The Allen County Museum received a $25,000 grant to re-examine and re-imagine the layout and the galleries on the museum’s first floor.
Craig Kelly | The Lima News
LIMA — Allen County Museum Director Christine Fowler Shearer is hopeful that the museum will be able to tell new stories about the county’s history in a more engaging manner thanks to a grant awarded to the museum Friday by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy Demands Wisdom.
The $25,000 grant, awarded through the endowment’s Public Impact Projects at Smaller Organizations program, will fund the planning stages for a reinterpretation and new layout for the galleries on the museum’s main floor. Displays on the lower level will not be part of the project.
“Basically, we want to update it and redo the interpretation of the galleries on the first floor and make sure that it’s up to date and we’re telling more stories that need to be told,” Fowler Shearer said. “As we do research, there is more and more stuff that gets uncovered, and so by looking at our interpretation, it gives us the opportunity to expand some of what we already have into more detail. A lot of the stuff hasn’t been updated recently, and so we’re trying to bring it a little more up to date and represent more of the community than what is represented right now.”
Edwards Creative, a Milan, Illinois-based exhibition design business, will be working with the museum for this project. Other scholars working with the museum on this project will be cultural anthropologist Nekole Alligood, a member of the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma, Ohio Nothern University public history professor David Strittmatter and museum reinterpretation consultant Katherine Solender.
According to a release from the museum, the redesign will include both the layout on the main floor as well as programming for the museum going forward to “allow the museum to move toward creating a more impactful and engaging experience for the public.”
The project, expected to begin in early March, is expected to last eight to 10 months.
“That will give us time to try to find additional funding for implementation,” Fowler Shearer said. “The implementation will probably take two years.”
The Allen County Museum was among the first recipients of this new grant, according to Fowler Shearer, as only a quarter of the organizations that applied to the endowment was selected for funding.
