Connecticut

Klaff’s has donated to the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum a portion of the proceeds from this year’s Klaff’s Jerry Levine Charity Golf Outing. The donation of $8,811.90 is one of the largest corporate gifts the museum has received this year. “We are very grateful to have received Klaff’s generous support again this year,” said Patsy Brescia, LMMM Chairman of the Board of Trustees. “This charitable donation and the museum’s ongoing relationship with Klaff’s have been invaluable to the Museum’s mission and its future.” 2016 marks the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum’s 50th anniversary and the museum will celebrate this milestone with programs that engage our communities and reimagine visitor experience of this National Historic Landmark. A series of collaborative ventures and interactive programs will make history, preservation, and this National Historic Landmark come to life for people of all ages.

The Lyman Allyn Art Museum is presently planning the reinstallation of American Art in the Palmer Galleries. Thanks to a gift of $250,000, the new installation will be implemented by museum personnel along with a recently hired project curator, Tanya Pohrt, Ph.D. of Hamden, CT, and an exhibition design firm, Amaze Design of Boston, MA. The new exhibition will supplant the existing “American Stories,” the mainstay of the museum’s educational programming. These galleries annually serve more than 4,000 schoolchildren on docent-led field trips, and provide enjoyable and educational gallery experience for thousands of adult visitors. This project will be the first major refurbishment of the primary galleries in more than a decade and will display works of art from Colonial times right up to the 21st century, featuring well-known and beloved paintings alongside furniture and other decorative arts. Special displays drawing attention to art from originating cultures will punctuate the visitor experience and provide opportunities to underscore the contributions of many immigrant groups that make up the pluralistic society America is today.

Maine

The L.C. Bates Museum is pleased to have support ($2,445.00) for humanities programs relating to the Blue Marlin caught by Pulitzer and Noble Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway. The program will bring scholar Susan Beegel to the museum to talk about the marine life in Hemingway’s book Old Man and the Sea and support family and students' Hemingway programs. With MAM, we will hold a June 27, 2016 workshop supported by IMLS on Collections Care including the preservation of the Marlin. Conservator Ron Harvey who is restoring the Marlin will present the free workshop.

Woodlawn Museum, Gardens & Park is pleased to announce that its Woodlawn School Program had record attendance in 2015. According to executive director, Joshua C. Torrance, “We had set an ambitious goal for ourselves at the start of 2015, to serve 1,000 students in a Woodlawn educational program either on our campus or in their classrooms. It is exciting to report that 965 students experienced a Woodlawn program this past year.” The number more than tripled those served in 2014. Woodlawn School Programs are funded through a designated Woodlawn Education Fund which allows area school children to participate free of charge, including transportation. This fund is supported with proceeds from the Ellsworth Antiques Show held annually in August at Woodlawn. Staff at Woodlawn work closely with school administrators, teachers and local community partners to develop age appropriate curriculums for students. Annual events for the Woodlawn School Program include 7th & 8th Grade “Innovations” Field Days in the spring and 5th & 6th Grade “History, Apples & Soil” Field Days in the fall. The field day programs bring nearly 600 students to the Woodlawn campus for a full day of learning and fun. The additional students served in 2015 participated in on-campus programs, school tours, croquet clinics on Woodlawn’s tournament-sized court, and a variety of in-school presentations.

Massachusetts

The North Andover Historical Society received a grant from the Elise A. Brown Fund in the amount of $2500 to support its ongoing summer enrichment program, Adventures in Time.

The Paul Revere Memorial Association is thrilled to announce that they have completed their capital campaign and have exceeded their $4m goal with a current total of $4,058,000 raised. The campaign is supporting the construction of our education and visitor center which will open in 2016.

The Boston Children’s Museum has announced it has created an artist-in residence program that will enable local artists to present their work in the museum’s Gallery space and have a conversation with museum visitors about the meaning and the inspiration behind their work. The new program, called Current, has been created in partnership with Alter Projects, an initiative that fosters artistic infrastructure through custom arts programming and consultation for artists.

The Boston Children’s Museum has announced that in collaboration with Maker Media, Inc. and WBZ-TV/CBS Boston it will host the first Boston Mini Maker Faire event on Saturday July 23, 2016. The Boston Mini Maker Faire will be held outside the Museum on Fort Point Channel. For additional information visit makerfaireboston.com and BostonChildrensMuseum.org.

The Foundation for MetroWest awarded $5,000 to The Discovery Museums in support of the development and pilot of Discovery Science: Out of School, a STEM enrichment program targeted to K-8 youth and delivered outside of the classroom. The museums will pilot the program with 350 youth at the Boys & Girls Clubs of MetroWest and Assabet Valley. Discovery Science: Out of School will provide hands-on STEM education to students in after school programs, modeled on the museums’ successful school field trip and Traveling Science Workshops programs. In 2015, the museums served more than 13,200 children through school field trips to the museums, and more than 29,000 through Traveling Science Workshop programs delivered in K-8 classrooms throughout New England.

The Fruitlands Museum in central Massachusetts is planning to integrate with the Trustees of Reservations. The boards of both organizations recently voted to approve the integration. The agreement will provide stronger financial stability to the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard for its long-term growth and expansion. Trustees President and CEO Barbara Erickson tells The Telegram & Gazette her organization is always looking for three things: natural, cultural and ecological significance. Fruitlands has all three. Fruitlands Museum, founded in 1914, features three separate museum collections of Shaker, Native American and American art and artifacts. It includes a farmhouse once home to the family of author Louisa May Alcott and two miles of recreational trails. The Trustees is a nonprofit conservation organization that oversees more than 100 historic recreational areas across the state.

Historic Deerfield, Inc. and the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association have recently purchased at auction a trove of 19th-century documents, consisting of journals, account books, maps, drawings, and notebooks, created by Deerfield residents Epaphras Hoyt (1765-1850) and his son Arthur (1811-1899). These manuscripts have been in private hands until now, and afford a new, significant perspective on Deerfield's history and the influence the Hoyts exerted on wider events. From the early 19th century until the close of the Mexican War, the observations of Epaphras Hoyt provide an unprecedented account of local, regional, and national events from the perspective of a highly literate and intellectually curious antiquarian and historian in rural western Massachusetts.

Historic Deerfield is pleased to announce a $22,690 grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. The award has supported the conservation of an artistically and historically important Chinese export lacquerware sewing table in the museum's collection. Furniture and Paper Conservators at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Williamstown, Mass., carried out the treatment over the course of a year. Historic Deerfield has received a $6,000 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to develop an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan specifically for its collections and to train a Collections Response Team of Historic Deerfield staff to prepare its buildings and collection objects when potentially damaging events are predicted, and to respond knowledgeably and efficiently to minimize damage to the collections after a flood, fire, or other disaster.

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that will allow the museum to expand and strengthen its Native American Fellowship program. Heading into its seventh year and boasting over two dozen alumni, PEM’s Native American Fellowship program ensures that talented Native Americans acquire the experience, knowledge and skills they need to excel as cultural leaders in the decades to come. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s transformative grant will expand the scope, scale and measurable impact of PEM’s Native American Fellowship program.

Abby Battis, Executive Director of the Rockport Art Association & Museum, (RAA&M) announced the recent action of its Board of Governors to accept the vote of the membership in approving the new name of the Association. The action amends the By-Laws to add the two words, “& museum” to the official name of the organization. “The addition of the phrase ‘& museum’ seems simple,” said Ms. Battis. “We see it as a major, strategic step to open our doors to more visitors, more members, more community involvement, and a stronger platform from which to support artists in Rockport and Cape Ann. This name change is a pivotal step in fulfilling our ongoing mission.”

The Museums on the Green, owned and operated by the Falmouth (MA) Historical Society, is currently undertaking the restoration and renovation of its circa 1730 Conant House, 65 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth. The project began in December 2015 and the contractor performing the work is Cape Associates out of Yarmouthport, MA. The architect for the project is Spencer & Vogt, Charlestown, MA. This is a project that is earmarked at $ 1.3 million and the Museums on the Green has been aided by grants that include: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Cultural Facilities Fund; the town of Falmouth’s Community Preservation Fund; the Hermann Foundation; the Lovell Charitable Foundation; the Falmouth Fund of the Cape Cod Foundation; the Gordon T. Heald Fund; the Willett Fund of the Cape Cod Foundation; the William G. Henry Trust; and several anonymous grants from other foundations. This project will provide research and archival space, exhibit space and office space for the Falmouth Historical Society while also restoring the 1730 portion of the structure. Completion is expected by August 2016.

The Museums on the Green is also working on a collaborative effort with the Cape Cod Conservatory, Salt Pond Areas Bird Sanctuaries, the Falmouth Art Center, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Falmouth Public Schools for a week-long camp for students ages 9-12. Entitled “Inspired by Nature”, attendees will spend one day each experiencing music, science, history, art and aquatics as they learn about how the natural world impacted the human world. The theme for 2016 is “Habitats”. This collaborative effort was made possible in part by a grant from the Edward Bangs Kelley and Elza Kelley Foundation of Cape Cod. 2016 will be the fourth year for this collaboration and it has grown each season.

Blood on the Snow is a new play by award-winning playwright Patrick Gabridge, with performances from May 13-29. The drama is set and staged in the Council Chamber of the Old State House. This world premiere production of Blood on the Snow is part of the Bostonian Society’s pioneering program to bring the story of the Old State House and Revolutionary Boston to life through live drama. The Bostonian Society and its partners will involve Boston students and teachers in the production through educational programming designed to foster an interest in history and the performing arts. Complete details can be found at www.bloodonthesnow.com.This project is funded in part by MassHumanities and is made possible by a unique partnership with the National Park Service.

Workers at Hancock Shaker Village have recently completed a $400,000 restoration project that consisted of scraping and repainting buildings and replacing windows and rotten wood. The project touched 20 of 23 buildings on the museum's Route 20 campus, and officials hope the new look will increase visitorship and prestige.

The Art Complex Museum's Japanese Tea Hut

The Art Complex Museum celebrates its 45th anniversary, this year, of bringing cultural events and programs to its visitors – mostly free of charge. As part of a year-long celebration, museum staff has planned improvements to the garden surrounding the Japanese Tea Hut used for tea ceremony presentations and several exciting artists’ demonstrations.

New Hampshire

The Boatshop at Strawbery Banke, a partnership between Piper Boatworks and Strawbery Banke Museum, broke ground this week. At the same time, the partners announced a fundraising challenge match. An anonymous donor has recently pledged $5,000 in matching funds as a challenge to other contributors who are inspired to support this new effort. The first phase of The Boatshop at Strawbery Banke, which will provide expanded maritime history-related exhibits, demonstrations and programs, is focused on the expansion of an existing building to accommodate a new workshop and demonstration space. The Boatshop is currently halfway to its fundraising goal of $20,000. Construction of the building will continue when the additional $10,000 from the challenge grant and the matching funds have been raised.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, through the New Hampshire Department of Historical Resources, has awarded an Emergency Response Plan grant to Strawbery Banke Museum. The FEMA grant underwrites the museum’s review and upgrades of the emergency response plan for the museum’s historic structures, landscapes and archaeological resources both above and below ground. Strawbery Banke’s buildings are surveyed, both formally and informally, on a regular basis. This survey will be conducted with the goal of documenting any limitations in the building structures that could be exacerbated in the case of a disaster. Specifically, the funding allows for a three-part program that consists of 1) surveying the buildings for potential areas that might be exacerbated in the case of a disaster; 2) creating emergency kits and updated procedural manuals for each resource, containing such items as tarps, water absorbent materials and resources to document features damaged or in danger of being lost; and 3) Strawbery Banke Museum staff training on implementation of the emergency response plan. A copy of the plan will be shared with City of Portsmouth emergency responders, the Police Department and the Fire Department. This project will re-assess known threats such as potential flooding and wind damage and identify other threats to historic buildings, landscapes and archaeological resources.

The Heritage House Program (HHP) at Strawbery Banke Museum, comprising twelve buildings identified for restoration and adaptive reuse, has received a $10,000 grant from the Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation.

Sheraton Inlaid Mahogany Sideboard

Thanks to the generosity of Elisabeth Sturges, Strawbery Banke Museum has acquired a c. 1800-1810 Sheraton Inlaid Mahogany Sideboard once in the possession of The Stearns Family of Durham, New Hampshire. The rectangular top with ringed ovolo corners above a conforming case with a bank of three central drawers, the uppermost with hinged front opening to a baize writing surface and fitted with a long drawer over a row of five cubbyholes, flanked by a single drawer over paneled door. All with flame birch veneered panels with mahogany crossbanding and cockbeaded edges. The case raised on swelled reeded and ring-turned legs headed by flame birch panels, terminating in slender pointed feet with ring-turned cuffs. Height 42 1/2 inches, width 57 1/2 inches, depth 21 inches. Provenance: The Misses Stearns, Durham, New Hampshire; Northeast Auctions, August 6, 2006, lot 1714.

The Roger R. and Theresa S. Thompson Endowment Fund recently awarded Strawbery Banke Museum and the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire grants. SBM's grant will support the creation of a new permanent exhibit, Maritime Portsmouth that “explores the breadth of the maritime history of Portsmouth and how it directly affected the lives of Puddle Dockers.” CMNH's grant will launch the museum’s new Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) Innovation Lab.

The New Hampshire Telephone Museum (NHTM) is excited to announce that it has gone solar! The idea was raised by a couple of board members at their May 2015 board meeting. According to the museum’s Executive Director, Laura French, “Several of the Museum’s board members have solar at their homes and the museum staff members practice recycling both at the museum and at home, so the basic premise of “reuse” and “recycle” was already present.” SunRay Solar of Concord, NH began installation of the indoor equipment and wiring in December. Installation of the 47 rack/rail-mounted microinverter panels was complete by the end of January. The system was fully functional and connected on February 4 and preliminary results are encouraging, especially given the time of year. “The whole process went very smoothly thanks to the SunRay staff,” says French. “They helped us every step of the way so that when they were finished we were connected to all the right sources and had filed all of the appropriate paperwork.” The project was funded by a portion of the museum’s endowment fund and the return on their investment is predicted to be less than ten years.

What is more fitting than a mobile tour app at a Telephone Museum? That is what the NHTM staff thought when they embarked on this project. Today, museum visitors are provided the option of taking a guided tour or looking around on their own. Most people opt for the tour, but there are those who prefer to go at their own pace. “We noticed that, despite the amount of signage, people who opted out of the guided tour were not spending as much time at the museum as those who took the tour,” says Executive Director, Laura French. “The mobile tour app provides a good compromise by enabling people to go at their own pace, but enjoy a richer experience.” The staff is hoping it will be a useful tool for them as well. “Right now, we have days where we have more visitors than our small staff can handle – which is a good thing – and this app will help alleviate some of the stress on the docents trying to juggle multiple tours.” Work on the app began in December 2015 with Action Data Systems.

Rhode Island

ProvidenceChildren's Museum Learning Club participants.

The Providence Children’s Museum has received a $40,000 grant from the Amgen Foundation to support hands-on STEM activities at the museum. The grant will help inspire children and families to love learning by bringing education to life through engaging, interactive exhibits and programs and during Museum Learning Clubs. Conducted by the Museum’s AmeriCorps members, Learning Clubs bring inner-city elementary school-age children from Providence neighborhood community centers to the Museum after school and during the summer. Through guided, hands-on math activities, children discover the joy of learning and come to see themselves as learners. Since 2004, the Amgen Foundation has supported Providence Children’s Museum with more than $440,000 in grants, benefiting 488,223 children.

Providence Children’s Museum is collaborating with Brown University on a National Science Foundation-funded project – in partnership with two other children’s museum/researcher teams – to investigate how open-ended exploration and parent/child interactions in museum settings support the development of scientific thinking skills, and how museums can better support children’s exploration and learning. The museum was one of 10 children’s museums selected for an Association of Children’s Museums’ project to build a field-wide research agenda and network of practice. The museum has recently revisited its educational philosophy to create new “learning frameworks” – a resource grounded in research and practice that summarizes how children learn through play and exploration, and articulates how experiences in the Museum’s environments and programs contribute to kids’ learning and development.

Mystic Museum of Art is the recipient of an $8,500 grant from the Frank Loomis Palmer Foundation, Bank of America Trustee. The grant monies will be utilized to deliver art programming to New London youth grades Pre-K to 12, both on site and at school sites, MMoA’s Education Outreach Programs are the museum’s way of partnering with schools and social service agencies to contribute to the education and development of young people across the region. Programs give school-age youth access to experiential learning in art and literacy.

Randall Rosenbaum, presenter Cheryl Faria, Patricia Henry, Dot Thornley, Nancy Moore EPHS

At a statewide presentation of the 2016 RI State Cultural Facilities Grants at the Odeum Theater on Monday, Jan 11th, the East Providence Historical Society was awarded a matching grant of $28,000 for the interior renovation/ ADA compliance of the 1895 Hunt’s Mills Amusement Park Ticket Booth as the new Hunt’s Mills Education Center. The Society and other groups involved at Hunt’s Mills will use the Center for classroom, meeting and exhibit space. The 500 square foot space has been vacant since the Water Dept moved in 1990. In 2008, with the remainder of a Champlin Grant, the Historical Society buttoned up the building with a new roof and repairs to the foundation and siding, all approved by the RI Historic Preservation Commission. It is very exciting for the Historical Society to be able to finish the interior work and provide handicapped access to this building. To this end, the group has raised over $20,000 of the matching funds. This State Cultural Facilities Grant was awarded by the RI State Council on the Arts.

The Newport Historical Society’s 18th century Chronometer.

An important marine timepiece, made as part of the British race to determine longitude at sea, has been discovered in the collections at the Newport Historical Society. Ingrid Peters, a staff member of the Newport Historical Society, recently traveled to the Royal Observatory, Royal Museums Greenwich, England to have curator of Horology, Rory McEvoy, examine a pocket watch from the NHS collections. Mr. McEvoy verified that the pocket watch was made by John Arnold of London and is #4 in a series of marine watches circa 1772. John Arnold was one of several men competing for the Board of Longitude prize to produce a chronometer that would ensure safe and accurate navigation. Only a few of these paradigm-shifting time pieces from this period of technological development are known and in public hands, and the discovery of Arnold’s #4 adds significantly to the scientific record. Arnold’s #3 is in the collections at the British Museum; #1, 2 and 5 in the series are missing.

New England

Congratulations to The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Fitchburg Art Museum, Nantucket Historical Association, and the Tomaquag Museum for being named as finalists for the 2016 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries for service to the community.

Lucien Aigner, Barber shop, Harlem, 1930s. Gelatin silver print. The Lucien Aigner Collection

The Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, the Yale University Art Gallery, and Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library have acquired the Lucien Aigner Collection, an extraordinary archive of photographs, negatives, recordings, film, books, magazine clippings, letters, and journalistic writings. Consisting of tens of thousands of negatives and thousands of prints and contact sheets, this rare and comprehensive collection is made all the more unique by Aigner’s extensive writings that accompany virtually every image or series of images and explain the circumstances under which they were shot, and often the current events that surrounded the photo shoot.

Congratulations to the following NEMA member that received National Endowment for the Humanities grants:

Preservation Assistance Grants

Historic Deerfield, Inc., $6,000, Developing an Emergency Preparedness Plan for Historic Deerfield
Lyman Allyn Art Museum, $6,000, Purchase of Archival Storage Furniture for Works on Paper
Newport Restoration Foundation, $6,000, Assessment of Historic Preservation Archives and Staff Training for Managing Public Access
Smith's Castle, $6,000, Smith's Castle UV Window Film Project
Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum, $5,362, Collections Needs Assessment

Preservation Education and Training

Northeast Document Conservation Center, $300,000, Expanding Preservation Field Services across Collections

Challenge Grants

Trustees of Reservations, $450,000, A New Gateway for the Old Manse: Constructing a Visitor Welcome Center at a National Historic Landmark in Concord, MA