Humanities Center

THE Jones Library Humanities Center

The Humanities Center will provide:

additional, fully climate-controlled collection space for the historical and literary materials housed in our world class Special Collections;
new Special Collections Exhibit Gallery and Reading Room;
a permanent home for Amherst’s Civil War Tablets;
new space for our Burnett Art Gallery; and
additional, flexible program space for internal and community-based programming, including after-hours access.

From creating engaging exhibits from our Special Collections that make local history artifacts more visible and accessible to young people to providing program spaces for the Library and community partners to bring people together, the Humanities Center will allow the Library’s humanities collections and programs to reach more people and enable Special Collections to vastly increase access to its world class archives.

In May 2023, the Jones Library was awarded a $1 million challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to create a facility that can serve broader audiences with our collections and programs. The largest of twenty-four NEH Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grants given nationwide, the grant was withdrawn in May 2025 by the Trump administration. All components of the Humanities Center are existing parts of the renovation and expansion plans, which will continue without NEH funding.

Learn more about the NEH Challenge Grant Program