WASHINGTON, DC—The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has announced its final Fiscal Year 2024 grant recipients. Awardees of the National Leadership Grants for Museums (NLG-M) will lead projects that address broad needs within the museum field, strengthen the museum profession, and strive to improve museum services for the American public. This year, 18 institutions were awarded NLG-M awards, including over $2M to four APGA members.
Made By Us, an entity of the Atlanta History Center, will create programming resources for museums that encourage informed youth participation in civic life and the 250th commemoration of the United States. Project activities will include hosting four convenings around the country, with museum leaders and young adults, to articulate programming strategies and approaches for museums to better meet the needs of youth. External consultants will be hired to compile and analyze results from workshops and to develop a Youth250 Toolkit, which will assist museums in planning youth programs. Gen Z staff will work with consultants to build a Youth250 Bureau made up of 25 members, who will train and advise museums on the use of this Toolkit. The Youth250 Toolkit and Youth250 Bureau will be easily accessible and replicable for museums to use for audiences with specific needs.
The San Diego Zoo will develop a cryopreservation storage repository for exceptional plants and build the capacity of botanic gardens across the United States to use such a repository. Exceptional plants are those that cannot be maintained in traditional seed bank collections, and it is estimated that 15-25% of flowering plants are exceptional. The project will create procedures to establish a repository for multiple institutional use and develop protocols to expand its utility to conserve specific taxa. The project will work in partnership with the Huntington and the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden to develop training for six paid interns and twenty-three botanical garden staff. The project team will create reference resources, such as best practices, written protocols, and training videos that will be broadly disseminated to the field through collaborative networks, symposia, and open-access science journals.
The Morton Arboretum will develop training tools for horticulture staff at public gardens and arboreta. Based on a survey conducted in 2023, the Arboretum learned that finding and retaining staff with horticulture backgrounds is increasingly difficult, and managers often do not have the time and resources to implement consistent training. This project will address these issues by developing an adaptable curriculum for horticulture staff at any garden, a suite of eLearning courses available on Morton Arboretum’s training platform, and customizable “Model Sites” that will incorporate an organization’s existing content and training needs. These three products will help horticulture managers onboard new staff and develop the skills of existing staff. By expanding organizations’ capacity and deepening staff learning, the living collections at public gardens and arboreta across the country will be better cared for and maintained.
The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden will conduct a three-year research project to improve breeding success among zoo-housed cats. Most cat populations in the wild are declining and breeding success has been decreasing the past two decades. Zoo scientists will utilize the jaguar and leopard as models to assess the reproductive health of females through a multimodal approach to reproductive exams using assisted reproductive technologies that will allow the propagation of genetically valuable cat pairs unable to breed naturally. The project will build capacity of the zoological community through advanced training of staff in research methodology and veterinary techniques, and by creating a paid undergraduate internship program. This project will result in enhancing the genetic viability and sustainability of big cat collections maintained in North American zoos.
