Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society is among 14 award winners to be honored by Museum Association of New York for its unique leadership.
The Historical Society is receiving the Excellence in Design award for its “WWI: The Home Front – Our Community Takes Action” exhibition catalog. The exhibit reopens May 10 and runs through November.
As a 2023 Award of Distinction winner, Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society will be recognized at the museum association’s annual conference “Finding Center: Access, Inclusion, Participation, and Engagement” in Syracuse on April 17.
The award winners are being honored for their unique leadership, dedicated community service, transformational visitor experiences, community engagement and innovative programs that use collections to tell stories of everyone who calls New York home.
“New York’s museums and museum professionals are reimagining and reinventing their roles within their communities, how they interpret their stories and collections, and the visitor experience,” said Natalie Stetson, executive director of the Erie Canal Museum and Musem Association of New York’s program committee co-chair. “This year’s award winners are outstanding examples for the museum field.”
“We were incredibly impressed with the quality and quantity of award nominations this year, which made the review process highly competitive,” said Clifford Laube, public programs specialist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and Musem Association of New York’s program committee co-chair. “Museums and museum staff across the state are demonstrating creative thinking and are inspiring institutional change.”
“The exhibition catalog showcases what was happening on Long Island during World War I,” said Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society President Chris Bain. “The narrative is not about the war; it’s about the home front, and is a personal one. It hasn’t really been told in this way before.”
The Excellence in Design: Publications/Graphics award acknowledges extraordinary achievement in design in publications/graphics. It recognizes excellence in the graphic design of a museum publication.
Award winners are selected for overall design concept, creativity, accessibility and how the museum branding and mission are communicated.
The ”WWI: The Home Front –Our Community Takes Action” exhibition catalog reflects how people on Long Island experienced the home front during the First World War. It is illustrated with primary source materials, newspapers, pictorial magazines, photographs, images, artifacts and letters from soldiers. The catalog designers color-coded sections to correlate to the exhibition installation.
Privately scheduled 75-minute exhibit docent-guided tours are limited to a maximum of 10 people per tour. The museum is also offering tours without docents each month.
The entry fee for all tours is $12. For more information, visit https://www.cowneck.org/ww1-the-home-front.
The printing and binding of the “WWI: The Home Front – Our Community Takes Action” exhibition catalog was made possible through a generous grant from The Robert D.L. Gardiner Foundation.
About the Museum Association of New York
The Museum Association of New York is the only statewide museum service organization with more than 730 member museums, historical societies, zoos, botanical gardens and aquariums. The association helps shape a better future for museums and museum professionals by uplifting best practices and building organizational capacity through advocacy, training and networking opportunities. Visit www.nysmuseums.org and follow MANY on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn @nysmuseums
About Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society
The Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society is a nonprofit organization that aims to engage people of all ages in programs that highlight the lifestyles of the people and families that lived and worked on the peninsula throughout the years. Central to the historical society’s mission is the preservation of the Sands-Willets House (circa 1735) and the Thomas Dodge Homestead (circa 1721), which the society operates as house-museums, serving as resources for the community. To learn more, visit www.cowneck.org.
