NEH On the Road Cooperative Agreement

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Through its regular grantmaking activities the Division of Public Programs funds exhibitions at museums and historic sites throughout the country. NEH on the Road is a special initiative designed to create wider access to the stories, ideas, and themes explored in these exhibitions. First implemented in 2005, it offers smaller, object-based, low-security versions of some of these exhibitions, which circulate to small and mid-sized museums nationwide. The program now offers a roster of eight exhibitions that deal with a variety of subjects and reach dozens of venues each year. This Request for Proposals seeks applications for the ongoing maintenance of the existing exhibitions, conversion to a rotating core of six exhibitions, the creation of replacement exhibitions as the existing ones are retired from use, and the management of all logistical details connected to their circulation for a three-year period, starting in July 2012 and ending in June 2015. These logistics include (as detailed below) publicizing the exhibitions; application processing; managing bookings; preparing programming materials, training, and resources for the host venues; and arranging for shipping, insurance, storage, repair, maintenance, and evaluation of the exhibitions. All NEH on the Road exhibitions must adhere to the following parameters: 1) the reconfigured exhibitions are primarily based on artifacts loaned from the original show; 2) they retain the humanities content and the intellectual coherence of the original exhibition; 3) they do not exceed 2,000 square feet in size; 4) they are designed to allow for easy use (e.g., uncrating, installation, etc.) by smaller museums; 5) they include materials that facilitate public programming on the themes of the exhibition; and 6) costs to the venues hosting the exhibitions will not exceed $1,000 for booking and $1,000 for shipping. The goal of this program is to provide exhibitions at low cost to museums that would not otherwise be able to participate in an NEH project, partly to provide resources to those museums, partly to broaden the reach of NEH-funded exhibitions, and partly to publicize the work of NEH nationally. The target venues for the program are mid-sized museums that are dispersed throughout the nation, have annual operating budgets between $250,000 and $1,000,000, are located in communities of fewer than 300,000 people, have approximately 2,000 square feet of available temporary exhibition space, can offer acceptable security and environmental controls for low-security exhibitions, and can provide additional public humanities programming on themes surrounding one of the exhibitions. Venues typically host an NEH on the Road exhibition for seven weeks (excluding shipping and installation time) and receive materials that can be used to create public programs based on the exhibition�s themes and ideas. NEH provides grants directly to the venues to help defray these program costs; venues apply directly to NEH for these funds. A typical NEH on the Road exhibition reaches five venues per year. To date approximately 150 bookings have occurred, and existing shows are fully booked through 2011. An exhibition�s life span is normally four to five years, depending on loan arrangements with the originating museum.

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