Olson House gets restoration boost with federal grant
Photo / Maureen Milliken
The Olson House, in Cushing, made famous by Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World," has won a National Park Service grant that will help pay for restoration.
The historic Olson House in Cushing has received a boost towards restoration with a $188,208 National Park Service grant.
The Save America's Treasures grant is part of $12.6 million in grants the park service recently announced. The money will go to 41 preservation and conservation programs in 23 states.
The Olson House, owned by Farnsworth Art Museum, was made famous by Andrew Wyeth's 1948 painting "Christina's World." It was the only Maine property to get a grant in this round of funding.
The museum plans to use the money to restore windows, as well as plaster and paint fixes in the 14-room colonial farmhouse, according to David Troup, Farnsworth communications officer. The work will take place over the next three years. The house, built in the late 1700s and substantially altered in 1971, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
The program requires applicants to leverage project money from other sources to match”the grant money, which is awarded after a competitive review of project proposals. Buildings and collections that have previously received Save America’s Treasures grants are not eligible to receive a second grant for the same project.
The park service, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded the matching grants to support the preservation of nationally significant historic property and collections through the Save America’s Treasures program, it said in a news release.
The $12.6 million in funding will leverage more than $22 million in private and public investment for preservation and conservation projects, U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt said in a news release.
National Park Service Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith said, “Through these competitive matching grants, the National Park Service and our federal, state, tribal, local government, and nonprofit partners are helping communities preserve some of our nation’s most important historic places and collection.”
The Federal Save America’s Treasures program was established in 1998, and is carried out in partnership with IMLS, NEA, and NEH with the objective of preserving nationally significant historic properties and museum collections for future generations of Americans to experience, learn from, and enjoy.
From 1999 to 2017, more than 1,300 projects received $328 million to provide preservation and conservation work on nationally significant collections, artifacts, structures and sites. Requiring a dollar-for-dollar private match, these grants leveraged more than $377 million in private investment, and contributed more than 16,000 jobs to local and state economies.
In 2018, Congress appropriated funding for Save America’s Treasures from the Historic Preservation Fund, which uses revenue from federal oil leases to provide assistance for a broad range of preservation assistance without expending tax dollars. The current disbursement of awards is from the 2018 appropriation.
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