The William Randolph Hearst Foundation Grants $100,000 to Mid-America Arts Alliance

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 26, 2005

Contact: Sarah McGreer
Communications Associate

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation Grants $100,000 to Mid-America Arts Alliance for ExhibitsUSA Educational Components

Kansas City, MO--The William Randolph Hearst Foundation has announced a $100,000 grant to Mid-America Arts Alliance in support of educational activity associated with ExhibitsUSA exhibitions.

“Our organization believes in the importance of supporting education in a wide range of venues,” says Thomas Eastman, Vice President and Western Director of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. “We are pleased to be able to support ExhibitsUSA in their worthy endeavor of educating underserved populations through arts and humanities exhibitions.”

The funds will allow ExhibitsUSA to develop and distribute affordable, museum-quality exhibitions with educational and programming components and help to underwrite the costs of producing educational components for exhibitions. In addition, extensive educational materials for new exhibitions will be available on the www.exhibitsusa.org Web site.

ExhibitsUSA develops high-quality educational and support materials to accompany all exhibitions in order to help exhibitors expand the depth and breadth of cultural life in their communities. Regardless of topic, exhibitors receive a sizeable cache of materials such as illustrated catalogs, brochures, reproducible gallery guides, text panels, narrative labels, audio CDs, slide presentations, resources for workshops, lectures and performances, and a selection of many more resources.

Beth Harris, Curator of Education, says, “We take a wide range of variables into consideration when planning our educational packages, depending on what regional populations, education levels, and age groups—among other factors—are likely to visit those exhibitions.”

For example, current exhibitions of art originating from Mexico and India include extensive background information about the indigenous cultures and geography of those countries. Just Like Me, an exhibition of artists’ self portraits from children’s books that celebrates diversity, includes multiple ideas for hands-on activities for youth in both family and school settings.

“It’s important to us that all of the hosts of our shows find ways to actively engage their visitors so that they come away with not only a new understanding of the subject matter, but also a sense of discovery and awe,” says Harris.

“These materials are widely used by the visiting public and are essential to the small and midsize museums that comprise ExhibitsUSA’s nationwide constituency,” explains Mary Kennedy McCabe, Director of Mid-America Arts Alliance, ExhibitsUSA’s parent organization. “We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the quality and usefulness of our educational materials, so we are very excited to receive this generous gift from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation that will allow us to continue to develop our programming.”

The Hearst Foundation, Inc., was founded in 1945 by philanthropist William Randolph Hearst. In 1948, Mr. Hearst established the California Charities Foundation. That name was changed to the William Randolph Hearst Foundation soon after Mr. Hearst's death in 1951. Both Foundations are independent private philanthropies operating separately from The Hearst Corporation. The William Randolph Hearst Foundations assist institutions in providing opportunities and high-quality educational experiences to underserved and underrepresented populations.

Annually, ExhibitsUSA offers more than 50 diverse visual arts and humanities exhibitions with companion outreach activities to communities across the United States. In 2004, 33 states hosted ExhibitsUSA exhibitions in communities with populations that ranged from 997 to 16 million. The educational materials accompanying the exhibitions helped to inspire over 1,000 associated community events, such as lectures, workshops, and performances.

The purpose of ExhibitsUSA is to create access to an array of arts and humanities exhibitions, nurture the development and understanding of diverse art forms and cultures, and encourage the expanding depth and breadth of cultural life in local communities. ExhibitsUSA is a national program of Mid-America Arts Alliance, a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1972.

Mid-America Arts Alliance supports and stimulates cultural activity primarily in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. M-AAA originates and manages regional, multiregional, national, and international arts and humanities programs. Major support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, participant state arts agencies, and leading foundations and corporations. For further information, visit the Mid-America Arts Alliance Web site at www.maaa.org or contact Sarah McGreer at sarah@maaa.org.