Congressman Pat Ryan Secures Over $1.45 Million

NEW PALTZ – Congressman Pat Ryan secured $1,459,056 in federal funding for initiatives across NY-18 to preserve the Hudson Valley’s rich history and to advance research in the humanities. Ryan delivered $124,611 for New Paltz’s Historic Huguenot Street, $574,445 for projects at Bard College that advance research in the humanities, and $10,000 for Women’s Studio Workshop, Inc. to preserve humanities collections at small and mid-sized institutions. Ryan also secured $750,000 to rehabilitate the Washington Headquarters Historic Site in Newburgh as part of the National Park Service’s Celebration of America’s upcoming 250th birthday in 2026.

“The Hudson Valley is the proud home of some of our nation’s most remarkable and consequential history and some of the brightest minds in research and innovation,” said Congressman Pat Ryan. “I’m proud that this funding will help advance extremely deserving initiatives across the Hudson Valley that will help preserve that rich history for future generations and keep the Hudson Valley on the forefront of research and discovery in the humanities. From expanding the invaluable work of New Paltz’s Historic Huguenot Street, to fueling research in AI and solar-powered digital archives at Bard, I’m thrilled by the truly inspiring efforts of NY-18’s historians and researchers.”

“This new interpretive plan will more fully integrate the needs, perspectives, and voices of stakeholders who have become involved with the site in the last decade and consider new and continued ways these communities can interact with the site,” said Historic Huguenot Street President Liselle LaFrance.

“Historic Huguenot Street is grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for its continued support of our ambitious initiatives,” said Historic Huguenot Street Board Chair Mary Etta Schneider.

“Experimental Humanities (EH) at Bard College is grateful to receive funding from National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support the creation of a solar-powered server to host our extensive archives,” said Krista Caballero and Susan Merriam, Co-Directors of the Center for Experimental Humanities at Bard College. “This project is important because recent research is clear that the environmental cost of our digital infrastructures is enormous; the Cloud has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. Solar-Powering the Humanities: Archiving for the Future emerged out of conversations regarding ways EH might incubate projects that explicitly address this ecological crisis. A collaboration among faculty in Computer Science, Physics, and the Arts as well as students, and staff, our designs will be made available so that other institutions can reimagine their archives to be self-sustaining and environmentally responsible.”

The $709,056 that Ryan secured for Historic Huguenot Street, Bard College, and Women’s Studio Workshop, Inc. was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Ryan previously delivered $349,956 in National Endowment for the Humanities funding for Historic Huguenot Street’s preservation efforts and $30,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts for Bard College’s Longy School of Music’s side-by-side music education and mentorship program. The projects funded by the grants are as follows:

* $75,000 for Historic Huguenot Street to support scholarly participation in the continued investigation and refinement of the humanities themes identified during phase one interpretive planning at the site, preliminary design of interpretive experiences and supportive programming, audience evaluation of potential experiences, and prioritization of future research efforts to enhance interpretation further. The development of this new interpretive plan will lead to change throughout the organization. The site has a sensitive, layered, and intercultural history, and HHS is intentionally learning, acknowledging, and working to relate that history to the present and future. With scholarly advisors and community partners, HHS will explore how intersecting themes of co-existence, human struggle, perseverance, and resilience provide a foundation for understanding the uses of the land and built environment.

* $49,611 for Historic Huguenot Street to assess and develop sustainable preventive conservation and storage strategies to create a dedicated study and storage center for the HHS Permanent Collection, Archives, and Library. The project will engage a multi-disciplinary team of experts to study the feasibility of environmental and structural improvements needed in existing collection storage, and seek ways to expand on-site storage space. The project builds on recommendations made in a planning project funded by an NEH SCHC grant (2016-18), which evaluated environmental conditions and made recommendations concerning twelve HHS buildings storing and displaying collections.

* $500,000 for Bard College to develop a new research center focused on exploring the ethical, legal, or societal implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI.)

* $74,445 for The Center for Experimental Humanities (EH) at Bard College to launch a new initiative that creatively re-envisions archives and the reliance of small institutions on external data storage providers while also significantly cutting overall contribution to institutional carbon footprint. As a proof-of-concept Level I project, we will redesign and migrate our EH digital archive, currently hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), to a “solar server” that we will design, prototype, and self-host. Our designs will then be made available via an open-source toolkit and white paper so that other humanities centers and low-resourced programs can reimagine their archive to be self-sustaining and environmentally responsible.

* $10,000 for Women’s Studio Workshop, Inc. to support small and mid-sized institutions in preservation of significant humanities collections.

Congressman Ryan also secured $750,000 in funding from the National Park Service (NPS) for the rehabilitation of Washington’s Headquarters Historic Site in Newburgh. The funding comes from The NPS’s Semiquincentennial Grant Program that is preparing for the celebration of America’s 250th birthday in 2026 by funding the restoration of sites on the National Register of Historic Places. The Site served as George Washington’s headquarters from April 1, 1782, to August 19, 1783 during the Revolutionary War.