Georgia Museum of Art receives NEA stimulus grant for a curator

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded the Georgia Museum of Art a $50,000 stimulus grant to provide a year of salary and benefits to fill the vacant position of curator of decorative arts through the 2009 NEA Direct Grants: Museum-Recovery Act. Recognizing the importance of the nonprofit arts industry on the economy, the Recovery Act provides stimulus funds, which the NEA uses in an effort to preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector that are threatened by the current economic downturn.

The curator of decorative arts directs the museum’s Henry D. Green Center for the Study of the Decorative Arts, which has as its primary focus the decorative arts and material culture of Georgia. Founded in 1998, the Green Center produces exhibitions, publications and educational programs that reach audiences in Georgia and well beyond the region, thus serving a critical role in the museum’s mission and its long-range and strategic goals.

“Happily, this very timely grant allows us to continue the work of the Henry D. Green Center without missing a beat,” said the museum’s director, William U. Eiland.

Among the first duties of the interim curator of decorative arts is to plan and present the fifth biennial Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, “Neighboring Voices: The Decorative Culture of Our Southern Cousins,” January 29-30, 2010, and edit the presentations for publication following the event. The curator will design the display of the permanent collection of decorative arts in the museum’s new gallery wing and formalize the Henry D. Green Center with the new GMOA humanities study centers, opening in early 2011. The curator will resume development of a major survey exhibition and catalogue of the decorative arts in Georgia, circa 1750-2000, along with other original exhibitions, and will direct new acquisitions of decorative arts, with an emphasis on works made in Georgia, the South and the United States.

GMOA is one of only nine nonprofit arts organizations in Georgia to receive a stimulus grant to provide salary support for positions deemed critical to an organization’s artistic mission. Only organizations that were awarded NEA funding over the past four years were eligible.

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