We’re excited to announce our first round of Art Acquisition Fund (AAF) and Collections Management Fund (CMF) grantees! For this round, we are awarding $196,527.10 to fourteen organizations across Alaska.
As always, we want to thank Rasmuson Foundation for their generous support for these two grant programs. We also want to thank our amazing panelists who spent a lot of their personal time to carefully consider the applications.
As a reminder, our AAF grant is now switching to a rolling deadline and is open again, so organizations can purchase art when it becomes available. The CMF grant will reopen on September 6 and close on October 11. That’s not too far away, so get your projects ready!
Collections Management Fund – Round 1 Grants
-
$7,407 – The Alaska Jewish Museum will upgrade its website so they have a stable online environment for virtual programming and exhibits.
-
$15,000 – The Alaska State Museum will contract with an expert consultant on their aviation collection in order to make curatorial and collections care decisions about the objects.
-
$14,970.10 – The Alutiiq Heritage Foundation will complete a collections management project for their Nunakakhnak collection that includes translating a Fortran catalog, correcting misidentifications, and updating the storage of the collection.
-
$5,105 – The Cordova Historical Society and Museum will digitize 58 rolls of The Cordova Daily Alaskan and The Cordova Times microfilm, which will provide opportunities for research that have not been accessible in the past.
-
$13,412 – The Juneau-Douglas City Museum will clean and prepare the Wooshkeetaan Kootéeyaa before it is raised in the State Office Building.
-
$15,000 – Ketchikan Museums will digitize unstable analog media in their collection including: (295) cassette tapes, (10) vinyl records and (4) Betacam tapes.
-
$13,395 – The Museum of the Aleutians will complete an eight-month collections care upgrade that will implement proper preventative cleaning measures throughout the museum, as well as upgrading storage mounts for objects currently in poor housing.
-
$8,870 – Preservation Alaska (AKA the Alaskan Association for Historic Preservation, Inc.) will transfer their Oscar Anderson House Museum collections catalog from excel into Past Perfect. In the process, each item will photographed and its condition reported on.
-
$14,418 – Talkeetna Historical Society will identify and label found-in-collections items, settle old loans, properly house objects, and rehouse the Robb collection, which is currently in a separate location.
Art Acquisition Fund – Round 1 Grants
-
$35,000 – The Alutiiq Museum and Archeological Repository will be acquiring a giant, bronze Alutiiq mask created by renowned Alutiiq artist, Perry Eaton. The mask will be installed in the entryway of the museum where every visitor can see it. The Messenger is a mix of traditional and modern design and will help the museum depict Eaton’s evolution as an artist.
-
$6,800 – The Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum will be acquiring one hundred tiny artworks from the series Hair Portraits, by contemporary Inupiaq/Athabascan artist, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, and a piece by Norwegian/Inupiaq artist Ryder Erickson, In Vain He Chases Ravens. These acquisitions will further their mission to collect, interpret, and preserve collections of historical, cultural, and artistic value that illustrate the vibrant communities of Nome and the Bering Strait.
-
$11,300 – The Anchorage Museum will acquire a set of photographs by African American artist, Jovell Rennie, to help fill substantial gaps in the Museum’s holdings and incorporate more immigrant perspectives into their archives and collections. They will also commission a painting by Linda Infante Lyons that will allow the museum to investigate of themes and ideas surrounding women’s rights, decolonization, and Indigenous sovereignty.
-
$13,000 – The Ilanka Cultural Center will acquire two paintings by David Pettibone, Open for Business and Study for Harvest, that will allow the center to interpret different stories around the importance of fishing in Cordova, the devastating impact of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, and the delicate ecosystems that the local communities and villages rely on for survival.
-
$850 – The Clausen Memorial Museum will acquire Le Conte Ice Fall, a photograph by David Beebe featuring gulls feeding during a glacier calving event. The scene is a familiar one in Petersburg, and will give the museum opportunities to talk about the importance of glacier ice to the local climate, as well as to the development and growth of the community.
-
$22,000 – Sealaska Heritage Institute will acquire a modern sea otter jacket and hat set from Tlingit artist, Robert Miller. By actively collecting modern pieces, the institute is documenting the growth and change of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures. Skin sewing is an ancient tradition, but these pieces will be dyed blue, and the jacket will be crafted using a sewing style of “letting the fur out”—both modern takes on the traditional art form.
We want to congratulate everyone on their successful grant applications! We can’t wait to see the progress on your projects.
