The Delaware Art Museum (DelArt) has been awarded a $65,000 planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and a $2.5 million implementation grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to advance two major initiatives centered on Pre-Raphaelite art and scholarship.

These prestigious grants mark a significant milestone in DelArt’s renewed commitment to its internationally renowned Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite art—the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind outside the United Kingdom. Recent highlights of the Museum’s ongoing dedication to the art movement include the 2022 exhibition “A Marriage of Arts & Crafts: William and Evelyn De Morgan,” the 2023 blockbuster “The Rossettis,” organized in partnership with Tate Britain, and the 2024 launch of a collaborative technical and conservation project supporting the museum’s forthcoming 2027 Simeon Solomon exhibition.

The NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant is the only award given by the federal agency this cycle to an institution in Delaware. Funding will support the planning phase of an ambitious international project to locate, transcribe, annotate, and publish the letters of May Morris (1862–1938). A pioneering British artist, designer, and editor, Morris was closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. She was a daughter of William Morris, widely regarded as a leader in “art embroidery,” and a passionate advocate for women’s creative work. Her unpublished letters are dispersed across archives in the UK, US, and Europe, including major holdings at the British Library, the William Morris Gallery in London, and the Huntington Library in California, among others.

DelArt will serve as the institutional host for this significant international research initiative, which aims to advance scholarship on May Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. The project is jointly led by Dr. Margaretta S. Frederick, DelArt’s curator emerita of the Bancroft Collection, Rowan Bain, principal curator of collections and Programme at the William Morris Gallery, and Anna Mason, head of collections & public engagement at the Museum of the Order of St John, London. This team will foster transnational collaboration and produce two major outputs: a print publication of Morris’s letters and a freely accessible digital archive hosted by the William Morris Gallery.

In late 2024, DelArt received a $2.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative. The aim of the national initiative is to support museums and other cultural organizations as they strengthen their capacity to provide fair, accurate and balanced portrayals of the role religion has played and continues to play in the United States and around the world, to explore themes of religion and spirituality in its exhibitions, programs and collections.

DelArt is using its grant to present several exhibitions. Among them is a groundbreaking 2027 show, “Simeon Solomon: Queer and Jewish in Victorian London.” Curated by Dr. Sophie Lynford, DelArt’s Annette Woolard-Provine Curator of the Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art, and Dr. Roberto C. Ferrari, Curator of Art Properties at Columbia University, this will be the first American museum exhibition dedicated to Solomon. The artist’s life and career still astonish many today. For nearly fifteen years Solomon worked in the orbit of the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements, receiving sustained critical attention for his Judaic subjects. By the mid-1860s, he was exploring same-sex passion in his art. Following arrests for homosexual crimes in 1873 and 1874, Solomon was rejected by the art establishment in which he had previously thrived. For his three remaining decades, he lived precariously, suffering from alcoholism and homelessness, yet his artistic output remained prolific.

Dr. Lynford explained the significance of a major show on Solomon: “In histories of Victorian art, Solomon’s robust oeuvre was consistently downplayed and, in many instances, entirely omitted. This has led to a gap in the appreciation and understanding of his work. DelArt’s exhibition redresses this omission, foregrounding Solomon’s Jewish faith and his homosexuality as essential to his contributions to Victorian art.”

Additional projects will be funded by the Lilly Endowment, which will engage DelArt’s British, American, and contemporary art holdings as well as its significant library and archival collections.

“These generous grants from the NEH and Lilly Endowment will allow us to reach new communities, deepen scholarship, and share powerful narratives that continue to resonate today,” says Molly Giordano, executive director of the Delaware Art Museum. “Our work on May Morris and Simeon Solomon, in particular, reflects our commitment to bringing to light untold and marginalized stories in eras both past and present.”

For more information about upcoming exhibitions and programs, visit www.delart.org.