The Richard M. Ross Art Museum has been awarded over $16,000 from the Ohio Arts Council through their prestigious Sustainability Grant program. This generous funding will directly enhance educational programming and create new learning opportunities for our students.
The grant will support an innovative exhibition that connects with OWU’s First Year Seminar Course, “How to Change the World,” a required course for all incoming students. This unique course explores environmental themes and humanity’s relationship with the land, preparing students to tackle pressing 21st-century challenges. The Ross Art Museum exhibition will bring these concepts to life through powerful works by national and regional artists, featuring pieces from our own collection alongside loans from Denison University and Hope College.
This program brings together faculty from multiple academic disciplines, showing students how art, science, humanities, and other fields can work together to address real-world issues. Through this integrated approach, first-year students develop essential skills in critical thinking, information literacy, and creative problem-solving that will serve them throughout their time at OWU and in their future careers.
Additionally, the funding will support a spring exhibition of artist educators from the New York Arts Program and faculty from Ohio Wesleyan University.
“This is a terrific partnership that enhances the OWU campus,” Karlyn Crowley said recently. “Centering the museum in the curriculum and the community is the gold standard. OWU is grateful to the Ohio Arts Council for this generous funding that recognizes the strength of transformative liberal arts education and an essential community resource.”
OWU Sponsoring Organization/Office: Sponsored Research and Projects Office
Contact: Susan Zimmerman at grants@owu.edu