In October, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), announced $15,255,733 in American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act project contributions "to institutions across 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico to support the role of museums and libraries in recovering from the coronavirus pandemic."
An examination of the contribution receivers shows that many projects that got funding from the relief package included "anti-racist" education and "social activism" for school-aged children, and many had almost nothing to do with recovery efforts.
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For example, the IMLS awarded $49,632 to the Rochester Museum and Science Center in New York for a field trip for third-grade students that will "utilize the ‘Take It Down’ exhibit, which tells the story of a community-led effort to remove racist artwork from a historic carousel, as a tool for anti-racism education."
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The IMLS also awarded $43,400 to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to train guides to "incorporate greater cultural fluency and responsiveness into their touring using an anti-racist lens," and to "introduce new tour topics for school audiences" regarding "social-emotional learning, identity, empathy, and social activism," according to the IMLS website.
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The IMLS awarded a $50,000 grant to the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to expand its power to offer "equity, diversity, and inclusion-focused STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs for pre-K through 12th-grade students in the greater Harrisburg area," the IMLS website states.
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The Brooklyn Museum received $50,000 to create an "intensive arts education curricula" for underserved schools and to produce "content that addresses history and art through an anti-racist lens."
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Some of the projects that obtained ARP-funded grants from the IMLS were less geared toward children but still included activities that appeared to have little to do with helping museums and libraries recover economically from the pandemic.
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The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, for example, received $50,000 to build a 9-foot bronze statue in Marcus Garvey Park that "addresses Black masculinity, stereotypes and shared diasporic experiences."
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Historic New England in Boston got $49,750 to hire a curatorial fellow to help "amplify marginalized voices and represent a complete history of the region," as well as to catalog and digitize "A Time to Remember," the nonprofit’s collecting initiative documenting the impacts of the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Northwest Mississippi Community College received $33,000 in ARP funds to create campus "safe spaces" where students can engage on topics dealing with "post-pandemic stress, racial injustice, diversity/inclusion, and resilience."
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