Description

This is a funding collaboration between the American Arts program and the Indigenous Knowledge Initiative who will support this program with $10K each and we are requesting an additional $20K in support from C&I.
Museums Alaska is an organization of Alaskan museums (which include museums currently or previously support under the HLF American Arts program) and museum professionals, and they provide professional development, networking grant, and other opportunities to support museums and museum professionals across Alaska. This grant will help support their Access to Alaska Native Collections (AANC) program that supports Alaska Native artists and knowledge makers to work with the curatorial and collections departments of partner museums. This is part of a larger body of Museum Sovereignty work that Museums Alaska is part of with the Siri Foundation, a Native Alaskan nonprofit in Alaska.   The AANC program was launched in 2022 and this funding will support the 2023 cohort of artists and allow Museums Alaska to give larger awards (if needed) to artists who are traveling longer distances or need longer museum stays. In 2022, the max award was $2500 per artist, and this was not enough to support the full cost of artist visits to museums. With this funding they will increase the minimum award to $3500 and implement a tiered award system with a max award of $7,000 for artists who travel long distances or need longer stays for collection visits. In 2022, they were able to support 7 artists through the AANC and in 2023 they plan to support at least 10 artists. This grant will also support outreach so that they can better market the AANC in rural communities and also target Native elders and others who may not have access to computers, social media or email.