National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions

 

We were one of 280 organizations across the US to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2023.  See Who else received grants. 

We requested a grant for a pre-assessment from the Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions. This grant will pay for a consultant to visit the Shinn House and Museum to give us advice on how to better preserve the Shinn Archives, some of which are 150 years old. The consultant will also run a half-day preservation workshop for us and other historic organizations in the community. [Read More]

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $41.3 million in grants for 280 humanities projects across the country on August 15. This round of funding, NEH’s third and last for fiscal year 2023, will support new NEH American Tapestry: Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future initiative projects related to climate change and technology, as well as collaborative and individual humanities research, books, exhibitions, documentaries, and education programs. These peer-reviewed grants were awarded in addition to $65 million in annual operating support provided to the national network of state and jurisdictional humanities councils.

Several newly funded projects will help preserve and expand access to important historical and cultural collections, such as the relocation of Georgia O’Keeffe’s personal library to archival facilities at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum to protect her books and personal effects from environmental damage. NEH Public Scholars grants, which support popular nonfiction books in the humanities, will enable the publication of 28 new titles, including a biography of novelist and poet Emily Brontë. Dangers and Opportunities of Technology grant awards, the first to be awarded in the program created under the agency’s American Tapestry initiative, will support research on the relationship between technology, culture, and society. Funded projects include a book examining the cultural and ethical implications of digital technology and the resulting “spontaneity deficit” as well as a convening of educators to develop resources on the use of AI technologies in teaching art history and media studies.

This round of funding also includes a $500,000 cooperative agreement with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to digitize and describe 120,000 pages of records from federal Indian boarding schools in conjunction with NEH’s partnership with the Department of the Interior on the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.

 

In our NEH Proposal,
we highlighted the Accomplishments of the Shinn Family

It is very hard to pick out the most important accomplishments of the Shinn family.  There are so many. So these are the highpoints that we chose for out letter:

The Shinn family’s history tells many personal stories of the development of the San Francisco Bay Area, the state, and the country. The archives cover the Gold Rush era, the coming of the Transcontinental Railroad, the growth of California agriculture, the study of child psychology, and the development of forestry in California, and WWII. Issues of the day - agriculture, water, labor, immigration, education, psychology, women’s suffrage, and conservation - can be seen through the eyes of this family. 


Eldest son, Charles Howard Shinn, was a journalist, historian, author, horticulturalist, and forester. He wrote about  the history and growth of California. While at Johns Hopkins University, he was Woodrow Wilson’s roommate. He knew John Muir and was a founding member of the Sierra Club.


His sister, Milicent Shinn, was one of the first women to study at the University of California in the 1870s. After graduation, Milicent was editor of the Overland Monthly, a literary magazine devoted to the  development of the country and of California. She was the first woman to receive a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation was based on child development observations of her niece, one of the first studies of its kind in the United States. Her work was done here at the Shinn Ranch and was, and still is, recognized nationally and internationally.  Milicent was added to Where Women Made History

Youngest brother, Joseph Shinn, took over the operations of the fruit ranch. He and his wife were active in the local community. Joseph was the first president of the board of the Alameda County Water District in 1914.

 The second son of Joseph and Florence, Vice Admiral Allen M. Shinn, concluded his long and distinguished career in 1968 as head of the world's largest naval air command (Commander, Naval Air Force Pacific Fleet), having previously served, inter alia, as a Carrier Air Group commander in WWII; Commander USS Saipan; Commandant of Midshipmen at the US Naval Academy;  Commander of the first "super carrier,"  USS Forrestal; and Chief, Naval Air Systems Command in Washington DC.

The archives also have precious fragments that tell the stories of the Chinese workers on the Shinn Ranch who were essential to the success of the nursery and the fruit ranch from 1870 to 1960. The letters and ledgers give voices to these forgotten people who worked in the Shinn family home and in the orchards for almost 100 years. This important history was lost over time, and we are continuing to bring it to light in exhibits and articles. 

Thanks to our US representatives in Congress.
Thank you for funding the National Endowment for the Humanities

We thanked our Senators and House Representatives in the US Congress, so they will know how the money is spent by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NEH and that it is being spent on meaningful projects in California. Letters were sent thanking Senator Butler, Senator Padilla, Representative Swalwell, and Representative Khanna for supporting programs like the NEH.

June 26th, 2024 was our day to meet with the Northeastern Document Conservation Center consultants. The pre-assessment was done in the morning with Megan Dirickson and Ann Marie Willer. We walked through the whole house - archives/museum, downstairs, upstairs, attic, and basement. The afternoon was a community workshop with most of the historic museums as participants.