Dubuque, Iowa – Dubuque County Historical Society (DCHS) was recently awarded two grants from the City of Dubuque’s Arts and Cultural Affairs grant program. DCHS was awarded $8,000 in funding to support a special 20th Anniversary exhibit at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. DCHS was also awarded $21,349 in Operating Support for fiscal year 2024. Through these grant programs, the City of Dubuque has nurtured the diversity and accessibility of Dubuque’s arts and culture community since 2006.
As a steward of the region’s history, DCHS has become a key community partner for humanities-based programming and informal learning. Its mission is to inspire stewardship by creating educational opportunities where history and rivers come alive. The organization works to fulfill this mission while serving local, state, national, and international audiences, and it seeks to capture and relate regional stories to a global perspective. This work engages diverse audiences in immersive educational learning and provides an equitable and accessible atmosphere in which all visitors can fully engage.
With support from the City Arts and Culture Special Projects Grant Program, the River Museum will internally curate We Are Where We Live: How Our Environments Shape Community. To honor the growth of its mission and its collection as the River Museum celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2023, DCHS will present a special retrospective exhibition and program that will engage external collaborative scholars from diverse fields. The scholars will bring expertise in human rights, environmental history, and fine art. Using a multi-tiered approach of environmentally-based historical analysis and artistic interpretation, the exhibition will be an opportunity to reflect on how place builds community. To foster an empathetic approach to themes like environmental impact, systemic racism, and immigration, DCHS is engaging collaborative scholars to support a culturally informed, inclusive, and multi-disciplinary experience. This special exhibit will run from late October 2023 through May 2024.
“This exhibition explores how the environment is inextricably tied to the stories that make us,” said Emma Sundberg, Director of Curatorial Services. “To celebrate the opening of the River Museum 20 years ago, we invite you to come and explore the shared history between people and the landscape and consider how your own identity has ties to place. Perhaps no other force exerts so much influence on the who of what we become. We are excited to investigate and present objects in the collection this way and hope it inspires a shared future.”
DCHS’s general operations, including exhibits and programming, are made possible, in part, through the City of Dubuque’s Arts and Culture Operating Support grant program. For more information about upcoming events and current exhibits at the River Museum and Mathias Ham Historic Site, visit rivermuseum.com.