The MSU Museum received two grants Wednesday to showcase Jewish and Great Lakes-area cultures later this year.
The Michigan Humanities Council awarded the museum $12,432 to display a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum traveling exhibit and sponsor a part of the East Lansing’s Great Lakes Folk Festival.
The council gave a total of $60,000 to 11 humanities programs in Michigan.
“One of the things our museum does is a lot of things for a lot of different cultural groups,” said Julie Avery, MSU Museum assistant curator of history. “We want to work together to create exhibits. This is a wonderful opportunity to do that.”
Scott Hirko, spokesman for the Michigan Humanities Council, said the council’s job is to donate money to humanity projects to heighten cultural awareness.
“We help people learn about who they are and who their neighbors are,” Hirko said.
A $3,000 grant will help the museum sponsor “Talkers and Tellers” at the Great Lakes Folk Festival on Aug. 9-11.
“It will highlight the artistry, cultural and historical significance of traditional culture as it relates to the occupation, ethnicities, religions and regions of the people of the Great Lakes,” Hirko said.
In a collaborative effort among Congregation Shaarey Zedek, a reform synagogue at 1924 Coolidge Road, MSU’s Jewish Studies Program and the MSU Museum, an exhibit will be moved from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., to MSU. A contribution of more than $9,400 will go toward the display that will start in November 2002.
Jeanette Abeles, the congregation’s cultural committee chairwoman, said she visited the display in Washington and was impressed with the exhibit about Varian Fry, a man who helped well-known Jewish writers, musicians and artists escape Europe during the Holocaust.
“Varian Fry and the Michigan Jewish Community” exhibit will be on display until June 2003.
“This is the first time we had a traveling museum exhibit in Mid-Michigan,” Abeles said. “We are very grateful to the Humanities Council because they are really helping us out.”
Abeles said this is a good exhibit for the whole community because it will inform people about Jewish history and culture from a world.
“This is going to be an opportunity for people to see things they have never seen before,”Abeles said.
