The Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities announces a new preventive conservation grant program, Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections, with a deadline of December 8, 2009. The program offers U.S. nonprofit museums, libraries, and archives, as well as state and local governmental agencies and tribal governments with humanities collections two kinds of awards:
*Planning and evaluation grants, with awards up to $40,000
These grants can help institutions assess risks to collections and identify realistic approaches for mitigating them; examine passive and low-energy alternatives to conventional energy-intensive systems for managing environmental conditions; analyze existing climate control systems and the performance characteristics of buildings and building envelopes to develop a plan for improved operation, effectiveness, and energy efficiency; and, evaluate the effectiveness of preventive conservation strategies previously implemented, including performance upgrades to systems and building envelopes. Planning and evaluation projects should involve an interdisciplinary team appropriate to the goals of the project. The team may consist of consultants and members of the institution's staff and might include architects, building engineers, conservation scientists, conservators, curators, and facilities managers, among others.
*Implementation grants, with awards up to $400,000
These grants can support managing interior relative humidity and temperature by passive methods such as creating buffered spaces and housing, controlling moisture at its sources, or improving the thermal and moisture performance of a building envelope; installing or re-commissioning heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems; installing storage systems and rehousing collections; improving security and the protection of collections from fire, flood, and other disasters; and upgrading lighting systems and controls to achieve levels suitable for collections that are energy efficient.
Guidelines will be posted on the NEH Web site in early September. Please contact the division for more information by emailing preservation@neh.gov or calling 202-606-8570.
