UPDATE: This just in—“President Biden announced his intent to nominate Shelly Lowe as the 12th Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).” A citizen of the Navajo Nation and currently a member of the National Council on the Humanities, she would replace acting chairman Adam Wolfson (pictured and quoted below).
The Toledo Museum of Art is one of the 292 organizations and institutions named yesterday to receive a share of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ $87.8-million allocation under President Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP). Toledo’s grant—$482,338—will go towards reinstallation of its American art collection “to highlight works by Native American, African-American, and Spanish colonial artists,” according to NEH’s press release.
The leaning towards “DEIA” goals (Diversity, Equity, Inclusiveness, Access) among NEH’s ARP grant recipients (as exemplified by Toledo) reflects not only the proclivities of many (but not all) of the applicants, but also the guidance that they received from the ARP’s own program description, which stated that NEH was “especially interested” in supporting proposals that furthered its More Perfect Union initiative. That would prioritize “projects that explore, reflect on, and tell the stories of our quest for a more just, inclusive, and sustainable society throughout our history. NEH especially welcomes projects that bring the perspective of the humanities to questions of racial justice, gender equality, the evolution of the American landscape, as well as America’s place in the world. Projects that strengthen Americans’ knowledge of our principles of constitutional governance and democracy are strongly encouraged, as are projects [like Toledo’s] that address the experiences of Native Americans and other under-represented communities [emphasis added].”
Nothing wrong with that. But ARP was presented as a program to provide “emergency relief to help offset financial losses sustained by humanities organizations over the last 18 months.” It apparently has a more focused agenda than the anodyne description by NEH Acting Chairman Adam Wolfson, as quoted in his agency’s press release:
The American Rescue Plan recognizes that the cultural and educational sectors are essential components of the United States economy and civic life, vital to the health and resilience of American communities.
As I noted in my previous post, the NEH got a jump on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which expects to announce its ARP grants in January. As with Toledo’s reinstallation initiative, a large number of art-related museum activities to be supported through NEH’s windfall seem to be focused on “marginalized communities”—to be elucidated by the new ARP-supported position of Curator of Inclusive History at the Santa Monica Historical Society & Museum.
Some $59 million of the NEH’s ARP allocation went to direct emergency relief for 292 humanities institutions and organizations adversely affected by the pandemic. Some $28.8 million went to 13 organizations that are administering competitive grantmaking programs to support humanities activities undertaken by organizations or individuals.
Below is a long (but still selective) list of institutions, art-related projects and grantmakers funded with NEH’s ARP money. You can see the complete list here. (I’ve boldfaced the names of some prominent institutions.)
—Phoenix Art Museum’s “new art exhibition about mining in the American West, with funding for 14 staff positions” ($240,746)
—Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts’ “retention of five staff members to engage in collection stewardship activities while planning and implementing inaugural exhibits at the museum’s newly renovated building ($195,374)
—Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block, Inc.’s “reinterpretation of Native American collections through community-based research, with the retention of three staff and stipends for Indigenous artists” ($105,133)
—National Trust For Historic Preservation‘s “grant program resulting in approximately 80 sub-awards to provide relief to humanities organizations recovering from the coronavirus pandemic by supporting place-based preservation activities that focus on the histories of underrepresented groups” ($3.5 million)
—National Trust For Historic Preservation‘s support of “scholarly research to advance new humanities perspectives, interpretation, and programming at five National Trust properties” ($499,566)
—Phillips Collection‘s “implementation of exhibitions featuring American artists David Driskell and Alma Thomas ($197,845)
The Phillips Collection, to be included in its upcoming show
—New Orleans Museum of Art‘s “creation of two full-time positions, an Interdepartmental Project Manager and a Digital Archivist, to oversee the museum’s cross-departmental projects and ensure that digitally curated material produced during the pandemic period is preserved for long-term use” ($144,058)
—Walters Art Museum‘s “restructuring the educational work and deepening the public engagement of the museum, and retaining six positions focusing on African-American and Native American history” ($463,555)
—Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute‘s “seven new positions and core humanities programing” ($500,000)
—Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts’ development of a new exhibition on Native American photography ($341,668)
—Walker Art Center‘s “addition of a curatorial fellow and five collections and digitization positions, along with the purchase of photography equipment, to digitize over 6,000 objects and conduct demographic research on the archival collections” ($341,182)
—Mississippi Museum of Art’s “creation of teaching materials on the Great Migration drawing on the collections of the Mississippi Museum of Art, including a workshop for teachers; retention of four jobs and creation of seven student fellowships” ($200,000)
—University of Nebraska’s “partial payment of salaries for two staff, the hiring of a student worker, and contracting the services of a professional photographer to digitize over 2,000 works of art at the Great Plains Art Museum, enabling new virtual exhibitions and education and outreach programs using art as a tool for humanities education” ($177,000)
—SITE Santa Fe’s “planning and execution of three exhibitions at SITE, a modern art museum in Santa Fe, and the development of interpretive tools to accompany each exhibit, with the retention of three full-time positions and two part-time positions” ($66,351)
—Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s “expansion of access to materials by historically underrepresented
artists within the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s library collections, and retention of nine jobs” ($468,500)
—Museum of the City of New York’s “planning and implementation of exhibitions, programs, and resources for educational and public audiences, as well as digital engagement and planning for the museum’s centennial year in 2023” ($497,998).
—New York Public Library‘s “Vindicating Evidences of Black Achievement & History: Onsite Digitization at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,” creating of two digital photography specialist positions and retaining one digitization coordinator to support a new digital imaging studio at the New York Public Library to expand its digitized collection of African-American, African, and African diasporic materials” ($500,000)
—New-York Historical Society‘s “creation of an exhibition examining the legacy of Frederick Douglas’s speech “Composite Nation” and educational programming related to the exhibition; retention of eight jobs and the creation of four new jobs ($492,075)
—Columbia (S.C.) Art Association’s “30 Americans: Rubell Family Collection,” creation of a traveling exhibition on contemporary African American art and implementation of supporting public programs” ($200,000)
—Mexic-Arte Museum’s (Austin, TX) “retention of five staff members to produce humanities programs and online exhibitions making use of the Mexic-Arte Museum’s unique collection of artworks ($200,000)
To be clear, I’ve got no quarrel with promoting the important goals of diversity and inclusiveness. But I don’t think a government program that is being sold to the public as straightforward pandemic relief should be skewed to advance political or social agendas by means of grant guidelines that only the applicants (and a few nosy journalists) are privy to.
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