City of New Bedford (New Bedford Free Public Library)

The New Bedford Free Public Library will use grant funds to provide conservation treatment to 23 hand-colored engravings from an original edition of John James Audubon’s double-elephant folio The Birds of America, a seminal work in both American art history and scientific illustration. New Bedford Free Public Library received its copy, only one of 143 complete, original sets of Audubon illustrations still in existence, in 1866. It was the institution’s first significant gift. The treatment will help prepare materials for a collaborative library and museum exhibition of Audubon prints, which will open in summer 2010.