Narrative Section of a Successful Application - National Endowment for ...
Narrative Section of a Successful Application
The attached document contains the grant narrative and selected portions of a
previously funded grant application. It is not intended to serve as a model, but to
give you a sense of how a successful application may be crafted. Every successful
application is different, and each applicant is urged to prepare a proposal that
reflects its unique project and aspirations. Prospective applicants should consult the
Division of Preservation and Access application guidelines at
for
instructions. Applicants are also strongly encouraged to consult with the NEH
Division of Preservation and Access staff well before a grant deadline.
Note: The attachment only contains the grant narrative and selected portions, not
the entire funded application. In addition, certain portions may have been redacted
to protect the privacy interests of an individual and/or to protect confidential
commercial and financial information and/or to protect copyrighted materials.
Project Title: Creating a Sustainable and Energy Efficient Storage Space for Art and
Artifacts of Western New York
Institution: Genesee Country Village and Museum
Project Director: Patricia M. Tice
Grant Program: Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections
1100 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Rm. 411, Washington, D.C. 20506
P
202.606.8570
F
202.606.8639 E preservation@
Genesee Country Village & Museum
3. Narrative
Introduction:
GCV&M seeks $400K to turn two galleries at the John L. Wehle Art Gallery (AG) into a safe,
secure, energy-efficient, sustainable storage wing. This will provide the museum with its first collections
storage facility and will significantly advance our ability to preserve the collections, as recommended by a
1998 IMLS General Survey undertaken by conservators Richard Kerschner and Ralph Wiegandt, and a
2006 NEH Environmental Assessment of the Art Gallery and Carriage Museum by conservator Barbara
Moore (see Appendix 1). This project is GCV&M¡¯s highest collections care priority because, quite
simply, without good storage, the museum cannot fulfill its mission or function properly as an institution.
Lack of acceptable storage has bottlenecked operations, negatively impacting GCV&M's ability to care
for existing collections, to acquire and refine collections, and to borrow artifacts for exhibition as the AG
lacks a secure holding area and falls below accepted facility standards. Lack of storage has hindered
implementation of our newly revised interpretive plan, developed under a 2004 IMLS grant, which calls
for interpreting the second floor rooms of the Historic Village houses, and making them accessible for the
first time. Many of these rooms, as well as an historic barn, are now inappropriately used for collections
storage, making access to the collections virtually impossible for researchers and the public. The prime
motivation for the project, however, is the fact that many objects are deteriorating due to the storage
conditions. This project has therefore been given utmost priority by the museum¡¯s Board and
administration because without a suitable storage area, GCV&M cannot achieve its mission to preserve its
collections for future generations, nor can it accomplish its new interpretive plan.
Collections Overview:
The museum¡¯s holdings include an outstanding collection of sporting and wildlife art, a collection
of portraiture, landscapes, genre, and still life representative of the popular art collected and appreciated
by people living in western NY in the 19th century, a superlative 19th century clothing collection,
important documentary artifacts and 3-D objects. Many of these objects are provenanced to western New
York. All of these objects directly support GCV&M¡¯s mission and programming which includes gallery
exhibitions, school lessons and outreach, adult education, special event weekends, and the living history
experience that explores our cultural past. Recent programming themes have included changing
interpretations of nature and land management as seen through art, the impact of the Civil War upon
civilian life, a study of changing food customs, specifically the impact that widespread sugar production
had upon American health and diet, and an exhibition that used clothing and art to examine accepted
ideals of masculinity. We will treat rites of passages particular to women from cradle to grave next
season. In the future, we will reinterpret a tenant house as representative of an African-American
farmstead.
Our diverse collections invite an interdisciplinary approach to the investigation, analysis,
synthesis and presentation of our historical and cultural heritage. The collections support humanitiesrelated research, education and programming, particularly in the arts, history, and social studies relating to
the settlement and development of 19th century America in general and western New York in particular.
The preservation and interpretation of these collections is critical because GCV&M is the only major
institution in our area that actively interprets, collects and preserves such artifacts. We are the keepers of
our region's history, the ¡°history place¡± for schools, and an important community partner for humanitiesbased programming which reaches diverse, and often, underserved rural and urban populations.
Institutional Profile:
Ranked the 3rd largest open air museum in the United States and the largest, most comprehensive
living history museum in New York State, GCV&M maintains 68 historically significant structures,
1
relocated from thirteen surrounding counties to recreate a village setting at the museum. In addition,
GCV&M operates an Art Gallery (AG) and a Nature Center located on its 700 acre campus. It serves
adjacent rural counties, as well as the cities of Rochester and Buffalo with an annual visitation 125,000.
The museum currently employs 32 full time staff, 17 part time staff, and 238 seasonal staff members, 550
volunteers, and has an annual operating budget of $3,489,338. Our mission is to interpret and preserve
objects that document 19th century life in western New York and America through its historic buildings,
landscapes, art collections, and three-dimensional artifacts.
All acquisitions are overseen by the Collections Management Committee of the Board of
Trustees, following staff review. Development in the collections is guided by our mission, a long-range
interpretive plan, and the collections management policy. We are actively shaping our collections to better
support our mission and areas of inquiry. For example, we have recently engaged to purchase the Susan
Greene Clothing Collection, a stellar collection that will fill a long-standing gap in our own clothing
collection and will foster new exhibitions, inform our historic costuming program, help build affiliations
with other living history museums, and make us a center for 19th century clothing research.
2. Significance of the collections:
The new storage facility will house our collections of fine arts, clothing and textiles, documentary
artifacts, and 3-D objects:
Fine Arts: GCV&M owns 950 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures within the sporting and
wildlife art collections. Hailed by Wildlife Art Magazine as ¡°the premier public collection of sporting art
in America and one of the finest of the world¡± and by artist Robert Bateman as ¡°New York¡¯s hidden
treasure,¡± this collection dates between 1650-1985. These works represent leading American and
European artists, serving as a veritable who¡¯s who of the genres. (See Appendix 2 for artist list) Within
this collection are notable subcollections, such as eight paintings by Swedish naturalist Bruno Liljefors,
the largest collection of his work outside of Sweden. Liljefors is considered the most important wildlife
artist of the late 19th century and a major influence upon American wildlife painters, including Carl
Rungius and Bob Kuhn. There is also a superb sculpture collection with lifetime casts of Frederick
Remington¡¯s most popular sculptures, The Bronchco Buster, The Outlaw and The Rattlesnake. These
complement sculptures by Antoine Louis Barye, Isidore Bonheur, Pierre Jules Mene, Christopher Fratin,
Charles Russell, Solon Borglum, as well as James Earl Fraser¡¯s End of the Trail. Art historians have
deemed End of the Trail and Broncho-Buster as America¡¯s most popular sculptures of the 19th and early
20th centuries.
GCV&M¡¯s sporting/wildlife art collection is the only one of its type in New York State. Indeed,
there are only a handful of collections in the nation which are comparable. The Whitney Sporting Art
Collection at Yale University Art Galley is the closest in scale, with 1,000 objects and the Yale Centre for
British Art has strong holdings in British sporting art. Shelburne Museum, Burlington, VT, has an
excellent but considerably smaller collection with approximately 150 British, American, and French
works, while The Paul Mellon Collection of Sporting Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts includes
42 British works. Both the Morris Museum, in Augusta, Georgia and Pebble Hill Plantation in
Thomasville, Georgia include small but excellent collections of sporting art which focus primarily upon
the Southern experience. The National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, WY has excellent
examples of wildlife art, but does not collect sporting art.
In addition to sporting art, GCV&M¡¯s collection contains a stellar group of paintings by the Taos
Society of Artists who strove to create a truly American school of art and whose work helped shape
America¡¯s vision of the west. Included in this group are works by Robert Henri, John Sloan, Joseph
Henry Sharp, Ernest Blumenschein, Oscar Berninghaus, Eanger Irving Couse, Lafayette Dixon, Walter
Ufer, Ernest Jennings, Victor Higgins, and Frank Tenney Johnson.
2
These works benefit humanities research through their demonstration of the art historical,
stylistic, and technical development and through the subject matter depicted. In the artwork, we see the
evolving relationship between people and animals who were viewed as servants, friends, foe, and
untamed symbols of nature, We see changing views of fashion, class, sports, leisure, evolving ideals and
principles of land management and conservation, animal rights, the vision of the West, and the view of
the Native American. Love, fear and fascination of Nature and wilderness are recurrent themes in
American culture, one readily accessible through these collections.
GCV&M's 19th century art collection includes approximately 200 paintings, drawings, prints, and
assemblages. Fifty-three portraits bring visitors face to face with former residents of the region and invite
us to think about family relationships, fashion, class, rites of passage, childhood and old age, ideals of
beauty, value systems, gender roles, and how people wished to be viewed by others. Many of the
paintings relate directly to the village structures, such as five MacKay family portraits (MacKay House),
seven Brooks, Brown and Savage family portraits (Brooks Grove Church. Brooks Grove Post Office and
Store). Other portraits relate to collection objects made or owned by the subject, (portrait of Ann Failing
Brown and her exquisite 1870s quilt). These works document the artistic achievements of professionally
and self-taught portraitists, including Ezra Ames, D. Brokow, Jonathon Buddington, Jerome Fielding,
Deborah Goldsmith, Edwin Weyburn Goodwin, Milton Hopkins, Randall Palmer, Abraham Tuthill and as
well as itinerant artists whose identities await discovery. We know from 19th century newspaper accounts
that art exhibitions engaged area residents with paintings depicting landscape, religious subjects, and still
life, and so these genres are also represented in the collection, both by amateur artists and by nationallyrecognized local talent including Frank Eastman Jones and Helen Searle. These works often show us the
prevailing tastes, aspirations and fashions which gave us our world today. Sometimes, this artwork shows
us customs now obsolete, such as calligraphy artwork that includes an outstanding 8 x 3 foot banner by
calligraphy teacher/artist William O. Place, created in 1858, Alfred, NY, and calligraphy by George
Washington Eastman, father of George Eastman (Eastman¡¯s Boyhood Home) who included decorative
writing in his business-school curriculum. Home-crafted art (wax and hair wreathes, scherenschnitte (cut
paper), tinsel, sand, and embroidered pictures) contrast with mass-produced prints by lithographers
Currier and Ives and other firms. Prints based on works by local artists (Joseph Young) depict the scenic
and iconic views that defined our region. (Genesee Falls, Lake Ontario, Erie Canal, Portage Bridge, etc).
GCV&M is the only area museum which regularly exhibits regional 19th century art. The collections of
the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester span antiquity to contemporary art; the Albright
Knox Art Gallery and Burchfield Penney, Buffalo, NY focus upon modern art. At GCV&M, we focus
upon our art which was known and valued in western NY.
While founder John Wehle directed GCV&M, the AG exhibited only the Wehle art collections.
With the professionalization of the staff in the last decade, however, the AG began mounting changing
exhibits which included Robert Bateman: A Retrospective (2002), Birds in Art (2003), About Face (2003)
How Fetching! Dogs in Art (2004), Quilts Uncovered (2005) Happy Birthday GCV&M! 30 years of
Collecting (2006), Sweet! Dessert in America (2007), Under Open Skies: Painting Nature Past and
Present (2008) and The Sporting Life: Sport in Art and Fashion (2009). Many of these exhibits resulted
from community collaborations. The Genesee Valley Quilt Club helped mount and staff Quilts
Uncovered, and with a local firm, sponsored ¡°Quilt Day¡±, a program featuring quilt historians who
provided lectures on 19th century quilting and who identified quilts belonging to program participants.
Under Open Skies juxtaposed 19th century and 21st century plein air painting, providing a place for The
Genesee Valley Plein Air Painters to exhibit their work. This talented group also taught plein air painting
classes outside the AG. More recently, the AG has attracted the Rochester Chapter of the Jane Austen
Society of North America, which presented three lectures in the Sporting Life exhibit, melding art and
literature together, exploring relationships between the landscapes portrayed in sporting art and Austen's
views on the Enclosure Acts, male fashion, and upon animals as reflections of their owners. We have
3
sponsored other scholarly programming, such as the New York State Council for the Arts-funded
symposium, Artists of Western New York (2006) where keynote speaker William Gertz analyzed the
regional art traditions and where six curators from Buffalo and Rochester institutions presented current
research on local artists to 102 participants. We accommodate advanced students studying botanical and
illustration art at nearby Rochester Institute of Technology. Students routinely visit the art gallery to study
wildlife art from Audubon to Zogbaum. Interior Design students visit GCV&M regularly as part of their
history of design curriculum. Each March, Art Education Month, GCV&M sponsor a themed, student art
show, offering a venue where student art can be proudly exhibited and viewed by students, their families,
and the public. On a less formal level, we offer many collection-based ¡°hands-on¡± crafts to our visitors.
For example, this past season, visitors experienced painting with sponges, feathers and stencils, recreating
the decorative painting documented on 19th century boxes on exhibit. We also offer spinning, weaving,
dying, knitting, quilting, basket making, wood working, tin smithing, cooking, and pottery making. We
anticipate extending art lessons in the 2010 season through GCV&M's Sampler program, Art and Nature,
and through a new program where visitors will participate in creating ¡°schoolgirl art¡± (watercolors,
calligraphy, needle arts) in the 1855 Romulus Ladies' Seminary in the Village.
GCV&M has loaned works to regional and national museums, including New York State
Museum, Albany, NY; Albany Museum of Art, Albany, NY; The Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York,
NY; National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC.; Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art
Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, VA; The Rockwell Museum, Corning, NY; The National Museum of
Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, WY; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NB; San Diego Natural History Museum,
San Diego, CA; Thomasville Cultural Center, Thomasville, GA; Wildlife Experience, Parker, CO; The
McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; The Dunnegan Gallery of Art, Bolivar,
MO; Canton Museum of Art, Canton, OH; Bergstrom-Mahler Art Museum, Neenah, WI; R. W. Norton
Art Gallery, Shreveport, LA; The Spartanburg Art Gallery, Spartanburg, SC; Elizabeth de C. Wilson
Museum, Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum,
Tucson, AZ. More local loans include the George Eastman House, Rochester Museum and Science
Center, Memorial Art Gallery, Landmark Society of Western New York, Strong National Museum of
Play (all Rochester, NY); Ontario County Historical Society, Canandaigua, NY; The Leroy Historical
Society, LeRoy, NY; and The Batavia Land Office Museum, Batavia, NY.
GCV&M's art collections have been sought for books and exhibit catalogs which include David
Wagner's American Wildlife Art, (2008), F.Turner Reuter's A History of American Sporting and Wildlife
Art (2008), Wild Life Art Magazine, and exhibit catalogs including Sheila Hoffman¡¯s Eanger Irving
Couse, A Place in the Sun. In 2006, GCV&M published its first exhibit catalog, A Stitch in Time by
Elizabeth Davis, based on Quilts Uncovered although Victoria Schmidt, former AG curator, had
presented an overview of the sporting art collection in 1984 in Four Centuries of Sporting Art. The Eagle,
GCV&M's membership magazine, also features articles by staff members on the museum's collections.
The museum has also been featured in Americana (1982) and Early American Homes (1997).
Documents and family archives illustrate the region¡¯s development. The Garbutt family papers
(1813-1981) consists of approximately 130 documents, 1,250 store ledgers, papers and receipts which
trace the history of the Garbutt Store, considered the best country store west of the Genesee River, from
1818-1910. (This store supplied local residents and settlers headed westward with foodstuffs, medicines,
ready to wear shoes and clothing, tools, luxury and dry goods.) Also included are accounts of the
Garbutt¡¯s plaster and grist mills, and Garbutt's Tailor Shop (now in Village.) The 47 letters between the
Garbutt family and James Garbutt, the area¡¯s first Civil War volunteer and death, would provide excellent
material for a doctoral dissertation. Garbutt¡¯s Bible, oil-cloth kit, and the home-made flag flown by the
Garbutts during James¡¯ military service also reside in the collections. GCV&M also holds the Altay Store
papers, which consist of over 500 papers and receipts dated 1851-1852 that document the wide array of
goods sold or bartered at this country store, once located in Altay, NY (and now also in Village.) The
4
................
................
In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.
To fulfill the demand for quickly locating and searching documents.
It is intelligent file search solution for home and business.
Related download
- automotive transmission design using full potential of powder metal
- ac 23 27 parts and materials substitution for vintage aircraft
- gates vintage passenger car light truck applications
- standard product safety signs for automotive fire apparatus
- adtomotive body sheet metal maintenance i automotive body repair ed
- this establishment is registered with the state department of consumer
- classic church signs churchsupply warehouse
- hose routing illustra tion with standard drier 31300 vbd vintage air
- automotive aftermarket bearing seal application catalog for 1989 and older
- narrative section of a successful application national endowment for
Related searches
- characteristics of a successful school
- qualities of a successful president
- characteristics of a successful student
- behaviors of a successful student
- traits of a successful student
- qualities of a successful student
- characteristics of a successful leader
- characteristics of a successful college student
- attributes of a successful student
- 5 traits of a successful college student
- characteristics of a successful teacher
- qualities of a successful person