Correction: Due to a reporting error, this story states that Robert Cantwell co-curated the Ackland exhibit "The '50s and the Anti-'50s." He is teaching a class on the subject of the exhibit.
A $1.25 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will be pumping through the veins of the Ackland Art Museum in the coming years with the impetus of enhancing the museum's role in University education.
The foundation invited the museum to apply and then awarded the grant to challenge the Ackland to strengthen its relationship with faculty to the benefit of students and research, Museum Director Emily Kass said.
Ackland must match $1 million of the grant in fundraising, while the remaining $250,000 acts as operational funds for three years while that goal is achieved.
"It's an expansion of the role we've had for some time," Kass said. "Our collection is global, historical and contemporary. Our works of art can be used to teach a class, and now we're looking at how to do a much deeper job of that."
Kass said the museum plans to increase communication with professors to coincide courses and exhibitions around the same subject.
She said discussion has already begun with Steven Reznick, associate dean for first-year seminars and academic experiences, to create seminars around the collection.
Plans for the seminars are still in talks, but the grant would help professors create seminars.
"The University is a many splendid thing and the Ackland is one of our splendors," Reznick said. "Seminars are special classes so they are a flexible way to use that resource."
Robert Cantwell, a professor of American studies, co-curated an exhibition "The '50s and the Anti-'50s," and will also teach a fall semester course on the counter decade.
Kass said Cantwell's joint exhibition and class is good model for how the museum wants to reach the grant goal in the future.
Cantwell's exhibition is a part of Ackland's 50th anniversary year, which begins Sept. 21 when the museum debuts its largest exhibition yet, "Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art."
The exhibition concentrates on work from the years around 1958, a turning point in the art world from popular abstract expressionism artists such as Jackson Pollock.
Events corresponding to the 1958 theme include four lunchtime lectures from faculty, two concerts of music from the decade held by the music department and readings of literature and poetry from the '50s by PlayMakers Repertory Company.
Each event is an effort to engage students in the exhibition and the further learning that the museum offers, said Nic Brown, Ackland's director of communications.
He said part of the grant money will be used to create two new full-time staff positions, a coordinator of academic programs and an assistant, to facilitate a stronger relationship with education within the University. About 7,000 students visited the museum last year for a curricular purpose.
"We expect that number to grow this year because of the grant," Brown said. "I think that's going to have a ripple affect on the community."
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