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September 14, 2009

Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture and Senior Research Scholar Dr. Maurice Berger Receive $400,000 Implementation Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities

CADVC's Project Also Receives "We the People" Designation from NEH

Contact: Thomas Moore
Director of Arts & Culture
410-455-3370
tmoore@umbc.edu

Note: You may view or download this release as a pdf file.

Ernest C. Withers, Sanitation Workers Assemble in Front of Clayborn Temple for a Solidarity March, Memphis, TN, March 28, 1968, Gelatin silver print, Image: 8 1⁄2 x 14 3⁄4 in., Paper: 16 x 20 in., Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Museum Purchase, © Ernest C. Withers, Courtesy Panopticon Gallery, Boston MAUMBC's Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture and its Senior Research Scholar, Dr. Maurice Berger, have received a $400,000 America's Historical and Cultural Organizations: Implementation Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a forthcoming exhibition, website, and accompanying book, For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Additionally, For All the World to See has been designated an NEH "We the People" project by the Endowment. The goal of the "We the People" initiative is to "encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through the support of projects that explore significant events and themes in our nation's history and culture and that advance knowledge of the principles that define America." Dr. Berger is the project director, author, and curator of For All The World To See.

Symmes Gardner, director of the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, observed: "The Center is tremendously excited to have received this major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. While it represents first and foremost a very substantial commitment to supporting For All The World To See, the grant also recognizes the importance of CADVC's and Dr. Berger's dedication to projects that seriously examine the issue of race in contemporary American culture."

John Jeffries, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, added: "I share the great excitement of Symmes Gardner and others in the CADVC about the NEH grant. Not only is this major award a signal recognition of the extraordinary quality of the work of Maurice Berger and the Center, but it is also testimony to the power of visual culture and a rigorous, creative multidisciplinary endeavor to illuminate important societal issues."

Missing: Call FBI, 29 June 1964, Offset lithograph, 15 11/16 x 10 7/16 in., Anonymous Gift, 2005, Collection of International Center of PhotographyThe project--the first comprehensive exhibition and publication to look at the role played by visual images in shaping, influencing, and transforming the fight for civil rights in the United States--is being organized in partnership with The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C. The exhibition will open in New York on May 21, 2010 at the International Center of Photography, with a film festival and public programming at the New York Public Library. The show will travel to the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution in June, 2011 and on to museums across the United States as part of its national tour. It will conclude its tour at the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture in the fall of 2012. Yale University Press will publish the project's extensively illustrated companion book, with a full-length text by Dr. Berger and a preface by the renowned writer, librettist, and novelist Thulani Davis.


About the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture
The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture is dedicated to the study of contemporary art and visual culture, critical theory, art and cultural history, and the relationship between society and the arts. CADVC exhibitions, public programs, and K-12 educational outreach initiatives serve as a forum for students, faculty, and the general public for the discussion of important aesthetic and social issues of the day. Disciplines represented include painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, digital art, video, film, television, design, architecture, advertising, and installation and performance art.

Web
UMBC Arts website: http://www.umbc.edu/arts
Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture: http://www.umbc.edu/cadvc

Images
Page 1: Ernest C. Withers, Sanitation Workers Assemble in Front of Clayborn Temple for a Solidarity March, Memphis, TN, March 28, 1968, Gelatin silver print, Image: 8 1-2 x 14 3-4 in., Paper: 16 x 20 in., Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Museum Purchase, copyright Ernest C. Withers, Courtesy Panopticon Gallery, Boston MA
Page 2: Missing: Call FBI, 29 June 1964, Offset lithograph, 15 11-16 x 10 7-16 in., Anonymous Gift, 2005, Collection of International Center of Photography

Posted by tmoore at September 14, 2009 1:10 PM