News and Updates
MUSEUM LOAN NETWORK AWARDS 38 GRANTS TO MUSEUMS NATIONWIDE
Latest Initiatives Support Early American Art and Community-Focused Cataloguing
(Cambridge, MA) October 24, 2005 – The Museum Loan Network (MLN) has announced its 2005 grant awards totaling nearly $300,000 to 35 institutions. The grants will facilitate the long-term loan of objects of cultural heritage between American museums of various sizes and disciplines. The latest round of grants brings to nearly $5.8 million the total amount awarded by MLN since its inception ten years ago.
More than half of this year's grant awards reflect MLN's current focus on two special projects. Collecting Stories: Connecting Objects, initially funded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation, is a museum/community-focused initiative designed to engage communities in cataloguing by connecting oral histories with cultural objects. Working with museums across the country, Collecting Stories will develop an online toolkit and methodology to be introduced on the MLN website in 2006.
A second project, Energizing the Study of Early American Art (EEAA), was launched by MLN with support from The Henry Luce Foundation to enable cataloguing of a significant group of pre-1840 American portraits, thus facilitating research, scholarship and sharing of early American art. By expanding the scope of online information and images of works from this period, MLN will create a new forum for discussion and scholarly activity in the field of early American art.
Museums receiving this year's MLN grant awards will catalogue more than 11,000 art works and cultural objects, adding an expected 2,200 items to the MLN Directory, an illustrated online database of nearly 16,000 objects available for long-term loan to museums. Created and maintained by the MLN, the directory is a free, shared resource that is highly valued by the field and is used on a daily basis by museums of all sizes and disciplines.
Among MLN's new grants are 12 survey grants to research and catalogue collections such as: 1,300 objects of the Yoruba collection at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, U.C. Berkeley (Berkeley, CA); 1,200 glass-plate negatives of Charleston photographer George W. Johnson at the Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston, SC); and 1,000 prints and 150 oil paintings at the Bostonian Society (Boston, MA).
Three other survey grantees, part of the Collecting Stories initiative, will be models for community-focused cataloguing, with companion activities including the development of online resources. Each will include related audio-visual oral history components. The three museums include:
• The Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA), to research 1,800 objects depicting Japanese American life during World War II, add 100 selections to the MLN Directory, and document oral histories related to these objects. Focusing on the Japanese American experience of displacement and incarceration in the United States, this project will also include a videotaped life history interview.
• The Judah L. Magnes Museum (Berkeley, CA), to survey 300 objects from its collection of Jewish material culture, add 100 objects to the directory, conduct provenance research, and record oral histories.
• The National Civil Rights Museum (Memphis, TN), for a comprehensive review of its collections representing the history of the U.S. Civil Rights movement, especially during the 1950s and 1960s.
The EEAA initiative includes grant awards totaling $76,000 to 21 institutions to identify pre-1840 American portraits for inclusion in the MLN Directory, thus increasing research and networking activity in the field of early American art. Institutions participating in this project include a wide range of U.S. museums, including the New-York Historical Society (New York, NY), the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA), Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library (Winterthur, DE), the Virginia Historical Society (Richmond, VA), The Newark Museum (Newark, NJ), and the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, PA).
The MLN also awarded five travel grants totaling $35,000 to encourage cross-institutional collaboration among museums, partner institutions, and professionals in other disciplines. Grant funds will enable a team from the Anchorage Museum of History and Art (Anchorage, AK) to travel to the New Bedford Whaling Museum (New Bedford, MA) to explore objects related to the history of whaling and then work with Inupiaq tribal elders on a long-term exhibition. Staff from the Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, OH) will visit the American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY), the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI), and UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History (Los Angeles, CA) to explore possible loans of African Art.
Since its inception in 1995, MLN has awarded 380 grants to 247 institutions in 172 communities in 51 states and territories. Nearly $5.8 million in MLN funding has supported travel, survey, and implementation grants for innovative museum programs.
As the MLN concludes its first decade of grant making, it plans to issue a comprehensive publication documenting its programs, grant awards, online directory, networking activities and other contributions to the museum field and their audiences. Scheduled for distribution in spring 2006, Sharing Connections: A Decade of the Museum Loan Network, will provide information and insights gained from hundreds of collaborative endeavors among museums and their partner institutions and communities.