SEPTEMBER 2004

WOLFSONIAN AWARDED THREE MAJOR GRANTS

A team of scholars and Wolfsonian staff began a multi-year process of reinterpreting and reinstalling the museum's exhibition of its permanent collection, Art and Design in the Modern Age: Selections from the Wolfsonian Collection with the support of a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The team met last summer to begin developing a "humanities framework" for the exhibition, exploring the many themes that run through the collection. As part of the grant, assistant director for curatorial affairs Marianne Lamonaca and assistant director for education and public programs Kate Rawlinson traveled to London to meet with representatives of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which recently concluded a reinterpretation of the exhibition of its collection of British art and design.

The National Endowment for the Arts awarded The Wolfsonian a $60,000 grant to fund the research, documentation, and exhibition of the museum's world-renowned 2,2000-piece collection of modern Dutch books, posters, furniture, and objects. The museum's Dutch Design collection is considered to be the finest outside of The Netherlands. The collection illustrates the evolution of Dutch design in the modern era and how it was used to promote nationalism, advance the development of consumer goods, and improve quality of life. An exhibition of works from the Dutch Design collection is planned. As part of the grant, the museum will make these resources available online.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded The Wolfsonian a $321,000 Economic Development initiative grant to support the construction of the museum's new café and museum shop. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was instrumental in facilitating the HUD grant. "The new café and bookstore will be a wonderful addition to The Wolfsonian, and will help attract additional visitors to the museum, enhancing what is already a significant cultural and educational resource in the Miami community," she said. "The new facility is more than simply a place to eat and shop. It will be a wonderful place for residents to gather - and it will help to revitalize that stretch of Washington Avenue."

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