The Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum has received another big boost from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
GallupARTS, a nonprofit arts council serving Gallup and McKinley County, got a $400,000 Digital Projects for the Public “Production” grant in January from the NEH to help its virtual museum project.
“The level of support this project and our community continues to receive from NEH is truly game-changing,” said Rose Eason, gallupARTS executive director. “With this award, we will be able to open the doors of the GNDA Virtual Museum to the public, so to speak, and bring to life a trailblazing project that preserves an important historical and cultural legacy, and brings it into the 21st century as an educational resource, community building tool and economic development asset.”
GallupARTS received a $30,000 Digital Projects for the Public “Discovery” grant in 2018.
“Our first NEH grant was … to plan and research the virtual museum. Our second grant, received in 2020, was to prototype and evaluate the virtual museum, and to continue research and development,” Eason said. “And so, this third grant aims to move the project forward, taking all that work and bringing it into fruition as a fully open, fully publicly accessible online museum experience.”
The Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum will hold both scholarly information and creative content, and was designed in collaboration with Gallup artists and community members.
Though navigating the pandemic has been tough, gallupARTS has remained persistent. Now, the focus is on what interests the locals.
“We are trying to get a grasp of how people are engaging now, what their expectations are, and what their needs and wants are, and figuring out how to best serve our community,” Eason said. GallupARTS looks to keep contributing to the art scene that is so strong in this state.
“New Mexico is so deeply rooted in the most amazing arts and cultural traditions, and, certainly in Gallup, we see those legacies in those ideas being carried forward, and constantly innovated and evolved into really new and exciting ways,” Eason said.
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