Friends, Businesses Make Winter Lecture Series Work

Where would our time-honored Winter Lecture Series be without the support of sponsors, friends and volunteers? Thank you to our sponsors Ronald Lee Fleming II, Felicia Fund, Inc., Cynthia and Robert Sinclair, The Hope Foundation, and Anita and George Furbish. Many thanks to our hard-working committee members who put together a terrific line-up of speakers: Chair Richard Hunt, Burton Alpert, Bruce Amand, Jeannie Brown, Steve Caminis, Mary de Leiris, Cora Lee Gibbs, Margot Grosvenor and Judy Hambleton. A round of applause to the many volunteers who served tea, set up and washed up before and after each lecture! Support from our friends in the community helped us present our weekly teas. Thank you to these generous tea sponsors: Café Zelda, Empire Tea and Coffee, Fatulli's Gourmet Bakery and Deli, La Forge Casino Restaurant, Sardella's Italian Restaurant and Yesterday's Restaurant and Ale House.

"Focus on Four" Receives American Masterpieces Grant

The National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, has recognized our fall 2009 exhibition “Focus on Four: Rhode Island Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier, Lewis Hine, Charlotte Estey and Aaron Siskind” with a $5,000 American Masterpieces grant. The federally-funded program is designed "to acquaint Americans with the best of their cultural and artistic legacy." Our Curator, Nancy Whipple Grinnell, spent five years researching and curating “Focus on Four,” which compared photographers across generations and revealed changes in artistic schools of thought, society and technology. Congratulations Nancy!

More great grant news

The Museum has received numerous grants over the past three months to support a wide variety of programs and services:

• $3,000 from Ocean State Charities Trust for laptop computers and art supplies;
• $5,000 from The John Clarke Trust for arts enrichment programs;
• $29,400 from the Newport County Fund of The Rhode Island Foundation to support a youth systems collaborative, which includes iNCASE;
• $100,000 two-year grant from the van Beuren Charitable Foundation to support operations management.