Smithsonian Women’s Committee Announces 2025 Grants

The Smithsonian Women’s Committee (SWC) has awarded 15 grants totaling almost $400,000 for 2025. These grants will benefit education, research, exhibitions, digitization and accessibility in 11 Smithsonian museums, research centers, institutes and offices. A complete list of grants awarded follows below. 

“Our organization awards grants of up to $35,000 annually to Smithsonian entities so that valuable, but unbudgeted, projects can be realized,” said Winfield Crigler, SWC president. “Often, SWC grants are seed money for new research that leads to expanded longer-term projects with major funding. Some SWC grants fill in an essential missing piece of an upcoming project, program or exhibition. We fund internships, major equipment updates, expanded expertise, outreach materials and cutting-edge scientific applications that further the Smithsonian’s mission. Every project funded by an SWC grant must have an immediate benefit within 18 months of funding or the clear potential to have positive impact in the future.”

The SWC is a Washington, D.C.-based volunteer organization dedicated to advancing the Smithsonian and its overall mission to increase and diffuse knowledge. Since its founding in 1966, the SWC has provided more than $14 million in grants and endowments for the Smithsonian with funds raised primarily through two annual signature events: the Smithsonian Craft Show in the spring and Craft2Wear in the fall.  

The 2025 Smithsonian Craft Show opens Wednesday, April 23, with a Preview Night Gala and continues daily through Sunday, April 27, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Proceeds from the craft show directly support the work of the Smithsonian. Details on this year’s show and how to buy tickets are available.

2025 Grants Awarded by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee 

For Education: 

National Museum of American History ($35,000): The grant supports the establishment of a Classical Music Fellowship by the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society to use technology and social media to carry out critically needed research and outreach work to new audiences, and to aid in transforming its young artists’ Academy Program. 

National Museum of the American Indian ($15,000): Coinciding with the Smithsonian’s celebration of the U.S.’s 250th anniversary and as a part of the museum’s Native Knowledge 360, the grant supports the design and printing of a classroom teaching poster featuring three important Native female leaders during the American Revolution. 

Anacostia Community Museum and National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute ($28,500): Stipends and seed money provide for a pilot professional development course for Washington, D.C., public school teachers in Wards 7 and 8 to teach theories and practices of nature play in urban environments. 

National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute ($17,645): The grant supports an intern to help develop a website and outreach materials, and fund the cost of those materials, to explain how the Zoo saves turtles, the most endangered four-legged vertebrates, and their habitats, and how the public can play an essential role in this effort. 

Smithsonian Science Education Center ($23,726.16): The grant supports the development of an e-book, “Sustainable Indigenous Agricultural Practices,” for 11–13-year-olds to explore traditional agricultural techniques around the world, as part of the upcoming Smithsonian Science for Global Goals guide “Sustainable Agriculture! How do we balance production, economics and the environment?” 

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute ($29,200): Building on the popularity of the science comic book character, Martina, produced by the institute, a series of science “explainer” videos for social media platforms will be created in Spanish and English for children ages 7–16. They aim to spark curiosity and learning about topics such as the Oceanic food chain and the architecture of leaf cutter ants. 

For Research: 

National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute ($33,280): The grant will fund cutting-edge genomic sequencing to analyze DNS methylation patterns and identify disease markers in wild and Zoo-managed endangered southern black rhinoceros. Funding will include recruiting and training an intern from an underrepresented demographic to engage in this analysis of diet/environmental influences on disease syndromes of black rhino populations. 

National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute ($25,000): The grant will fund the purchase of a stereomicroscope with imaging capabilities and upgrade the coral nursery and aquaculture facilities at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, so it can move forward with cryopreserving live corals for gene banking and nursing sick corals to health. 

For Digitization and Accessibility: 

National Museum of Natural History ($34,072): The grant funds the purchase of a 3D photogrammetry kit to digitize priority biological and cultural heritage collection items to provide accessible important models for researchers and students. 

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute ($30,000): The grant will provide funding to digitize the extensive Smithsonian collection of pollen, spores and fossils and create the first worldwide-accessible, online course in palynology for high school and college students. The course will teach basic concepts of pollen and spore morphology and the importance of plant life in deep time and natural history in relation to modern problems. 

National Museum of African Art ($29,776): The grant will fund the completion of archival descriptions for 3,627 photos by Chief S.O. Alonge from the Collection of the Benin Kingdom (1920s–1980s) with the who, what, when, where and why to make this digitized cultural documentation accessible and useful and to further the Smithsonian’s Shared Stewardship and Ethical Returns Policy. 

For Exhibitions:  

Smithsonian Associates ($32,700): The grant will provide funds to revise and update the popular 25-year-old Discovery Theater play, Seasons of Light, by building out the production elements (props, set, projections) to complement the script and allow it to play in larger theaters and tour regionally. 

Smithsonian Exhibits ($35,000): Funding will provide for the acquisition of a Canon Colorado Printer to meet the growing needs of Smithsonian museums for environmental and immersive graphics. This state-of-the-art equipment will make graphics more stable and faster to produce, allowing Smithsonian Exhibits to service more Smithsonian museum projects and improve chemical emissions and air quality in the process. 

Smithsonian Gardens ($15,000): The grant will support the creation of a website to augment Smithsonian Gardens’ upcoming campus-wide exhibit, “Growing Tomorrow,” to provide deeper content and to reach audiences around the world on the theme of how people and plants need each other and adapt together to survive and thrive. 

National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute ($15,000): The grant will fund a new leafcutter ant exhibit in the Amazonia Science Gallery at the Zoo to highlight the importance of insects in the Amazon and their critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. 

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SI-29-2025