The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens has received the most substantial grant in the more than 50-year history of the institution.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded the museum a challenge grant up to $500,000 to support establishment of a $2 million endowment that will expand and sustain in perpetuity humanities-based public programming that complement exhibitions.
The museum must raise $1.5 million in matching funds to receive the full amount of the challenge grant.
“This will help support our ability to provide more public programs like those we have presented over the past several years which raised up narratives about history, race, suppression and hope,” said museum Director Hope McMath in a news release.
She cited the museum’s exhibits and related programs, including “A Commemoration of the Civil Rights Movement” and “One Family: Photographs by Vardi Kahana” as factors that led to the challenge grant being awarded.
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency established in 1965 to support education and research in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities.
The Cummer is one of only 15 grant recipients in the U.S. and the only applicant in the state to have its proposal funded.
The challenge grant program encourages fundraising for permanent endowments and capital improvements.
Since its inception in 1977, more than 1,500 awards totaling nearly $500 million in federal support has leveraged about $2 billion in nonfederal contributions to the humanities.