Maine Humanities Council

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Located in Portland, Maine, the Maine Humanities Council was founded in 1975 as a private nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is one of 57 humanities councils in the United States and its territories.

The Council was restructured in 1997 to incorporate the Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book. The National Center for the Book was established in the Library of Congress in 1977 to promote books, reading, libraries, and literacy. The Maine Humanities Council established the Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book as one of the state affiliates of the national program. It is one of only eight state humanities councils to be awarded this responsibility.

While most of its work is in direct public humanities and educational programs that bring people together around books, the council is also a grantmaker. Since 1976, the Council has distributed over $4 million in grants to Maine libraries, museums, historical societies, colleges, schools, literacy groups, adult education programs, towns, and other organizations. Its program audiences include practicing teachers, low literacy adults, childcare providers, health care professionals and the general public.

The Council's national awards include a 1998 Award of Merit from the American Association of State and Local History for the Century Project and the 1998 Helen & Martin Schwartz Prize for Excellence in Public Programming from the Federation of State Humanities Councils for the Odyssey Project. In 2002, the Council's Literature & Medicine program was named as a Patient Quality Initiative by the Maine Hospital Association. The program then received the 2003 Helen & Martin Schwartz Prize for Excellence in Public Programming from the Federation of State Humanities Councils.

The Council is located on Brighton Avenue in Portland