The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University has been awarded a three-year $195,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The grant will enhance the museum's educational mission and further strengthen collaborative efforts between the museum and Cornell's academic departments, as well as support student internships.

"This grant is a significant step forward in the museum's ability to fulfill its mission of serving the educational goals of Cornell University," said Franklin W. Robinson, the Richard J. Schwartz Director of the museum. Specifically, the grant will support four upcoming exhibitions jointly coordinated by academic units: an exhibition related to the 11th-century novel The Tale of the Genji, which will be coordinated with a faculty member in Asian Studies; an exhibition celebrating the labor force in America, supported by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations; an exhibition of American paintings from the Baekeland Collection, in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences; and a series of artist's residencies sponsored by the Africana Studies and Research Center.

The grant will provide funds for a special position, the Mellon Assistant for University Education-Museum Programming, dedicated to designing and planning further university-museum collaborations.

In addition, the grant will support internships for both undergraduate and graduate students to work on numerous museum projects, including a new handbook of the collections.

The museum, which received a Mellon Foundation grant in 1993 to enhance educational services, has seen its educational programming increase almost 300 percent in the past three years. More than 100 class sessions are held annually in the museum.