American Folk Art Museum – $25,000

With this grant, the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) will convene a public event in February 2027 entitled Potential Threads: Un-Raveling and Un-Settling the American Sampler to discuss and interpret artworks presented in the upcoming AFAM exhibition entitled Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art. The convening will bring together a diverse group of curators, scholars, and artists to reassess American needlework within an expanded art historical narrative that foregrounds BIPOC, Indigenous, and women’s perspectives and reveals a more inclusive and accurate account of early American experience.