National Museum of Wildlife Art Receives Hearst Grant
December 15, 2020HEARST FOUNDATIONS AWARDS ART FOR ALL GRANT TO NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WILDLIFE ART
The National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) applied for a grant to the Hearst Foundations in January 2020 for its Art for All educational and outreach programming for K-12 students. We are honored to announce that the Museum was notified of a $100,000 award in June 2020.
The Hearst Foundations receive more than 1,000 grant requests annually and of those, about 300 grant requests will merit funding based on the strength of the proposal and demonstrated outcomes. Preference is given to arts education programs that effectively fill the void of arts programming in K-12 curricula. In each area of funding, the Foundations seek to identify those organizations achieving truly differentiated results relative to other organizations making similar efforts for similar populations.
This award will allow the Museum to continue to serve students throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. We are very proud of our ability to respond quickly to our growing audience of online learners. We expect our virtual engagement to steadily grow as we increase our online educational offerings in the coming months.
The purpose of the Art for All grant is to supplement school arts programming by providing innovative art education to students in grades K-12 through a continuum of free programs ranging from engaging school programming to in-depth fine art instruction and exhibition. Examples of this include expanding Latinx outreach efforts to ensure that Art for All is genuinely representative of community need. The Hearst Foundations grant provides sponsorship for two new episodes of Bisoncast, an online video series that allows the Museum to extend its reach to households and classrooms throughout the state, nation, and globe.
The Art for All programmatic continuum reflects NMWA’s 32 years of experience delivering art education in Jackson Hole. Each component was carefully developed in partnership with local educators and arts organizations, according to these criteria: 1) provides broad access to all school-age children; 2) meets priority curriculum standards for TCSD #1; 3) fills gaps in existing community services, and 4) maximizes the unique resources of the Museum’s collection.
This award is available for up to three years and NMWA cannot apply again to the Hearst Foundations for a minimum of three years. This is the second time NMWA has received this award; the first time was in 2015.