Grants Awarded

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, United States
The Walker Art Center brings an expanded approach to multilingual visitor engagement, presenting collection interpretation in the four most-spoken languages in the Twin Cities: English, Hmong, Somali, and Spanish. With Getty support, the Walker is developing new models of multilingual, community-informed interpretation across its collection galleries and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden to determine how language shapes access, meaning-making, and belonging in contemporary art institutions. The project will include collaboration with community partners and local native speakers spanning seven languages, with the addition of Dakota, Ojibwe, and American Sign Language. The multi-year project will also test new interpretive models on Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg’s sculpture Spoonbridge and Cherry, recognized as an unofficial symbol of the city and a beloved gathering spot for residents and visitors. A major collection reinstallation will integrate research findings from the project and formalize co-creation models into sustainable institutional practice.
Grant awarded: $300,000 (2026)

Queens Museum, United States
Queens Museum is a community museum in Queens, New York: one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse neighborhoods in the United States. The Museum is using a Getty grant to develop an institution-wide accessibility and interpretation strategic plan that builds upon its recent accessible redesign of its central atrium main lobby and a transformative capital renovation project expected to be completed in 2029. The plan will establish a comprehensive, institution-wide accessibility and interpretation strategy that centers the in-gallery visitor experience and shapes how the Museum welcomes its diverse community members. Consulting partners JSA/MIXdesign and Prime Access Consulting will conduct institutional research, accessibility audits, and visitor experience assessments to inform the plan and to develop a set of pilot accessibility touchpoints such as artist-led verbal description tours, sound descriptions, ASL tours and interpreters, touch tours, and tactile maps.
Grant awarded: $250,000 (2026)

Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Manchester Museum, one of the UK's largest university museums, is using Getty support to launch The Archaeological Imagination, an initiative to refresh interpretive materials in its archaeology collection for the first time in over a decade. Three Imagination Fellows will work with museum staff and community partners to explore new ways of presenting the collection. Each fellow will be focusing on themes such as local stories, social justice, and accessibility for neurodivergent visitors, resulting in new interpretive materials that bridge collections, communities, and civic life. The project builds on previous work such as the Indigenizing Manchester Museum initiative and established community partnerships incubated through the museum’s Top Floor program that offers space and program support to local non-profits. Research findings will inform the Museum’s plans for a future full-scale reinstallation of its archaeology gallery and will be shared widely through an open-access toolkit, publications, and a final symposium.
Grant awarded: £185,000 (2026)

Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea with M+, Hong Kong
Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul is collaborating with M+ in Hong Kong to build a community of visitor-centered museum practitioners across Asia where there are often limited opportunities for sustained exchange on this topic. To close this gap, a Getty grant is supporting two gatherings for museum professionals to establish a sustainable network for museum interpretation and audience engagement. A symposium at M+ in December 2026 will invite museum leaders from across Asia to engage with case studies, discussions, and workshops on inclusive text writing, interpretive planning, and audio guide development. A five-day Interpretation Academy at Leeum in March 2027 will convene participants from across Korea to explore different approaches to museum interpretation. A jointly published practical handbook will be produced in English, Korean, and Chinese to share insights from the project with a broad, regional audience.
Grant awarded: ₩400,000,000 (2026)

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, United States
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum houses a historic collection spanning thirty centuries and is known for its densely installed galleries without labels, encouraging visitors to form strong, personal relationships with art. A Getty grant is supporting an interpretive initiative exploring how museums can design effective interpretation for artworks grounded in complex literary or narrative sources that visitors cannot be assumed to know beforehand. The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt (August 2026–January 2027) will serve as an initial case study and include short narrative film paired with visual and narrative diagrams. Folding Screens, Unfolding Stories (February–May 2027) will experiment with sound development and immersive sensory cues to support narrative comprehension of the 11th-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji. Community roundtables with educators, librarians, and writers engaging with Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye will be tested for Sonya Clark: The Yellowest Eye (June–September 2028). An evaluation will assess how these interpretive modalities affect visitor comprehension, emotional connection, confidence, and sustained engagement.
Grant awarded: $250,000 (2026)

Fowler Museum at UCLA, United States
The Fowler Museum at UCLA explores global arts and cultures with an emphasis on Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Indigenous Americas—past and present. With Getty support, the Fowler is debuting a new space within its permanent collection galleries that centers Tongva perspectives. In collaboration with Tongva advisors and community members, the museum will implement new physical and digital interpretive resources, artist commissions, and educational materials including a land acknowledgement display to deepen visitors’ understanding of Native presence, land relationships, and the responsibilities of guests on Tongva homelands. The project builds upon the Fowler's commitment to highlighting Indigenous perspectives and community-informed interpretation and strengthens relationships created through their most recent PST ART exhibition, Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art. A digital archive of commissioned works, interpretive materials, and community knowledge will support future installations and collaborations.
Grant awarded: $90,000 (2026)

First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City, United States
First Americans Museum (FAM) centers Indigenous authority in its exhibition and programming strategies, guided by principles of rhetorical sovereignty, shared authority, and a values-based framework centered on respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and relationship. The team is using a Getty grant for interpretive planning and evaluation of its Community Gallery to develop and test new frameworks for understanding the complex interactions among artworks, interpretive design, and visitors through surveys, exit interviews, and focus groups. A Getty-supported Audience Research and Evaluation Fellow with a focus on Native audiences will manage a baseline visitor study and exhibition evaluations, largely focused on the Community Gallery that hosts four-month exhibitions developed in collaboration with tribal communities. Research will also shape an inaugural planning convening and new artistic and interpretative approaches for Indian Removal Act 2030, a ten-year FAM exhibition slated to open in 2030 on the bicentennial of the Indian Removal Act.
Grant awarded: $300,000 (2026)

Denver Art Museum, United States
Denver Art Museum (DAM) has been a leader in collaborative museum interpretation practice for more than 40 years. A Getty grant is supporting a comprehensive visitor research project to understand the needs of new generations of museum visitors in an era of AI, emerging technologies, social isolation, and increasing competition for leisure time. Through a largescale on-site survey and a series of visitor panels, the project will explore what it means for museums to showcase cultural material that is intrinsically human and how to design for human connection in museums. An Interpretive Practice Lab will bring together emerging and mid-career interpretation professionals for a workshop spanning in-gallery exercises, information sharing, and discussion of real-life case studies as they learn to test interpretive frameworks and integrate evaluation into practice. A digital report will synthesize the visitor evaluation findings, interpretive frameworks, and practitioner insights generated through the workshop.
Grant awarded: $275,000 (2026)

Baltimore Museum of Art, United States
Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) is installing a new Global Modernism gallery with Getty support. Collection displays will present 20th-century art in new thematic groupings that position modernism as a set of responses to shared global conditions, highlighting the movement of artists, ideas, and materials across borders. An initial research and planning phase encompasses statewide listening sessions, the establishment of an ongoing advisory group, and formative evaluation. The galleries will also act as a two-year “Learning Lab” where interpretive strategies such as multisensory soundscapes, responsive and visitor-generated labels, and interactive digital platforms will be tested and refined. Findings will inform BMA’s upcoming collection reinstallation and be disseminated to the field through a white paper on inclusive and innovative interpretation.
Grant awarded: $275,000 (2026)

Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) explores the history, artistry, and social impact of screen-based art, film, television, and videogames. Standard interpretation approaches like wall texts and fixed captions can disrupt the viewer's experience of these formats, presenting accessibility challenges for multi-lingual and hearing-impaired audiences. ACMI is using Getty support to refine, evaluate, and share a multilingual captioning software application it developed to deliver synchronized, translated captions directly to visitors' personal devices. The application will be further developed based on visitor research, a scan of accessibility practices and infrastructure at other institutions, and in-gallery testing to ensure it is adaptable at galleries and museums of all scales.
Grant awarded: AU$345,000 (2026)

Association for Art Museum Interpretation, United States
The Association for Art Museum Interpretation (AAMI) is using a Getty grant to conduct the first-ever comprehensive, cross-regional analysis of museum interpretation in global art museum contexts. The two-year, fieldwide study will investigate art museum interpretation programs across North America, Western Europe, and East Asia with a focus on five key areas: field infrastructure; processes and workflows; emerging practices and trends; institutional commitment and sentiment; and practitioner needs related to training, compensation, and professional development. Following an information gathering phase, AAMI will convene advisors to review findings and provide recommendations for practitioners and institutions based on new benchmarking and research-based data and insights. The findings will also be shared publicly at AAMI’s 2027 annual convening and other conferences, in a final report, and on AAMI’s website.
Grant awarded: $250,000 (2026)