Through its grant-making to thousands of nonprofits each year, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) promotes opportunities for people in communities across America to experience the arts and exercise their creativity.

In the second major grant announcement of fiscal year 2015, the NEA will make a $20,000 award to the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University to produce a documentary about the conservation of the Joan Miro mural Personnages Oiseaux (Bird People). The NEA will make 1,023 awards totaling $74.3 million nationwide in this funding round.

“This treatment is critical, as the mural was literally falling apart,” said Bob Workman, director of the Ulrich Museum. “The project is saving our most important treasure for the engagement of current and future residents and visitors. This documentary will connect the public with excellent art, through awareness of the Ulrich collection’s preeminent work by deepening the viewer’s engagement with this work. That, in turn, will create connections with other works in the Ulrich collection.”

The documentary video is developed in consultation with the WSU Media Resources Center video production department.

NEA Chairman Jane Chu said, “The NEA is committed to advancing learning, fueling creativity, and celebrating the arts in cities and towns across the United States. Funding new projects like the one from the Ulrich Museum of Art represents an investment in both local communities and our nation’s creative vitality.”

All facets of treatment will be documented by this film. The funds from the NEA will allow for the recording of the entire process — set into the larger story of the importance of this Miró mural to our country. The resulting video will be a rich resource for understanding and appreciating the importance and complexities of saving cultural treasures, and for instilling appreciation and pride in Wichitans and Kansans in the cultural heritage of our region. 

Highlights

• Ulrich Museum awarded $20,000 grant from NEA
• Grant will fund documentary about conservation of Joan Miró mural, Personnages Oiseaux (Bird People)
• Miro mural to return to Ulrich Museum fall 2016.
• Documentary to emphasize importance of saving cultural treasures.
• Documentary will be 27 minutes
• Documentary to feature interviews with Ulrich Museum Founding Director M. H. Bush, modernist art historian Patricia McDonnell, key stakeholders at the time of the removal of the mural, and a selection of voices from the community will provide thoughts on the impact of the mural for them

About the Ulrich Museum of Art

The Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University serves as the area’s premier venue for new work by emerging and established artists of national and international reputation. The Ulrich Museum is home to the renowned 76-piece Martin H. Bush Outdoor Sculpture Collection — rated one of the top collections of its kind by Public Art Review — and a permanent collection of more than 6,300 works of modern and contemporary art. Established in 1974, the mission of the Ulrich is to expand human experience through encounters with the art of our time.