Morven Museum & Garden has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support its Inclusive History Gallery Exhibition project.
The funding will be used to write interpretive text for a new exhibition and develop public programming that explores the lives of the people connected to Morven’s history, including those enslaved by the Stockton family.
The new gallery will be located in the museum’s second-floor west wing, formerly a large meeting room, and will open in the fall of 2025. Morven’s Executive Director Rhonda DiMascio expressed gratitude for the grant.
“We thank the NEH for supporting this significant project,” she said. “The grant will help Morven expand the story we tell about everyone who lived here. We’re excited to continue our work with research and archival consultant Sharece Blakney, who has conducted over 900 hours of research on people enslaved by the Stockton family.”
Blakney, along with Morven’s curators, will develop the exhibition’s interpretive text and related programming. The exhibition will examine families like the Stocktons, whose land holdings and family ties stretched across both the North and South in the years leading up to the Civil War.
The museum will also collaborate with community advisor Shirley Satterfield to incorporate Princeton’s Black History into the programming.
Work on the Inclusive History Gallery will begin on March 1. Morven’s Inclusive History Gallery Exhibition Text and Programming project is funded, in part, by the NEH. The agency, which is dedicated to supporting humanities projects, recently awarded $22.6 million in grants to 219 projects nationwide.
For more information on Morven, go to morven.org.
