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$21 Million Awarded to Help Museums Improve Service to Public
IMLS announces 206 awards made through its largest museum grant program

Washington, DC—The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) today announced grants for 206 museum projects totaling $21,149,000. The museums were selected from a pool of 548 applications to the highly competitive Museums for America grant program. Institutions receiving the awards are matching them with $29,346,091 in non-federal funds.

“Museums play a vital role in their communities supporting learning experiences and inquiry for people of all ages, fostering civic engagement, and serving as stewards of collections that represent the nation’s cultural, historical and scientific heritage,” said IMLS Director Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew. “The federal support provided by IMLS will help museums all over the country, enabling their best efforts to provide the highest level of public service.”

The Museums for America grant program funds a variety of projects developed by museums to better serve its public.  This year’s funded projects include:

• The Preservation Society of Newport County (Rhode Island) project to digitize and create finding aids for collections that document the city of Newport’s role in shaping national cultural and social movements. Manuscripts, photographs, and scrapbooks from two centuries (1770s-1980s) will be digitized and made more accessible to scholars and the public.

• The Children’s Museum of the Upstate (Greenville, South Carolina) project to upgrade its media lab exhibit, which explores issues relating to media literacy in the 21st century. In addition to the interactive exhibit, the project will develop distance learning STEM programs and customized curriculum units.

• The Creative Discovery Museum (Chattanooga, Tennessee) project to create a culture of evaluation among its staff. Through staff development, the use of assessment tools, and cross-departmental meetings, the project will help staff create more meaningful and lasting experiences for museum visitors.

• The Pratt Museum’s project to explore the cultural values of seven diverse communities of South Central Alaska, through a series of community conversations, directed interviews, and musical performance events. With participant input, the project will produce a cookbook and music album to share traditions, songs and stories among the communities’ many generations.

Click here to see all the Museums for America grants for this year.

IMLS will be accepting applications for the FY 2017 Museums for America program through December 1, 2016. For more information see the Museums for America webpage and the blog post highlighting changes in the FY 2017 museum grant programs.