The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has announced emergency COVID-19 grants totaling $3 million in support of small museums across the United States.
The second round of grants awarded through the Art Museum Futures Fund, which the foundation launched in September, will provide general operating support to fourteen museums with strong and longstanding connections to their local communities and social justice. In the first round of funding in September, the fund awarded grants totaling $24 million to twelve midsize museums
The latest grant recipients are the Abbe Museum (Bar Harbor, Maine); the Art Museum and Visual Arts Program at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (Albuquerque, New Mexico); California African American Museum (Los Angeles, California); El Paso Museum of Art (El Paso, Texas); Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania); Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, New York); Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (Kalamazoo, Michigan); Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York, New York); Mexic-Arte Museum (Austin, Texas); New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain, Connecticut); New Orleans African American Museum (New Orleans, Louisiana); Riverside Art Museum (Riverside, California); San José Museum of Art (San Jose, California); and Tucson Museum of Art (Tucson, Arizona).
“America’s small-sized arts and culture institutions sustain their communities by providing access to transformative and wide-ranging artistic contributions while also preserving many different histories and cultural legacies,” said Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander. “As the pandemic continues to threaten the future viability of museums that have long been underresourced, we must do our part to strengthen support for these organizations and the trenchant work they tirelessly undertake to enrich and expand our American story.”
Source: PND
