Houston Endowment funds GHPA's online museum project

Houston Endowment Inc. is providing GHPA a $350,000 grant to develop an online museum of Houston history. Mayor Bill White announced the creation of the Museum of Houston Web site during a news conference April 4. The privately funded project is a cooperative effort among Houston's top educational institutions, cultural organizations and public archives to create a digital storehouse of historic resources relating to Houston's past. The HEI grant will fund the first two years of the project.

"We are very grateful to Houston Endowment, which had the vision to recognize the need for this innovative project," said GHPA Executive Director Ramona Davis. "GHPA's mission includes preserving cultural resources as well as historic architecture. The digital archive will provide Houstonians unprecedented access to these valuable resources."

A preliminary version of the Web site including a project overview, introductory podcast by Mayor White and selected images from the collection is now on line. This preliminary site was created by GHPA volunteer Jim Parsons, who is also responsible for GHPA's Web site.

During the news conference, Mayor White said, "This isn't going to be like the Dead Sea Scrolls, where they built a big building and restricted access. We’re not going to squirrel away our archival materials. We’re not like that here. In Houston, we share."

Rice University/Fondren Library is providing technical expertise for the project. In addition to GHPA and Rice, other institutions with representatives on the Museum of Houston steering committee are Houston Public Library/Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Southern University/Robert James Terry Library, and the University of Houston Libraries.