UNIVERSITY PARK, PA.- This spring, the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State received a major grant of $100,000 from the Henry Luce Foundation to produce a catalogue that will illustrate and detail its impressive American art collection. The four-year grant will provide funding for the research and production of the catalogue, which will highlight around 100 of the most aesthetically and historically significant examples of the Palmer’s 4,500-some works of American art.

“The Henry Luce Foundation only awards grants to art museums with exceptional holdings in American art,” said Palmer director Erin Coe. “A grant from this prestigious foundation recognizes both the national significance of the Palmer’s collection of American art and the need to support scholarly research so the collection is more accessible and visible.”

The Luce-funded catalogue will be the first of the museum’s permanent collection ever to be published and will significantly raise the Palmer’s profile as a major repository of American art. It represents an outstanding opportunity for students, scholars, visitors, and residents of the local community to become more engaged with the art of the United States at the Palmer and Penn State.

Coe said the project will put the Palmer’s collection on the national stage and have a lasting impact on studies of American art. The launch of the catalogue is planned to coincide with the museum’s 50th anniversary in 2022.

Adam Thomas, the Palmer’s curator of American Art, will lead the research and serve as editor of the publication.

“The catalogue will be a multi-author print publication containing short scholarly essays on approximately one hundred of the museum’s most important objects,” said Thomas. “It will feature high-quality color images, showcase new research and interpretations, and foreground the centrality of American art to the history of the museum and to Penn State.”

This is the first grant that the Luce Foundation has ever awarded to the Palmer, and it is also the largest grant from a private foundation ever received by the museum.