The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced new grants for 211 museum projects, totaling $25,576,662, through its highly competitive Museums for America and National Leadership Grants for Museums programs.
Kristine Morrissey, iSchool lecturer and director of the Museology Graduate Program was awarded $140,000 for the Let's Talk program. Let's Talk will bring together museum professionals who are engaged in facilitating, evaluating, and studying dialogue programs in STEM and history-based institutions to analyze and synthesize what is known about dialogue programs, convene a cross-discipline symposium, and develop and share models and resources.
The findings from Let's Talk and discussion on dialogue as an educational strategy will inform the development of a framework and resources to be shared with other institutions to further the museum field's understanding of the emerging practice of dialogue-based programs. It will also increase the capacity of current and future museum professionals in planning, implementing, evaluating, and studying dialogue programs that effectively engage broad audiences around significant societal topics.
“Millions of Americans visit museums each year,” said IMLS Director Susan H. Hildreth. “These federal investments will ultimately help museums deliver enhanced learning experiences, improve collections care, and address community needs.”
IMLS museum grants support a wide variety of projects, including exhibits; onsite and offsite arts and education programming; projects to digitize collections; partnerships to reach underserved neighborhoods and to address community needs; projects for people with disabilities and underserved populations; conservation of threatened or fragile collections, including living collections in zoos and botanical gardens; creative physical spaces for hands-on learning; internships; makerspaces and STEM-based learning projects; and much more.