800
New England Quilt Museum, $5,800
Newton Historical Society, Inc., $9,300
Old South Association in Boston, $8,900
Old Sturbridge Village, $41,600
Paul Revere Memorial Association, $8,300
Peabody Essex Museum, Inc., $55,500
Plimoth Plantation, Inc., $49,500
Smith College Museum of Art, $11,300
Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, $55,500
The Berkshire Historical Society, Inc., $3,600
The Berkshire Museum, $19,500
The Bostonian Society, $12,400
The Discovery Museums, $12,300
The Emily Dickinson Museum, $7,200
The House of the Seven Gables, $11,300
The Norman Rockwell Museum, $32,900
The Springfield Museums, $43,700
Tufts University Art Gallery, $2,500
USS Constitution Museum, Inc., $22,800
Williams College Museum of Art, $11,300
Worcester Art Museum, $55,500

New Hampshire

Laconia Historical and Museum Society has been awarded a Cultural Conservation Grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts to support the conservation of the Moulton Opera House grand drape theater curtain. The Laconia Historical and Museum Society, The City of Laconia and The Laconia Public Library will work together to complete this project. Under the guidance of “Curtains without Borders”, an organization dedicated to documenting and preserving historic painted stage scenery, conservation work is scheduled to begin the week of October 20. The public is encouraged to stop by to view the work in progress during normal library hours that week. Those interested in assisting with the conservation work are asked to call Laconia Historical and Museum Society at 603-527-1278. A Community Reception is being planned for the “Unveiling” of the Moulton Opera House Theater Drape in early November.

The Monadnock Center for History and Culture and the Monadnock Folklore Society have received a grant from the NH Council for the Arts to support their exhibit, "Gents Bow & Ladies Know How: Three Centuries of Traditional Dance in the Monadnock Region" opening in January 2015.

The Museum of Art of the University of New Hampshire is pleased to announce its Collection Study Area, a new and important learning space constructed within the galleries, is open for faculty teaching and research. As an academic museum, experiential learning and object-based study is at the heart of what we do—this exciting renovation project, funded by private donations, makes our principal mission visible to all visitors, highlighting our commitment to teaching through the fine arts. This summer the museum added prints by two artists whose work explores their African-American racial identities: Details, 1996, a set of 21 photogravures by Lorna Simpson, and three intaglio impressions of ironing boards, Mammy, Carolina, and Mattie Lee, 2012, by Willie Cole.

Rhode Island

The Rhode Island Creative and Cultural Economy Bonds Question is on the November 4, 2014 election ballot in Rhode Island as a bond issue. The measure, if approved by voters, would approve the issuance of up to $35 million in bonds to fund capital improvement, preservation and renovation projects for public and nonprofit centers of culture and the arts, museums and historic sites.

Providence Children’s Museum, an active place where kids and grown-ups play and learn together, recently received a $10,000 grant from the Dominion Foundation – the philanthropic arm of Dominion Resources, Inc.  The funds support kids’ hands-on science learning in activities related to the museum’s Play Power exhibit, Imagination Playground, and the participatory play “No Time to Waste,” about the importance of recycling.

A hand-carved sign hung outside the Rhode Island Historical Society's Benevolent Street headquarters just over two weeks ago has been stolen and is presumed destroyed. The society announced October 10 that the sign, made by Reedy's Woodworks in North Scituate at a cost of nearly $2,200, had been taken.

A water-damaged painting at the RISD Museum is being restored due to a grant from Bank of America. The painting, The Eternal Presence (An Homage to Alejandro García Caturla), was damaged by water during a loan to Paris years ago. The funding is through Bank of America's 2014 global Art Conservation Project. Bank of America has provided grants to museums in 27 countries supporting 72 conservation projects since 2010. “This painting is one of Wifredo Lam’s most important works and one of the highlights of the RISD Museum’s 20th-century collection,” said RISD Museum Director John W. Smith. “This very generous grant from Bank of America allows the museum to undertake a major conservation project that will ensure that future generations will continue to experience and appreciate this landmark work.” The restoration will take place at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center, in Williamstown, MA, by Thomas Branchik, Director and Conservator of Paintings. Branchik is a conservation expert who was involved in the original examination and stabilization of damage early in his career. The new restoration project includes continued stabilization of the composition, replacement of the lining, and a new stretcher.

Vermont

Rokeby Museum has received a grant from the Walter Cerf Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation to purchase shelving for collections storage. The grant will outfit storage space in the museum's new Education Center and is the first of several steps in improving storage throughout the museum.

Brattleboro Museum and Art Center received a $5,250 Vermont Arts Council Arts Partnership Grant to support activities that strengthen communities through the arts.

New England

Congratulations to the following NEMA members on receiving a National Endowment for the Arts grant:

Wadsworth Atheneum, $25,000, to support "Matrix," an exhibition series for emerging and under-represented artists.  Designed to present the most recent trends in contemporary art in dialogue with the traditional art offerings of an encyclopedic art museum, the series has presented works by more than 160 artists since its inception in 1975.  

Yale University Art Gallery, $35,000, to support the exhibition Roman in the Provinces: Art on the Periphery of Empire. The exhibition, divided into sections that distinguish between public and private realms, will include mosaics, ceramics, sculpture, glass, textiles, coins, and jewelry to create a complete picture of life in the Roman provinces (2nd through 6th centuries CE).

deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, $45,000, to support the exhibition and catalogue Walden.  The exhibition will examine the influence of Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" through the presentation of new commissions and existing works by local and national artists.

Smith College Museum of Art, $25,000, to support the exhibition and catalogue Mary Bauermeister: The New York Decade.  Focusing on Bauermeister's (b. 1934) work during the 1960s in New York, the exhibition will explore her association with Pop and Fluxus artists.

The following NEMA members received IMLS grants in 2014:

Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, $111,173, to perform high-quality, rapid digital photography of key parts of its collections, prepare those images for collection management and educational access, and place many of them online for public viewing and aggregation. 

Mystic Seaport Museum, $150,000, to develop an introductory video and projection globe—two critical multimedia pieces for its upcoming Voyaging in the Wake of the Whalers exhibit that will explore America's historic and contemporary relationship with whales and whaling. 

Victoria Mansion. $24,122, to re-house its textile collection of 586 unique, high-end fabrics and trimmings dating from the 1860s. 

L.C. Bates Museum, $27,171, to conserve 63 historically and scientifically significant ornithological taxidermy bird mounts and their associated case housing, and a large blue marlin caught by Ernest Hemingway. $27,994, to provide 1,700 rural fourth grade students and their families museum-based STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) educational programming including integrated naturalist, astronomy, and art activities that explore Maine's environment and its solar and lunar interactions. 

Museum of Science, $460,292, to launch the "Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies" (COVES) project, which will unite science centers across the country in the systematic collection, analysis, and reporting of visitor experience data. $150,000, to prototype several exhibit elements to be included in the Charles River Gallery, a new 3,000-square-foot exhibition gallery atop the Charles River Dam that explores the connection between the science of the natural world and that of the engineered world.

Smith College Museum of Art, $21,445, to conserve eleven objects from its collection, including six paintings, two early American pastel portraits, and three pieces of sculpture in order to support the museum's strategic goals of preserving objects in their care and using those objects to educate. 

Peabody Essex Museum, $473,453, to expand and refine Access App, a prototyped open-source mobile application intended to increase accessibility to museum collections by adding video capture capabilities, improve the usability of the interface, and make the entire platform easily reusable by other cultural institutions..

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, $150,000, to document approximately 20,000 object records and digital images from its anthropological collections in its collections database.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, $118,737, to digitize significant volumes from the Julius S. Held Collection of Rare Books, in the Clark Library, and make these materials available through the library's digital collections interface, the Internet Archive, the Getty Research Portal, the Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth, and the Digital Public Library of America.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, $102,500, to complete the second phase of a tapestry conservation project that will result in the treatment and reinstallation of eight 16th-century Flemish tapestries that visually dominate the museum's Tapestry Room. 

USS Constitution Museum, $150,000, to develop a research-based, hands-on exhibit providing visitors of all ages the opportunity to learn about the origins of the "USS Constitution."  

Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, $150,000, to design and develop a new, unified interface using rich digital content from the museum's collection to create vivid multimedia experiences in modules bringing to life the art, legacy, and times of American illustrator Norman Rockwell.

Discovery Museum, $149,477, to create the "Brain Building Zone," an early learning gallery to guide parents in developing turn-taking skills, including observing, responding to, and initiating nonverbal and verbal communication with their infants. 

Memorial Hall Museum, $149,835, to create "Impressions from a Lost World," an array of programs to engage regional, national, and tourist audiences in learning about the history of the 1835 dinosaur track discoveries along the Connecticut River Valley.

Harvard Museum of Natural History, $149,988, to develop, in partnership with the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), detailed biological species "stories" that show how the scientific name attached to a species is the product of meticulous study and the progression of knowledge over time.

Museum of African American History, $135,990, to build upon past collections initiatives; strengthen its institutional collections and interpretation capacity; increase its presence as an incubator for African American professionals in the field; and increase access to its collections among schools, educators, researchers, and the public.

Moffatt-Ladd House, $24,996, to undertake a comprehensive project to develop onsite and online learning experiences and resources for students in grades 9-12 centered on the issues addressed by the 1779 Petition of Freedom.

Blithewold Mansion and Gardens, $25,000, to purchase the supplies necessary to inventory its collection of 4,800 items and will convert the existing collections management system to a PastPerfect database in order to improve management of and access to its archival and three-dimensional collections.

Newport Art Museum and Art Association, $10,938, to expand its Museum Studies (MUSE) program which works with underserved high school students to promote interest in museum careers through active engagement with arts, cultural, and historic preservation institutions in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.

ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, $150,000, to create a master plan to upgrade, maintain, and transform the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain campus.

Vermont Historical Society, $117,521, to undertake a project to research and document the political, social, and cultural changes of the 1970s in Vermont to create a body of primary resources for this period in Vermont's state history.