NEH on the Road, a partnership of the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Humanities, has brought 17 traveling exhibitions to cultural organizations in 47 states. Image courtesy of the Mid-America Arts Alliance.
In partnership with the NEH, the Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) manages NEH on the Road. Through the program, small and mid-size cultural organizations across the United States have access to rich content developed by major institutions that they can introduce to their communities. The Mid-America Arts Alliance manages every step of this process: sourcing artifacts, consulting with experts, downsizing the exhibition and rewriting its script, and creating toolkits for use in K–12 classrooms. Since 2003, M-AAA has adapted 17 exhibitions originally developed by institutions like the Minnesota Historical Society, the C.M. Russell Museum, the Museum of International Folk Art, and the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis on topics as widely ranging as the Civil War, agriculture, early flight, and American landscape painting. Once developed, exhibitions travel for 5 years, visiting 24 institutions ranging from libraries to museums and historical societies.
“Through a diverse and active changing exhibition schedule, as well as providing various opportunities to access the museum, our audience has moved from being small and narrowly defined to a broad and diverse one that reflects our collective community.”
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NEH on the Road exhibitions bring some of the best exhibitions developed by large museums to smaller cultural organizations across the United States. As well as adapting the exhibitions, the Mid-America Arts Alliance creates corresponding educational materials to be shared with school groups. Image courtesy of the Mid-America Arts Alliance.
Importantly, M-AAA helps organizations build their capacity through the NEH on the Road program. Their exhibitions are designed for museums and other cultural organizations that often don’t have a large staff, and M-AAA assists with everything from design to installation and programming. The process provides host-organization staff with critical professional development and helps them build the confidence to develop exhibitions and programming on their own. For the Upcountry History Museum in Furman, South Carolina, the traveling exhibition program is fundamental to its business model and has produced results. From 2013–2017, the museum increased attendance by 60%, giving by 50%, and community partnerships by 40%. According to Dana Thorpe, executive director of the museum, “through a diverse and active changing exhibition schedule, as well as providing various opportunities to access the museum, our audience has moved from being small and narrowly defined to a broad and diverse one that reflects our collective community.”
Students wear their own U.S. Marshal armbands after visiting The Power of Children, an exhibition developed by the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and adapted for smaller organizations by the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Image courtesy of the Mid-America Arts Alliance.
NEH on the Road exhibitions, such as Spirited: Prohibition in America, help cultural organizations reach a range of audiences. Image courtesy of the Mid-America Arts Alliance.
Organizations hosting NEH on the Road exhibitions develop programs tailored for their communities, for which they are awarded $1,000 NEH grants. For Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors the Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History in Bryan, Texas, hosted local farmers and their baby animals for three days. Exhibitions and their accompanying programs help organizations reach new audiences across many demographics. By hosting Roaring 20s-themed programs with Spirited: Prohibition in America, the West Baton Rouge Museum reached a much younger audience than typically attends their shows. And every day for two weeks, the museum sold-out screenings of the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which accompanied For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.
