MSU Museum has been awarded a grant of $24,000 from the State of Michigan Arts and Culture Council. The grant was awarded through the MACC peer review process and was one of 639 applications to compete for MACC fiscal year 2023 funding. The grant will allow the museum to present an exhibition and public programming that explores the myriad ways the sounds of religion permeate our daily lives.

Titled Sounds of Religion, this new exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services was developed in partnership with the American Religious Sounds Project, a collaborative initiative of Michigan State University and The Ohio State University. For more than seven years, students and faculty in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere worked together to document the sounds of local religious life. Most of the recordings and images presented in this exhibition come from their work.

Beginning in January 2023 and extending through June 2023, Sounds of Religion will educate and engage an estimated 25,000 Michigan residents around issues of religious diversity in ways that are compelling and accessible to a wide audience. Visitors to the Museum’s lower-level exhibition gallery will experience immersive sounds from churches, mosques, temples, shrines, homes, streets, campuses, forests and more. Different life sounds will invite new ways of listening and connecting to one another.

“We’re honored and grateful to receive support from the Michigan Arts and Culture Council to bring this exhibition, which was developed by the Smithsonian and Drs. Amy DeRogatis (Michigan State University) and Isaac Weiner (The Ohio State University), to our communities here in mid-Michigan,” states MSU Museum director Devon Akmon. “It reinforces our new mission, strategic plan and work towards serving our communities as a creative collaboratory.”

Organizations receiving a MACC grant award are required to match those funds with other public and private dollars. In sum, MSU Museum will provide $73,660 in matching dollars to support the award.

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