Americana Foundation

This grant will support a collaborative effort involving the State of Michigan, four tribes, and local partners in developing and interpreting the west side of Straits State Park in St. Ignace, MI. The project will add Anishinaabe context to the story of Michigan told at the site through a Learning Commons, outdoor trails, and structures at a Powwow Circle. This will make it a key interpretive space for explaining the seasonality of Anishinaabe life in both the pre- and post-contact periods, as well as their culture’s continuing relationship with the natural world. Americana’s grant will be used to construct a Drum Circle structure at the center of the Powwow Circle.

Historic Locust Grove, an 18th-century farm site and National Historic Landmark near Louisville, Kentucky, will use this grant to install outdoor interpretive signage, accessible to visitors throughout the 55-acre site, to illuminate the stories of the historic people who lived and worked on the property. The signage will present the site’s full history, particularly the history of the large and varied enslaved community, so that all visitors -- not just those participating in ticketed tours – know that the full history of the site is honored in the site's interpretation.

Unnamed Figures is an exhibition and publication developed by the American Folk Art Museum in New York that explores the often-unacknowledged presence of Black makers and subjects in the visual and material culture of the 18th and early 19th centuries in the North American North. Historic Deerfield, an outdoor history museum in Deerfield, MA, will use this grant to develop programs to deepen public discussion of these themes and to bring the exhibition to Historic Deerfield in Spring 2024 following its origination (and only other showing) at AFAM. 

This grant will support educational programming associated with the “Hear Me Now” exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). The programming will be designed in collaboration with exhibition co-curator and UM Professor of History Jason Young and will illuminate and extend the exhibition for regional audiences in Michigan. Programs will include structured programs for K-12 and university students; guided tours led by curators and educators, and gallery talks. UMMA anticipates that 40,000+ visitors will engage with the exhibition and 5,000+ will participate in programming.

Colonial Williamsburg will use this grant to support a conference related to the “I Made This…” exhibition that celebrates Black artistry in the fields of folk, fine and decorative arts. The conference will feature three days of activities, including keynote presentations by historians, lectures by CW’s curatorial staff, panel discussions with the historic trades team, guided tours of the exhibition, onsite tours of two additional African American themed archaeological projects underway in CW’s historic area, a demonstration of African American foodways, and performances by CW’s historical interpretive staff.

This grant will support the reinstallation of the permanent collection of American art at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, MA. The reinstallation will connect important portraiture and other fine art with the museum's significant collection of early American decorative arts by examining the human and environmental costs of nation-building as reflected in the beautiful luxury goods acquired and collected by early Americans. This project is part of the museum's effort to ensure that people "who have historically been excluded from the narrative of American art, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, feel a true sense of representation and belonging at the Worcester Art Museum and experience an authentic connection to the art objects and stories found within our reimagined galleries." 

Historic New England, an historic preservation organization headquartered in Boston, MA, will use this grant to support a second-year Research Scholar for Recovering New England's Voices, a multi-year initiative to challenge traditional narratives and promote healing, community, collaboration, and inspiration at our historic sites.  The scholar will build upon research into the experiences of historically marginalized people conducted by our first-year cohort of scholars, with a focus on the stories of free Black and enslaved peoples.

This grant will contribute to the construction of a special area at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello where guests can reflect on the issues of freedom and slavery that they encounter during their visit.  The site will include an artistic installation that contains a permanent list of names of 609 individuals known to have been enslaved by Thomas Jefferson and his family during their lives.

This grant will support an exhibition entitled "Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina", which is opening at MFA in 2023 and is being developed by the MFA in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  The exhibition will center the art and experience of enslaved Americans through the 19th-century stoneware industry in South Carolina.

Ford House will use this grant to support the development of a new conservation/curator fellowship at the Ford House designed to employ individuals from war-torn nations (e.g. Afghanistan, Ukraine).  The fellowship will broaden the experience of the scholars from other lands and will facilitate the preservation and conservation of the Ford House collections.  After this inaugural year, the Ford House plans to expand the fellowship to include more individuals in the coming years.

Ford House, with conservator Mark Gervasi, will use this grant to strengthen and expand the capacities for small museums to properly care for their historical objects.  Staff from Ford House will consult with staff/volunteers from the museums to help them better understand collections care and management, and to assist with interpretation of the historical objects.  Ford House and Gervasi will work together to determine what item(s) in their collection are those that exemplify their community's stories and ensure they are conserved and properly cared for or exhibited.  Ford House hopes to expand the program to include hands-on collections care and conservation classes for Michigan's small museums.

This grant will support the very first art exhibition at Colonial Williamsburg dedicated exclusively to celebrating African American artistry.  All types of decorative art and folk-art objects will be included in the exhibit, including furniture, textiles, quilts and coverlets, metals, ceramics, paintings, sculpture, drawings, tools and equipment, and costume accessories, all of which date from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

The Henry Ford Estate is preparing to begin the next phase of the restoration of Fair Lane, home of Clara & Henry Ford.  The next phase involves the kitchen and four bedrooms used by the Ford family and staff, and the Edison Suite.  This grant will help fund a full-time Collections Specialist to examine how the Fords lived in these private rooms.

This grant will contribute to a collaborative effort to increase Detroit region student participation in the year-long Michigan History Day academic competition program for grades 4-12.  More than 5,000 students participate in the program across the state, but Detroit region participation is lower.  Through focused outreach, the grantee hopes to raise those numbers.

With this grant, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation will create a full-time, one-year, curatorial intern position to update catalog records for the foundation’s 800 most significant objects and make them accessible for study by the public through an online database. The updates will address content bias shown towards white or dominant class artisans and patrons using an inclusive methodological approach to cataloging recently developed by the curators. This approach records materials, sources, and other details to reveal the diverse range of people—free and enslaved—responsible for making, using, and caring for each object. 

This grant will support the development of an educational classroom series to complement a 60-minute public broadcasting television documentary that celebrates the history, traditions, culture, and natural resources of Michigan. Michigan: An American Portrait explores Michigan’s roots in the Native American experience and highlights its world-renowned innovations in automation, science, farming, furniture manufacturing, technology, and the arts. The educational classroom series will be distributed free of charge to 3rd grade students state-wide.

This grant will provide drainage corrections in the alley behind the Firefighters Museum for the purpose of keeping storm water and snow melt out of the basement of the Museum. 

With this grant, Winterthur will employ an early career conservator to reconstruct the lost elements of a late 17th century kas that incorporates a hybrid design of English, French, Dutch, and German cultural traditions in a uniquely American context.

This grant will support the development of a professional documentary to raise awareness and launch a campaign to restore the historic Stannard Rock Lighthouse and international climate research station.  A special component of the project will be a video tutorial that will provide a step-by-step process for coastal communities and organizations that also own lighthouses to develop a comprehensive fundraising campaign tailored to each unique lighthouse and designed to successfully leverage sufficient funding for critical maintenance and renovation projects.

This grant will support urgent repairs at the Keweenaw Heritage Center, a 120-year old building that is plagued by its age, exposed to the extremes of summer and winter weather, and experienced significant roof damage in the winter 2020.

This grant will enable the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. State Department to increase access to the State Department’s collection of decorative arts by creating a series of online “object-based learning” training videos that educators can use to meet the need for high-quality, virtual training experiences.

With this grant, Old Sturbridge Village will develop a unique, experiential learning opportunity in a yearlong study of historic agriculture for middle school students at a school that targets “hard to reach/hard to teach students.”

This grant will enable the grantee to develop interpretative programming at the Delano Homestead to honor the legacy of Native American and Black farmers that used sustainable farming methods to maintain steady harvests and soil fertility across generations.

This grant provides support for Fair Lane's in-house conservation program.  Fair Lane's program trains and mentors early-career conservators and preservationists while carrying on the restoration of the Henry Ford Estate in Dearborn, MI.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) will use this grant to restore and preserve the Great Clock at Monticello.  The clock was built to Thomas Jefferson's specifications and has remained in the Hall at Monticello since 1804.  During the conservation, the TJF will record and document the restoration process to share with visitors.