President’s Committee on the Arts & the Humanities
Below is an announcement for your newsletters and Web sites on the recently awarded 2006 Save America’s Treasures grants.
This program provides vital capital funds for museums, libraries, archives and historic structures and sites around the nation. I encourage you to congratulate recipients in your state and consider ways to highlight these treasures and the awards. For instance, these treasures are ideal products for cultural heritage tourism marketing efforts—tours, events, open houses, etc. Finally, please collaborate with other state agencies in identifying appropriate SAT applicants for 2007. Guidelines and applications will be available for 2007 in January. To see all the SAT 99-05 awards in your state please see attached file [Note: Send an email message to bambi@nathpo.org to request this large PDF file.]
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The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), National Park Service (NPS), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) jointly announced the awarding of $7.6 million in federal Save America’s Treasures (SAT) grants. With these funds 42 organizations and agencies will act to conserve some of America’s most significant cultural treasures, which illustrate, interpret, and embody the great events, ideas, and individuals that contribute to our nation’s history and culture. Through the congressionally-appropriated SAT program, awards were made to 23 historic properties and sites and 19 nationally significant collections of artifacts, documents and artistic works.
Save America’s Treasures competitive awards preserve the nation’s most significant endangered intellectual and cultural artifacts, historic structures and historic sites. The range of this year’s awards covers the breadth of American history and culture-- from preserving the Nellie L. Byrd, one of the Chesapeake Bay’s few remaining skipjacks, to saving Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, a Civil Rights landmark. Other grants will restore the Gettysburg Cyclorama and the letters and journals of prominent leaders of the American Revolution.
“Save America’s Treasures grants help address the very real threats to our nation’s historic and cultural treasures, a legacy held in trust by all Americans,” said Mrs. Laura Bush, Honorary Chairman of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. “Through this program President Bush and I want to encourage public and private efforts to carry forward the work of generations in keeping these vital pieces of the nation alive for our children and their children.”
Click here for a complete project list and highlights of this year’s awards follows:
2006 Project Highlights
This year’s Save America’s Treasures awards:
A) Cover a diverse range of subject matter and American themes
Colonial History
While his farm in Concord, Massachusetts was being searched for arms by British troops, Colonel James Barrett had assembled the militia who would fire the shots that ignited the American Revolution. Preservation of his home, which remains relatively unchanged, provides a living link to the American Revolution.
Civil Rights Movement
Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was a focal point for African-American life in the South, serving as a lecture hall, gathering place and headquarters for the Civil Rights rallies and meetings. In 1963, a bomb exploded during Sunday school killing four young girls—forever linking this tragic event and the church as a symbol of the struggle for civil rights.
Maritime History
Maryland’s skipjacks, sleek sailing ships that harvested oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, helped drive America’s prosperity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today only a few of these boats exist. The Nellie Byrd will be restored to serve as working boat, teaching the next generation about the contribution of these ships to the growth of our nation.
B) Serve as keystones for scholars and future historians to tell our nation’s story
Nebraska State Historical Society Native American Collection touches on almost the whole history of the Plains Indians Tribes from before contact with Europeans to the present day. It provides an irreplaceable understanding of the cultural life of these people.
Hearst Metrotone Newsreel Collection represents a priceless public archive that highlights the broad patterns of 20th-century U.S. history through the eyes of journalists reporting on American and world history, scientific and medical breakthroughs, popular culture and hundreds of other stories.
C) Represent a wide range of American communities
Sheridan Inn in Sheridan, Wyoming, was developed by Buffalo Bill Cody with the railroad company and served both hunters and authors who were the seeking the Wild West.
Farnsworth House on the outskirts of Chicago was designed by Mies van der Rohe and is considered one of the country’s premier architectural treasures.
National Bank Building, Galveston, Texas, is one of the pillars of the city’s National Historic Landmark District, which encompasses examples of 19th- and early 20th-century architecture.
D) Contribute to the preservation of American culture, identity and heritage
Alcatraz Island Garden was created by those who lived on the island during its military and prison eras. Sustaining this unique cultural landscape, its history, horticulture and cultural significance, is a critical piece of this National Historic Landmark’s interpretation for visitors.
World Trade Center 9/11 Collection includes more than several hundred thousand artifacts, ranging from the legacy of thoughts and memorials to the fragments of buildings, vehicles and other pieces from the site, all of them framing a defining moment in modern American history.
Gettysburg Cyclorama is one of the last surviving examples of its type and depicts Pickett’s Charge the climatic clash of this epic battle. It is 359 feet long, 27 feet high and weighs an estimated 3 tons and presents a host of challenges to conservators in the restoration of this fragile 19th-century work.
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Again, the website for the list of 2006 SAT grants is: http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/treasures/download/2006SATgrants.pdf