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Center for Arts & History to receive NEH grant
The Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History will be awarded a grant of almost $6,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), officials from the office of Idaho Senator Mike Crapo have announced.
The 2012 Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions will be used by the Center to support staff training and purchase climate monitoring equipment to better preserve Lewiston's historic Chinese Beuk Aie Temple Collection.
The grant, in the amount of $5,982, is the second consecutive NEH grant awarded to the Center for Arts & History, an achievement which is far from common.
"...NEH does not fund anything but excellent projects," said NEH's White House Liaison and Director of Congressional Affairs Courtney Chapin in reference to the Center winning a second consecutive award. "Federal funds are simply too precious and too few. Our reviewers are the top experts in their fields. Projects have to be superb, and plans have to be very clear and precise. We get far, far more applications than we can fund."
LCSC Dean of Community Programs Kathy Martin is hopeful that the grant will speed up the process of reopening a permanent exhibit for the Beuk Aie Temple Collection at the Center for Arts & History, which is located in the Volmer Building at 415 Main Street in Lewiston.
A fire in March of 2009 forced the closure of the building and the removal of the Chinese collection to a local warehouse.
Despite a number of needs, including funding for redesigning and installing new exhibit lighting, Martin believes that with continued support from both the public and private sector a permanent exhibit could open in 2013. And Martin points out that the revitalization of the exhibit will complement the award-winning Chinese Remembering Project's fifth annual conference scheduled for June of that year.
The Chinese Remembering Project, a program sponsored by LCSC and the Museum at St. Gertrudes, highlights the influence and contributions of the Chinese to the history of Idaho and the Inland Northwest and specifically examines the murdering of 34 Chinese miners in 1887. Martin says that this massacre will be acknowledged in the coming exhibit in its display on mining.
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