• Focus Areas
    • Cause Selection
    • Global Health & Wellbeing
      • Effective Altruism Community Growth (Global Health and Wellbeing)
      • Farm Animal Welfare
      • Global Aid Policy
      • Global Health & Development
      • Scientific Research
      • South Asian Air Quality
    • Longtermism
      • Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
      • Effective Altruism Community Growth (Longtermism)
      • Potential Risks from Advanced AI
    • Other Areas
      • Criminal Justice Reform
      • History of Philanthropy
      • Immigration Policy
      • Land Use Reform
      • Macroeconomic Stabilization Policy
  • Grants
  • Research & Updates
    • Research Reports
    • Blog Posts
    • Notable Lessons
    • In the News
  • About Us
    • Grantmaking Process
    • How to Apply for Funding
    • Team
    • Contact Us
    • Stay Updated
  • We’re hiring!
  • Focus Areas
    • Cause Selection
    • Global Health & Wellbeing
      • Effective Altruism Community Growth (Global Health and Wellbeing)
      • Farm Animal Welfare
      • Global Aid Policy
      • Global Health & Development
      • Scientific Research
      • South Asian Air Quality
    • Longtermism
      • Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
      • Effective Altruism Community Growth (Longtermism)
      • Potential Risks from Advanced AI
    • Other Areas
      • Criminal Justice Reform
      • History of Philanthropy
      • Immigration Policy
      • Land Use Reform
      • Macroeconomic Stabilization Policy
  • Grants
  • Research & Updates
    • Research Reports
    • Blog Posts
    • Notable Lessons
    • In the News
  • About Us
    • Grantmaking Process
    • How to Apply for Funding
    • Team
    • Contact Us
    • Stay Updated
  • We’re hiring!

Smithsonian Institution — Outbreak Exhibit

Visit Grantee Site
  • Focus Area: Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness
  • Organization Name: Smithsonian Institution
  • Amount: $300,000

  • Award Date: July 2017

Table of Contents

    Published: December 2017
    Grant investigator: Jaime Yassif
    This page was reviewed but not written by the grant investigator. Smithsonian Institution staff also reviewed this page prior to publication.

    The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $300,000 to the Smithsonian Institution to support the Outbreak exhibit on naturally caused pandemics at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., along with associated educational programming. The exhibit is planned to open in 2018 and run for approximately three years; it may reach up to 8.5 million visitors during that time. We hope this exhibit will help raise awareness of pandemics, in part by drawing public attention to the 100-year anniversary of the 1918 flu pandemic, which is the largest on record.

    Some reservations we have about this grant are that the exhibit does not address deliberate or accidentally caused pandemics; that the exhibit itself is designed as a broad introduction to natural pandemics for the museum’s visitors, as opposed to targeted communication about the importance of taking action to reduce pandemic risks; and that it will be difficult to determine the marginal impact of our grant. Overall, we believe that supporting the exhibit and the associated educational programming will be valuable because of its potential to reach a large and diverse audience.

    This grant falls within our focus area of biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

    Related Items

    • Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness

      Tyler Whitmer — Scoping Work for Biosecurity Legal Research

      Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $125,000 to Tyler Whitmer to support his scoping work for a possible organization focused on legal research to improve biosecurity. This falls...

      Read more
    • Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness

      Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab — Biosecurity Research (2022)

      Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $2,648,881 over three years to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab to support research led by Professor Kevin Esvelt on biosecurity, primarily focused...

      Read more
    • Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness

      Longview Philanthropy — Far-UVC Event (2023)

      Open Philanthropy recommended two grants totaling $165,000 to Longview Philanthropy (a project of Effective Ventures Foundation UK) to support an event, hosted by Kevin Esvelt and David Sliney, on far-UVC technology. This...

      Read more
    Back to Grants Database
    Open Philanthropy
    Open Philanthropy
    • Careers
    • Press Kit
    • Governance
    • Privacy Policy
    • Stay Updated
    Mailing Address
    Open Philanthropy
    182 Howard Street #225
    San Francisco, CA 94105
    Email
    [email protected]
    Media Inquiries
    [email protected]
    Anonymous Feedback
    Feedback Form

    © Open Philanthropy 2022 Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. If you'd like to translate this content into another language, please get in touch!