The Newark Museum of Art, the largest art and education institution in New Jersey, recently received two significant grants that will allow it to support essential operations.
The grants, issued by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities (NJCH) respectively, are part of a new program that distributes CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act funding to cultural nonprofits affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The grant funding will allow the Museum to retain staff and enhance its digital public programming on humanities-related subjects.
“We deeply appreciate this critical funding as The Newark Museum of Art, and a majority of our peer institutions, are grappling with the widespread impact this public health crisis has had on our operations and financial health, said Linda C. Harrison, Director and CEO of the Newark Museum of Art. “These grants will allow us to sustain jobs among our Museum family as we prepare for our reopening this fall.”
U.S. Senator Cory Booker, former mayor of Newark, provided a letter in support of the Museum’s grant application to the NEH highlighting the institution as an important economic engine for the greater Newark community that employs more than 200 staff, provides job training for up to 60 student interns each year, and attracts cultural consumers to Newark’s resurgent downtown.
“The Newark Museum of Art is the largest museum in New Jersey, and has been an essential cultural anchor for the City of Newark and the entire region for more than a century,” Senator Booker wrote. “This funding will increase the Museum’s capacity to address the growing public demand for humanities-related virtual public programming, not only during the current pandemic, but also in the future.”
In June, the NEH announced that $40 million in supplemental funding would go directly to the 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils to support local cultural nonprofits and educational programming affected by the coronavirus, all as part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act economic stabilization plan appropriated by the U.S. Congress.
“Over the past few months we have witnessed tremendous financial distress at cultural organizations across the country, which have been compelled to furlough staff, cancel programs, and reduce operations to make up for revenue shortfalls caused by the pandemic,” said NEH Chairman Jon Parrish Peede.
“We have a longstanding history of running successful grant programs for public humanities organizations, and we know well the remarkable cultural and historical organizations that serve this state’s communities,” said NJCH Executive Director Carin Berkowitz. “We are honored to contribute to their recovery by administering this emergency grant program. This public health crisis has left no sector untouched and our hope is that this funding provides some much-needed relief to our nonprofit program and project partners.”
NEH CARES grants were awarded across all 50 states, and the District of Columbia, to support essential operations at more than 300 cultural institutions across the country.
