In 1981, at a pivotal moment in its history, the Louisiana State Museum was awarded a sizeable National Endowment for the Humanities grant requiring a local match and had an extraordinary opportunity to create and open The Sun King: Louis XIV and the New World, a world-class exhibition that could draw international attention to New Orleans and the Louisiana State Museum. To ensure that the grant funds did not become embroiled in the state of Louisiana’s accounts in Baton Rouge, and because the state could not afford to match the grant or to finance the exhibit, a group who became the Louisiana Museum Foundation’s Life Members formed the organization to serve as a vehicle to administer the grant and other funds raised for the Museum and to mobilize private funding, which ultimately matched the grant and enabled the Sun King’s opening on schedule.
Since its inception, the Louisiana Museum Foundation has continued as the major donor support group of the Louisiana State Museum. Its purpose is to administer gifts, grants and contributions for the State Museum, to assist the Museum in raising funds and to market the Museum’s programs and services.
The Louisiana Museum Foundation is not a state agency, but an independent nonprofit 501 (c) (3) public charity. Funds generated by the Museum Foundation for the benefit of the State Museum are never remitted to the state and never become part of the state budget; instead, they are administered by the Foundation under the direction of an apolitical, self-perpetuating civic-minded volunteer board of directors.
Because the Museum Foundation is an autonomous nonprofit Museum support group that works closely with the Museum’s administration to prioritize its projects, every dollar raised supports the Museum’s outreach goals or the Foundation operations. The state of Louisiana staffs the Museum’s facilities and pays for building maintenance and security. However, public access to the collections is possible largely thanks to the generous support and contributions of the Foundation’s members and donors—individuals, businesses, corporations and foundations—who enable the Foundation to fund exhibitions, collections conservation, educational and public programs, exhibit openings and receptions, and the Museum’s public relations activities.
To help ensure adequate funding for future Museum programming, the Foundation established an Endowment Fund in 1995. The Endowment Fund’s current value is about $2,000,000. Expenditure from 50% of the proceeds will not begin until the Fund reaches $3,000,000. The remaining 50% will go back into the Fund.
Educational Programs and Exhibitions
The historic State Museum properties, featured on French Quarter walking tours, are architectural attractions in themselves. But the kind of private investments that the Foundation and its members provide helps underwrite permanent and changing exhibits in five of these buildings, as well as programming in State Museum and other facilities throughout Louisiana.
Beyond the blockbuster Sun King exhibition, the million-dollar Louisiana history exhibition in the Cabildo was made possible through such private support. Educational programs for adults and children—lecture and film series, the Music at the Mint concert series, and themed Kids and Family Days at Museum facilities—also rely on support provided by the Foundation and its members. The Museum Foundation also helped to finance Mardi Gras: It’s Carnival Time in Louisiana, a permanent exhibit that opened in the Presbytere in 2000.
Programs funded in full or part by the Foundation since 2000 include numerous changing exhibits at the Presbytere; the digitizing and placement online of the Museum’s photography collection; a Matisse exhibit from the Musée Matisse in France; and purchase of equipment which enables in-house production of traveling exhibits. In 2003, to help celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Louisianan Purchase, the Foundation produced a reenactment of the tranfer of the Louisiana territory to the United States using professional actors and attracting an international television audience.
Most recently, the Foundation brought the traveling exhibitions, Gold! and the Treasures of Napoleon to New Orleans and opened both with themed fundraising galas. The Foundation staged another exquisite event to open From Tramps to Kings: 100 Years of Zulu in January of 2009, and in April 2009, the Foundation hosted a fundraising opera in the Cabildo’s courtyard. The Louisiana Museum Foundation will promote the Museum’s latest New Orleans exhibit, Unsung Heroes: the Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll at its January 2010 gala, which will feature live vintage rock and roll music and cuisine from some of the area’s finest restaurants.
The Louisiana Museum Foundation’s work and its members’ and supporters’ generosity ensure that the Louisiana State Museum’s priceless treasures are accessible to the public. More than a quarter-million people enjoy the State Museum’s interpretive exhibitions, educational programs, traveling exhibits (normally mounted in public libraries) and other outreach activities each year. More than 50,000 students on class field trips visit Museum facilities free of charge, and thousands more benefit from exhibits sent directly to schools for in-classroom use.
Conservation of Valuable Collections
Aging artifacts need special care and attention that private contributions provide. Louisiana’s irreplaceable legacy is at risk without the support of the Foundation and its members. In recent years, Foundation support has enabled the Museum to conserve a Confederate submarine found in the Gulf of Mexico, a 19th century altar cloth, and several vintage Mardi Gras costumes.
The Museum Foundation also furnished the Museum’s collections repository facility, a state-of-the-art humidity and light controlled building which houses most of the Museum’s holdings.
Special Campaigns
As an independent nonprofit organization, the Museum Foundation can be flexible and responsive to the Museum’s needs as they arise. Frequently, the Foundation seeks major gifts for special projects. Major gifts campaigns restored the Cabildo after a catastrophic fire in 1988 and have furnished a classroom in the restored Arsenal, financed a special exhibit on the Mississippi River’s role in shaping New Orleans and Louisiana, purchased outdoor furniture for the Cabildo courtyard, and equipped the State Museum facility in Baton Rouge before its opening in 2006.
Following Katrina, the Foundation succeeded in financing the maintenance and ultimate return of collections evacuated to Baton Rouge due to storm damage to the Old U.S. Mint. It secured a grant to develop a Master Plan for the Museum’s French Quarter properties and has raised more than $2,000,000 towards Living With Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond, a 6,700 sq ft technology-heavy and artifact-rich exhibition expected to open in the Presbytere near the end of 2010.
The Louisiana Museum Foundation