News and Updates
MUSEUM LOAN NETWORK AWARDS GRANTS TO 20 MUSEUMS NATIONWIDE
ENABLING THEM TO BETTER SERVE THEIR COMMUNITIES
(Cambridge, MA) August 8, 2001 - The Museum Loan Network (MLN) announced today that it is awarding grants totaling $421,544 to 20 institutions across the country. This latest round of grants facilitates the sharing of a wide variety of art and objects of cultural heritage -- works held in storage in one museum will be brought to public view in another. The objects loaned range from Soviet nonconformist and conformist works to an Egyptian mummy. The MLN grants enable institutions to expand their collections by integrating loaned objects from partner institutions into their existing displays, allowing them to present a broader range of ideas to better serve their communities.
This grant cycle will result in the loan of over 200 objects as well as the cataloguing and research of close to 16,000 works in storage for possible loan. This marks the twelfth grant cycle, bringing the total level of Museum Loan Network awards to $3.3 million, funding the long-term loan of 3,432 objects and involving 249 museums in 50 states and territories across the country since its inception five years ago. Among the 20 new grants announced today, the MLN is facilitating and funding the following loans:
• The Grace Museum, Abilene, TX: loan of 32 Soviet nonconformist and conformist works from the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, NJ, and the Springville Museum of Art, UT. The installation of these objects will spark community dialogue surrounding the complex story of Soviet and U.S. relations during the Cold War. (Throughout the Cold War, the Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, housed nuclear bombs and functioned as a key military base for the United States' defense against Soviet threat.)
• Seattle Art Museum, WA: loan of 10 European paintings from the collection of the Taft Museum of Art, OH. The Seattle Art Museum - long renowned for its collection of Asian art - will partner with Cincinnati's Taft Museum to bring Dutch and English masterworks to the West Coast. These loaned paintings will enhance the Seattle Art Museum's collection and provide local audiences a unique opportunity to experience a more comprehensive range of European art.
• Huntington Museum of Art, WV: loan of a mummy, sarcophagus, and canopic jar from the Michael C. Carlos Museum, GA, and 20 additional Egyptian objects from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. The loan of these ancient Egyptian objects will bring an extensive selection of ancient Egyptian art and cultural objects to the state of West Virginia for the first time. In conjunction with this installation, the Museum will present wide-ranging educational programming for adults and children addressing such topics as Egyptian religion, mummification, hieroglyphs, and the ancient Egyptian counting system.
Beyond the lending of objects, the Museum Loan Network continues its commitment to serve as a matchmaker between institutions of differing sizes and disciplines, and provide museums with access to a large field of experts who are not available under their own roof when developing their installations. For example, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, MI, has been awarded a grant to travel to several museums, including The Detroit Institute of Arts, MI, to research Roman and Etruscan art for future loan. A grant linking the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, TX ,with two institutions of differing disciplines, The Field Museum, IL, (a natural history museum) and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, PA, to research Mexican objects is also representative of the innovative, interdisciplinary partnerships and information-sharing networks the Museum Loan Network helps forge.
This series of grants will bring a wide-range of objects into the MLN Directory – an online database of works available for long-term loan by museums around the country. The MLN Directory, which contains over 6,000 objects, serves as a shared permanent collection for museums nationwide and is available as a free resource for all museums. The latest survey grants will identify a variety of objects that will be added to the directory, including African-American historical objects, decorative arts, folk art, musical instruments, and ancient Mayan materials. For example, a grant to the New York Historical Society, NY, will allow the institution to survey and research 2,000 objects from the Elie Nadelman folk art collection for future loan opportunities.
Museum Loan Network grants are awarded on a semi-annual basis. The next deadline for applications is December 7, 2001. A full listing of the July 2001 travel, survey and implementation grant awards is available through the MLN Web site.
The Museum Loan Network also features on its Web site virtual tours of exhibitions created through MLN programs. The Museum loan network is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.