Title of Project
Tolerance Week 2023

Sponsoring Organization
Tolerance Week

Sioux City

Grant
$5,000

Project Description
Tolerance Week started in 2005 with the idea of dedicating one week each year to the remembrance of the Holocaust in Sioux City. For Tolerance Week 2023, we are partnering with the Sioux City Community Theatre to present the play, The Diary of Anne Frank. We plan to bring in two speakers, Inge Auerbacher, a Holocaust survivor, and Michael Ruskin, the author of a book about his parents’ experiences in the concentration camps. We’ll also be sponsoring field-trips for eighth grade students and teachers to the new Holocaust Rails Exhibit at the Sioux City Railroad Museum.

Title of Project
Iowa Corridor Sangeet

Sponsoring Organization
CARTHA

Iowa City

Grant
$5,000

Project Description

Iowa Corridor Sangeet (ICS) is a grassroots effort that will bring to Iowa greater understanding of performing arts from South Asia. While the word “Sangeet” means “music” in most Indian languages, its roots loosely mean “song together.” In the current context, the word encompasses not only the musical arts but also the harmony created by enhanced understanding of the arts through discourse, discussion and analysis. This proposal outlines our exciting goal to bring artistic programs to Eastern Iowa over the next year. All programs have an important educational component, including (as appropriate) analyses of the art depicted, historic evolution of the art, or artistic evolution of the artist.

Title of Project

Occupy Wounded Knee 1973

Sponsoring Organization
Linn County Historical Society

Cedar Rapids

Grant
$7,500

Project Description

The History Center (THC) will mount an exhibit that will explore, through the Linn County lens, the facts and sometimes murky history surrounding the Wounded Knee Occupation by the American Indian Movement and other tribal entities. The trial of the three men accused of murdering two FBI agents during the Wounded Knee Occupation in the 1970s took place in Linn County, Iowa in order to provide them a fair hearing. This positions THC ideally to also provide a fact-based and neutral telling of this extraordinary story.

Title of Project
Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing

Sponsoring Organization
Brink Literary Journal

Iowa City

Grant
$4,894

Project Description

The Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing will be awarded to the winner of a contest championing innovative hybrid work. Hybrid writing includes multiple mediums such as visual and written elements that together accomplish a result impossible to achieve alone. It harnesses form and content in singular ways to create dynamic work. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication. The Humanities Scholar is Lars Horn. Horn is a writer and translator working in literary and experimental non-fiction. Their first book, VOICE OF THE FISH, won the 2020 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and was an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection. Initially specializing in Phenomenology & Visual Arts scholarship, they hold MAs from the University of Edinburgh, the École normale supérieure, Paris, and Concordia University, Montreal.

Title of Project
Nature – Culture / Natur – Kultur

Sponsoring Organization
Museum of Danish America

Elkhorn

Grant
$5,000

Project Description

The Museum of Danish America plans to explore Danish and Danish-American environmental history through the development of a major exhibition, Nature-Culture/Natur-Kultur. Denmark is known for its strides towards sustainability and carbon neutrality, but the story extends much farther back than just contemporary action. The exhibit Nature-Culture/Natur-Kultur will look at the intersection of Danish cultural values and environmental action, both historically and in the present day. From dairy cooperatives to wind farms to urban planning, a range of topics will be explored to highlight the ways in which Danes and Danish-Americans have both shaped and been shaped by the environment around them. This grant will support the exhibit development process, including research, design, and fabrication, culminating in an in-gallery exhibit that opens on June 22, 2023.

Title of Project
Perle Hogrefe Visiting Writer Series – The Makers

Sponsoring Organization
Iowa State University

Ames

Grant
$7,500

Project Description

The Pearl Hogrefe Visiting Writer Series presents the Makers Series featuring eight events highlighting the discovery process of eleven invited authors each of whom is an accomplished researcher. The theme, “Makers,” focuses on how authors in the environmental humanities are working within the tradition of social justice to create new knowledge through novel research methods resulting in a re-envisioning of old understandings. Among others, invited scholars include Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement, a book on climate change, and attorney Sarah Vogel, who won a class action lawsuit that protected 240,000 farmers. Taylor Brorby and Michael Walsh will discuss their respective books on queer ecology, and four alumni of the MFA in Creative Writing and Environment will return to celebrate their recent books.

Title of Project
Iowa’s Railroad Evolution

Sponsoring Organization
Iowa Railroad Historical Society

Boone

Grant
$5,000

Project Description

Iowa’s Railroad Evolution is an upcoming exhibit which will be at the James H. Andrew Railroad Museum and History Center. It will open Saturday, May 27, 2023 (Memorial Day weekend) 2023. This exhibit will explore the evolution of passenger trains and Iowa railroads and their impact on Iowa’s growth. The exhibit will cover their beginnings, peak and eventual decline due to internal and external factors. We will showcase various trains such as locals, mixed trains, 1800’s passenger cars (wood), 1900’s heavyweights, 1900s streamliners, doodlebugs (gas/electrics), narrow gauge passenger trains, the interurbans, and mail and express. We will highlight those who worked these trains in all areas; food service, overnight accommodations, schedules, passenger growth and decline and their struggle with increasing competition as the years progressed.