The Intrepid Museum was awarded a prestigious grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) under its Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge category. The funding will help facilitate the Museum’s largest restoration project since 2008 – opening the ship’s medical facility, known as Sick Bay. 



Allowing visitors to access more of the ship’s historic spaces has been a longstanding goal of the Museum. Currently, only 44 percent of the ship’s historic spaces are open to the public, and the remaining 56 percent is inaccessible to visitors. Through this 2.5-year project, the Museum will complete the infrastructure work required by the building codes and safety standards, allowing the Intrepid Museum to open this fascinating historic naval medical facility and adjacent spaces such as Post Office and Barber Shop, to the general public for the first time since the ship’s decommissioning.
 

This project is an important step in preparation for the next phase -- to create a dynamic and engaging 21st-century curatorial interpretation bringing history to life through immersive stories and exhibition that will incorporate new technologies, augmented and virtual reality elements, inspiring every visitor’s imagination by providing them with an opportunity to explore the Museum’s most intriguing spaces.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: neh.gov.