The Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle has received a $4 million grant from the Windgate Foundation to fund ongoing efforts to preserve the school’s architecturally significant campus.
The gift, the largest in the nationally renowned art School’s history, will allow Haystack to maintain its forty-acre campus, with buildings designed and built in the early 1960s by acclaimed American architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. The grant will function as an endowment, and the funds will be limited to paying for the preservation and maintenance of the buildings, according to a press release sent out by the School on Thursday.
It is situated on a granite cliff overlooking Jericho Bay in the village of Sunshine in Deer Isle. The School was awarded the Twenty-five-Year Award from The American Association of Architects, putting it in the company of other important buildings and structures such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Haystack was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
The Windgate Foundation previously awarded Haystack a $2 million grant in 2014 to endow the school’s Open Residency Program, which allows artists to attend two-week residencies at no cost. The Arkansas-based Windgate Foundation funds arts institutions and educational efforts across the country.