As budgets across the state are being slashed, the Georgia Museum of Art is adding $50,000 to its budget to attain a new curator, thanks to a stimulus grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jenny Williams, media relations coordinator for GMOA, said the grant was part of the National Recovery Act passed earlier this year, and will allow the museum to hire a new curator for the Henry D. Green Center for the Study of the Decorative Arts. According to the museum’s Web site, the primary focus of the Green Center is decorative arts “made in or of significance to Georgia”.

William Eiland, director of the GMOA, said the new curator will most likely be hired by October and will have to “hit the ground running.”

Eiland said that one of the more important tasks the curator will be charged with is organizing and running the fifth biennial Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts – “Neighboring Voices: The Decorative Culture of Our Southern Cousins.”

The event will take place next year on Jan. 29 and 30. Aside from planning the sold-out symposium, the curator will also be in charge of researching and teaching about the material culture of Georgia and the South.

“It’s important that the new curator explore the unexplored decorative arts of Georgia,” Williams said.

GMOA was one of only nine organizations in Georgia to receive a grant, Eiland said.

“We applied for it as soon as we heard about the possibility,” he said.

Luckily for Eiland and the museum, the process of selecting grant recipients was short, taking only about a month to award.

The stimulus grant provides salary support for nonprofit arts organizations.

“This was an important position which existed before [the grant], but was vacant,” Williams said.

With the $50,000, GMOA hopes to extend the grant money to pay for two years’ worth of the curator’s salary and benefits instead of one year.

“We would rather have someone work half-time for two years instead of having someone work full time for one,” Williams said.

In the mean time, Williams said, GMOA is still looking for its perfect candidate who has expertise in decorative materials of the South.