The Hunter Museum is pleased to announce that the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded an Art Works grant of $10,000 to the museum for its new program Art Sense, a group of initiatives that will make the Hunter's collection more accessible to guests with limited vision or other sensory impairments and offer new avenues of understanding for museum guests without sensory impairments.
Partnering with Signal Centers, the museum will develop multi-sensory experiences in its interactive art lounges, including tactile representations of artwork and digital and auditory elements that will allow guests to explore with all their senses. The collaboration will also involve the creation of sensory kits, available for all guests, to experience the Hunter's collection aurally, by touch, and by smell. The first of these programs, scheduled for October, will be Art in the Dark, an evening program open to the entire community during which guests will experience art without using sight.
“We are grateful to have been awarded this competitive grant from the NEA,” said Virginia Anne Sharber, executive director of the Hunter Museum. “The Hunter strives to engage a wide range of audiences with the visual arts, and this grant will support our continuing efforts to provide visitors of all backgrounds and abilities new points of entry to experience works of art.”
“The variety and quality of funded projects speaks to the wealth of creativity and diversity in our country,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Through the work of organizations such as the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee, NEA funding invests in local communities, helping people celebrate the arts wherever they are.”
The Art Works category is the NEA’s largest funding category and supports projects that focus on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and/or the strengthening of communities through the arts.
For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.