For more information, contact:
Leslie Appleget
District Arts Integration Specialist, North Adams Public Schools
lappleget@napsk12.org
(413) 776-1632
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
North Adams Public Schools to Receive $30,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
NORTH ADAMS — North Adams Public Schools (NAPS) is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $30,000. This award will expand the district’s longtime educational partnership with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards made across the United States, totaling nearly $28.8 million, that were announced by the NEA as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities
nationwide,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “Projects such as this one strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.”
For over two decades, North Adams Public Schools and MASS MoCA have worked together to provide every PreK–6th-grade student in the North Adams district with direct access to world-class contemporary art and living artists.
Dr. Barbara Malkas, Superintendent of North Adams Public Schools, offered inspiring comments about the district's partnership with the museum: “As a world-class art museum, MASS MoCA is a valuable resource to the community at large, but more so as a museum committed to arts education and integration of the arts into the lives of our students. They have provided many opportunities to explore art, present art, and learn from master artists, as well as space for students to use art as a means of understanding complex issues found in history, lived experience, and the broader world. North Adams Public Schools greatly values our partnership with MASS MoCA and the opportunities the museum provides our students.”
This project is an expansion of the district’s partnership with the renowned museum, which will go beyond school-day visits for students by engaging North Adams families. This new focus on making MASS MoCA more accessible to students’ families is a response to lack of access to the museum during school hours throughout the last two school years due to the pandemic.
In the 2023-2024 school year, KIDSPACE, MASS MoCA’s child-centered contemporary art gallery and hands-on art-making studio, Anne Samat, Malaysian artist from Kuala Lumpur, spreads inspiring reminders that we are surrounded by love and compassion in a solo KIDSPACE exhibition of her mixed media woven sculptures. The artist blends traditional Southeast Asian art of Pua Kumbu weaving, which she formally studied, with humble household goods from 99 cent stores and thrift shops to construct totemic figurative sculptures.
NAPS teachers and MASS MoCA staff will use this exhibition to develop programs that explore social issues and topics important to children—“community” and “love” are the main themes of Samat’s exhibition and related school programming. What students experience at the museum is designed to enhance and strengthen their classroom learning. In preparation for the 2023-2024 school year, our three elementary schools will each select three teachers to serve as school ambassadors to design programs with museum staff. Additionally, the museum-school partnership will design programs for families and each school will be provided with passes to visit the museum for free.
Dr. Laura Thompson, MASS MoCA’s outgoing Founding Director of Education + Curator of Kidspace said: “This grant proposal was organized during the height of the pandemic, when we weren’t able to have students visiting the museum. It was important to include programming that could take place with families who had been struggling during this difficult time. Though we welcomed back some school groups in September 2022 after a two year hiatus, we are looking forward to the opportunity to expand our programming.”
For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit
arts.gov/news.
For more information about North Adams Public Schools’ partnership with MASS MoCA, contact Leslie Appleget, District Arts Integration Specialist via email at lappleget@napsk12.org or via phone at (413) 776-1632.
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