The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Division of Public Programs is offering a Cooperative Agreement for Touring Museum Exhibitions

1) the reconfigured exhibitions are primarily based on artifacts loaned from the original show;
2) they retain the humanities content and the intellectual coherence of the original exhibition;
3) they do not exceed 2,000 square feet in size;
4) they are designed to allow for easy use (e.g., uncrating, installation, etc.) by smaller museums;
5) they include materials that facilitate public programming on the themes of the exhibition; and
6) costs to the venues hosting the exhibitions will not exceed $1,000 for booking and $1,000 for shipping.
The goal of this program is to provide exhibitions at low cost to museums that would not otherwise be able to participate in an NEH project, partly to provide resources to those museums, partly to broaden the reach of NEH-funded exhibitions, and partly to publicize the work of NEH nationally. The target venues for the program are mid-sized museums that
are dispersed throughout the nation,
have annual operating budgets between $250,000 and $1,000,000,
are located in communities of fewer than 300,000 people,
have approximately 2,000 square feet of available temporary exhibition space,
can offer acceptable security and environmental controls for low-security exhibitions, and
can provide additional public humanities programming on themes surrounding one of the exhibitions.
Venues typically host an NEH on the Road exhibition for seven weeks (excluding shipping and installation time) and receive materials that can be used to create public programs based on the exhibition�s themes and ideas. NEH provides grants directly to the venues to help defray these program costs; venues apply directly to NEH for these funds.

A typical NEH on the Road exhibition reaches five venues per year. To date approximately 150 bookings have occurred, and existing shows are fully booked through 2011. An exhibition�s life span is normally four to five years, depending on loan arrangements with the originating museum.