CT Humanities Advocated for Funding and Will Provide Expertise on an Educators Institute on Pequot History and an Exhibit on Surfing’s Indigenous Roots
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Dana Barcellos-Allen, dbarcellos-allen@cthumanities.org 860.937.6648
Over $939,000 in National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant funding has been awarded to four CT groups – a tribal nation, two museums, and a higher education organization – for projects that support vital humanities education, research, preservation, and public programs.
Connecticut organizations that received funding during NEH’s final granting round of 2024 are the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Mystic Seaport Museum, Yale University, and Lyman Allyn Art Museum.
CT Humanities advocated to secure funding for and will provide expertise for two of the NEH-funded projects. CTH Executive Director Dr. Jason R. Mancini will serve as key scholar for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s institute for K-12 middle and high school teachers, an initiative that aligns with CTH’s priority of supporting state educational infrastructure. CTH Board Member Akeia de Barros Gomes will oversee a Mystic Seaport exhibit that touches upon a wide range of humanities themes including indigenous skills and belief systems, colonization, community, recreation, and environmental stewardship. Mystic Seaport’s surfing exhibit also received CTH implementation grant funding earlier this year.
“We are thrilled to see Federal funding of Connecticut’s cultural and educational organizations and are very grateful to NEH and also to our congressional delegation for their continued support for humanities funding,” Mancini said. “The combination of federal and state investment, for which Connecticut Humanities is a primary advocate, will contribute to our community vibrancy, educational attainment, and quality of life.”
Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Mashantucket, was awarded $81,490 for a K-12 education institute, The Pequot War: America’s First Attempted Genocide and the Resilience of the Pequot People Project. This grant covers a one-week, residential institute for 36 middle and high school teachers on the history and persistence of the Pequot culture.
Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, received $399,199 for an exhibition called Stoked! Surfing’s Global Legacy. This project, managed by CT Humanities’ Board Member Akeia de Barros Gomes, encompasses the implementation of a traveling exhibition on the history of surfing from its Indigenous origins through the impact of colonization to today.
Yale University, New Haven, was awarded $448,551 for a preservation project documenting connected speech in an endangered language. Through collaborative research, this project will catalog, curate, and provide online access to existing cultural and linguistic materials and to collect new recordings related to Umóⁿhoⁿ (Omaha), a critically endangered language.
Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, received $9,981 in preservation assistance grant funding for the purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies to rehouse approximately 300 works of art on paper ranging from the sixteenth century to the present.
Click here for the full list of awardees.
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. More information about NEH and its grant programs is available at neh.gov. CT Humanities is an independent, non-profit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Connecticut Humanities (CTH) is an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
CTH connects people to the humanities through grants, partnerships, and collaborative programs. CTH projects, administration, and program development are supported by state and federal matching funds, community foundations, and gifts from private sources. Learn more by visiting cthumanities.org.
