Open Forum

We are a natural science museum, not a traditional history or anthropological or art museum. We hold some of the largest collections of mammal and bird specimens in the United States. We also have holdings of arthropods, fishes, parasites, amphibians and reptiles, frozen tissues and a herbarium. Our museum is a tremendous draw for the schools and currently tours are held in the collection rooms. Because we are not a traditional museum, trying to find funding for an initial exhibit is difficult. We have worked with our University Foundation, but they have not been very helpful. We have a few regular donors, but they stipulate their donations are to go the collections for cases, supplies, etc. Does anyone know of grants that would be applicable to our museum?

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Catherine Osborn
Administrator
Museum of Southwestern Biology
Albuquerque NM
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Hi, Catherine -

A number of colleagues (mostly paleontologists) that I interact with have mentioned that their NSF grants have a "public outreach" component.  I wouldn't be surprised to find that many of the researchers utilizing your collections (maybe even some of your curators) are NSF grant recipients.  While the outreach/education dollars allotted to any single scientist may not be sufficient to finance a whole exhibit, perhaps with their combined funds a workable sum could be raised.  This might get somewhat logistically complicated to arrange.  It may also result in a lot of different avenues of research to attempt to include in the exhibit content, but that might be okay if the overall theme of the exhibit is something rather nebulous, like "biodiversity" or "adaptations for life in the desert".  I'm not sure if this is the right answer for you, but it might be worth considering. 

     Michael


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Michael Holland
Principal/Owner
Michael Holland Productions
Bozeman MT
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-12-2015 11:09 AM
From: Catherine Osborn
Subject: Initial funding for exhibits

We are a natural science museum, not a traditional history or anthropological or art museum. We hold some of the largest collections of mammal and bird specimens in the United States. We also have holdings of arthropods, fishes, parasites, amphibians and reptiles, frozen tissues and a herbarium. Our museum is a tremendous draw for the schools and currently tours are held in the collection rooms. Because we are not a traditional museum, trying to find funding for an initial exhibit is difficult. We have worked with our University Foundation, but they have not been very helpful. We have a few regular donors, but they stipulate their donations are to go the collections for cases, supplies, etc. Does anyone know of grants that would be applicable to our museum?

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Catherine Osborn
Administrator
Museum of Southwestern Biology
Albuquerque NM
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Recently was able to secure funds for the programming of an upcoming large exhibit for the Kenosha Public Museum through the Toomey Foundation for Natural Sciences.
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Samira Gdisis
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Original Message:
Sent: 3/12/2015 11:09:45 AM
From: cosborn@unm.edu
Subject: Initial funding for exhibits

We are a natural science museum, not a traditional history or anthropological or art museum. We hold some of the largest collections of mammal and bird specimens in the United States. We also have holdings of arthropods, fishes, parasites, amphibians and reptiles, frozen tissues and a herbarium. Our museum is a tremendous draw for the schools and currently tours are held in the collection rooms. Because we are not a traditional museum, trying to find funding for an initial exhibit is difficult. We have worked with our University Foundation, but they have not been very helpful. We have a few regular donors, but they stipulate their donations are to go the collections for cases, supplies, etc. Does anyone know of grants that would be applicable to our museum? ------------------------------------------- Catherine Osborn Administrator Museum of Southwestern Biology Albuquerque NM -------------------------------------------