Sponsorship Opportunities

EDUCATION

General Education Programs
During fiscal year 2008-2009, The Mint Museum’s programs reached nearly 40,000 children/youth and more than 250 teachers. When adult and senior audiences are factored in, The Mint Museum’s educational programs reach more than 80,000 people annually. Research has shown that students who participate in rigorous arts programs are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, and four times more likely to participate in a math or science fair, among other accomplishments. The Mint bolsters the arts in schools by serving as a parallel classroom for K-12 students and an educational resource for teachers. Our collections, exhibitions and programs encourage a thoughtful exploration of human culture that supplements classroom learning in ways that are accessible to students of various ages, socio-economic levels, ethnicities and learning styles.

Family Saturdays - Sponsored by Wachovia-Wells Fargo
Each month, families are invited to drop by the Museum to visit the exhibitions and make art together. Prepare to get messy! All ages; drop in anytime between 10:30 am and 2:30 pm. Kids FREE when accompanied by a paying adult. FREE for Mint members.

Artists’ Forum
Area artists discuss their works as well as current activities in their artistic fields. Up to six Tuesday evening events will be held per year at the Mint Museum Uptown after it opens. (First three programs in the new Museum will take place in the spring of 2011).

OUTREACH

Regional Collegiate Art History Symposium
Since 1990, the Symposium has had the distinction of being one of the country’s few forums that spotlight undergraduate art history research. After the students present their findings at the program, their research papers become permanent, bound additions in The Mint Museum’s Library for future research and reference. Both the program and the reception following are open to the public and free with museum admission. Date: Saturday, March 27, 2010

K-12 Teacher Professional Development
Evenings with Educators classes provide arts education and curriculum connections for various topics of interest to area educators. Teachers learn about art history first-hand in the museum galleries, practice hands-on arts and crafts skills in a studio environment, and earn license renewal credit while working with exciting guest artists. 

Summer Camp Scholarships - Sponsored by Young Affiliates of the Mint and the David J. Toman Foundation
The Mint offers several scholarships for artistically talented children who would otherwise be unable to attend summer art camps.

The A. Zachary Smith III Internship
The purpose of this internship is to encourage diverse college students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds to consider art museums as a future profession.

The Sommers Family Art Internship
Created for top students enrolled in the Art Department of Central Piedmont Community College, this internship offers students with a career interest in art museums an opportunity to learn about museum operations from the inside and gain valuable professional experience.

YMCA, YWCA & Library Program - Partial funding provided by IBM
The Mint Museum has developed a successful outreach program of Train-the-Trainer art workshops for teachers and teacher assistants at various after-school sites, including YMCAs, YWCAs, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library branches, Park & Recreation sites, and private after-school sites. These teachers work primarily with at-risk and minority children and youth; many of the sites are located in predominantly minority neighborhoods. Children at all of these sites have limited opportunities for cultural activities, and this outreach program gives them a greater sense of connection to the community at large by exposing them to art and encouraging them to express themselves through art. Most recently, several senior facilities, such as independent living centers, have been added to the site roster.

Grier Heights - Sponsored by a grant from the Mecklenburg County ABC Board
The Mint Museum works with youth in Charlotte’s Grier Heights community to address substance abuse prevention with a focus on avoiding risky behaviors. Grier Heights is an historically African-American neighborhood located across the street from the Mint Museum Randolph. The upcoming project, Discover Your Style Part II: Past, Present and Future, takes a novel approach to two of the challenges all youth face: peer pressure and self-image/self-respect. This is the sixth year of the Mint’s working relationship with the Grier Heights community, targeting youth ages 11 to 17. Participants will address important subjects that relate to their everyday experiences at school, at home and in the community through the arts.

Generations Eye to Eye - Funded by a Front Porch grant from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Foundation
The one-day project, entitled Eye to Eye: Building Respect for One Another – One Relationship @ A Time, will embrace and encourage respect as inspired by an artist whose work is being shown at the Mint Museum Randolph in Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color (November 14, 2009-February 27, 2010). The initiative allows 50 women and girls from different ages and ethnicities to find genuine mutual respect for one another and build relationships by stopping to unplug from technology, communicate more openly and appreciate one another’s cultures. This will be achieved in part through the common language provided by the arts: partaking in the verbal arts of poetry and storytelling, learning about and crafting an object that has universal meaning, and experiencing art through the Loïs Mailou Jones exhibition.

EVENTS

Opening of the new Mint Museum Uptown

• Gala 
• Affiliate Event 
• 24 Hour Community Opening – Presented by Duke Energy
• Various activities available for sponsorship

First Fridays
Visitors will enjoy “after-five” programming on first Friday evenings. Free for Mint members/$10 general public/$5 sponsors’ employees. Potential activities include lectures, tours, movies, live music, hands-on activities, food and cash bar. A variety of themes throughout the year will target various audiences.

• March 5, 2010 (Mint Museum of Craft + Design – 220 N. Tryon St.)
• April 1, 2010 (Mint Museum Randolph – 2730 Randolph Rd.)
• May 7, 2010 (Mint Museum Randolph)
• October 2010 through October 2011 – new Mint Museum Uptown (500 S. Tryon St.)

Director’s Reception
Held each year in May, this exclusive event honors Mint Masterpiece members and major donors. The evening begins with a cocktail reception, followed by a program by the Museum Director. Afterwards, guests enjoy a buffet seated dinner.

Children’s Holiday Party
This spirited event is for the children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews of members of The Mint Museum. Approximately 500 guests enjoy holiday performances by “Banana Claus” in the Mint Museum Randolph’s auditorium.

MARKETING AND PUBLICATIONS

Free Family Passes - Sponsored by Wayland H. Cato
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools fifth grade students who visit The Mint Museum on school-sponsored field trips are given passes to return with their entire families.

Free Tuesday Hours
The Mint Museum has a long history of sponsoring free hours in order to be accessible to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. Free hours are every Tuesday from 5 - 9 p.m. at Mint Museum Randolph.

News of The Mint Museum - Sponsored by Moore & Van Allen, PLLC
The Mint Museum’s bi-monthly e-newsletter reaches more than 8,000 Museum members, artists, travel and tourism industry professionals, arts educators, museums and galleries. 

Cell Phone Tours
Visitors to the new Mint Museum Uptown will be able to use their cell phones for guided tours of the collection. This relatively new technology will be an exciting learning tool and a great marketing opportunity for a corporate sponsor!

Guide to the Collection: Historic Costume and Fashionable Dress
As this important collection approaches its 40th anniversary, it is timely to publish a major catalogue illustrating the depth and wealth of the Museum’s fashion holdings. The Mint Museum’s Historic Costume and Fashionable Dress Collection provides a rich narrative of community dedication which has created one of the finest groupings of antique, vintage and contemporary fashions within the southeastern United States. Numbering more than 10,000 items, the collection provides a unique documentation of fashion history, beginning with early 18th century garments and continuing up to present-day haute couture and luxury designs.

CONSERVATION AND EXHIBITIONS

Art Conservation
The proper care and maintenance of artworks is an institutional obligation that parallels the educational interpretation and presentation of the collection to Mint Museum visitors. Conserving artworks greatly improves the condition of these irreplaceable objects and furthers their safekeeping for the education and enjoyment of future audiences. Various funding opportunities are available.

Rare Books Conservation
A collection of great aesthetic and scholarly value, the rare books in the The Mint Museum Library range from 17th century bound volumes to 20th century limited editions. While their overall environment is sound, special treatment and housing is needed so that they may be preserved yet also allow access to scholars. Many of these titles are primary resources, particularly on the history of ceramics, and are the only copies in the Southeast. They are truly the undiscovered treasures of the Mint.

Student Artist Exhibitions - Sponsored by Harris Teeter
The Student Artist Gallery (STAR) at the Mint Museum Randolph opened in 1985. Since then, more than 10,000 area K-12 students have had their artwork displayed here. Each year the Museum presents 8-10 exhibitions of works by approximately 500 children from Charlotte and surrounding communities.

Identity Theft: How a Cropsey Became a Gifford - Exhibition supported in part by The Betty J. and J. Stanley Livingstone Foundation, a grant from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the Curator’s Circle for American Art, and Private Donors.
November 21, 2009 – March 28, 2010, Mint Museum Randolph
Identity Theft centers on what is perhaps The Mint Museum’s most important Hudson River School painting, Sanford Robinson Gifford’s Indian Summer in the White Mountains. For many years it was attributed to Jasper Francis Cropsey and titled Mount Washington from Lake Sebago, Maine.  Although long questioned by Gifford scholar Ila Weiss, Indian Summer in the White Mountains remained attributed to Cropsey based on the apparently original signature and date on the painting. Recent conservation work revealed a Gifford signature and a new date beneath Cropsey’s.

Contemporary British Studio Ceramics: The Grainer Collection - Sponsored by Duke Energy
October 1, 2010- March 13, 2011, Mint Museum Uptown
Focused on the collection of Diane and Marc Grainer of Potomac, Md., this exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of Contemporary British Studio Ceramics in the U.S. Comprised of functional and sculptural objects made between the 1980s and the present, this show includes work by established “contemporary classics” such as Lucy Rie and Hans Coper, as well as cutting-edge artists such as Julian Stair, Kate Malone and Grayson Perry.

Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection - Sponsored by Bank of America
October 1, 2010- April 17, 2011, Mint Museum Uptown
Curated by the Mint, this special exhibition includes approximately 80 highlights from one of the world’s finest corporate art collections, the Bank of America Collection. Drawing from the strengths of its post-World War II holdings, this exhibition includes work by Milton Avery, John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson, Joan Mitchell, Faith Ringgold, Ed Ruche and Frank Stella.

VantagePoint IX: Janet Biggs - Sponsored by Goodrich Foundation
Fall 2010, Mint Museum Uptown
One of a group of artists who turned to video and video installation in the early 1990s, Janet Biggs has been creating and exhibiting videos and video installations for nearly 20 years. Examining themes of speed, precision, personal discipline, pushing personal limits, gender roles, spectatorship and aging, her videos also explore the existential questions of being. Her most recent projects probe the theme of environmental demise. This exhibition will present 3-4 single channel videos. Airs Above Ground, 2007 (now in the Museum’s collection) and Vanishing Point, 2009 are two completed videos that will be screened. The artist worked on a project in the Arctic in September 2009, and will create a new video which will debut at the Mint Museum Uptown. Discussion is also underway about creating a video about NASCAR.

Robert Henri and Ireland
May 7 - August 7, 2011 tentative dates, Mint Museum Uptown
Robert Henri and Ireland will be a major loan exhibition organized by the Mint that will travel to two or three additional venues in 2011 and 2012. Long celebrated as an important American artist due to his position as the leader of the group of urban realists known as “the Ashcan School,” Henri’s own oeuvre has received less attention than one might expect. By bringing together a carefully selected group of approximately 50 paintings drawn from public and private collections, co-curators Jonathan Stuhlman and Dr. Valerie Leeds will emphasize the quality of the work that Henri produced during his time in Ireland, his deep engagement with the subjects that he painted there, and the nuances that emerged when he depicted the same sitters year after year or even multiple times within a year.


Chanel: Designs for the Modern Woman
2011, Mint Museum Randolph
Harold Koda, Curator-in-Charge of the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, once stated: “In creating a wardrobe for herself, Chanel invented the idea of the modern woman… it is her work, which transcended class barriers and revolutionized the ideals of dress, that is the ultimate testament of her life.” Thus, the Chanel name has long been recognized as one associated with elegance, refinement and fashionable flair. The Mint Museum’s collection of Historic Costume and Fashionable Dress includes within its holdings more than 50 works by the legendary French designer Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel (1883-1971), whose House of Chanel in Paris continues to carry her name. Her fashions and accessories – including her famous Chanel No. 5 perfume – earned her a place on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Her tailored two-piece suits for women are icons of her designs, and the Museum is proud to have a rare early example that dates to circa 1929-1930. A selection of suits, evening wear and fashion accessories will make up this look at Chanel fashions.

Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections - Sponsored by Duke Energy
September 3, 2011- January 7, 2012 tentative closing date, Mint Museum Uptown
Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections will include approximately 70-75 works of art that span the career of this internationally renowned Charlotte-born artist (1911-1988). This Mint-organized exhibition and subsequent national tour will underscore not only Bearden’s artistic mastery, particularly in the technique of collage, but also his development of narrative and thematic explorations of his native South. Collages, paintings, watercolors and prints will be assembled from The Mint Museum’s collection as well as other private and public collections. This exhibition will coincide with the centennial of Bearden’s birth, and will examine how the South served as a source of inspiration throughout his career. This important theme has never before been explored in any previous exhibition or writings on the artist.  

INDIVIDUAL NAMING OPPORTUNITIES (new Mint Museum Uptown)

Auditorium

•   Sponsor a seat - $1,000

Galleries and Public Spaces

First Floor

• Entry Gallery - $300,000

Second Floor

• Orientation Room (1,100sf) - $250,000
• 2-D or Painting Studio (700sf) - $150,000
• 3-D or Clay Studio (700sf) - $150,000
• Volunteer Lounge (230sf) - $150,000

Mezzanine

• Large Conference Room (1,000sf) - $500,000
• Small Conference Room (350sf) - $250,000

Third Floor

• Craft Pavilion (Entire Floor, 18,000sf) - $3,000,000
• Six Permanent Collection Galleries (2,200, 3,100, 1,500, 1,850, 1,000, 1,850sf) - $250,000- $1,000,000         

Fourth Floor

• American and Contemporary Pavilion (Entire floor, 18,000sf) - $3,000,000
• Six Permanent Collection Galleries (2,200, 3,100, 1,500, 1,850, 1,000, 1,850sf) - $250,000- $1,000,000
• Contemporary Art Wing (5,750sf) - $2,000,000
• American Wing (5,750sf) - $2,000,000           

Fifth Floor

• Pavilion (8,200sf) - $2,000,000