The President’s Award is bestowed annually to individuals, companies, or organizations by the current MMA Board President. The award recognizes exemplary support of MMA, service to the Michigan museums field, a career of distinction or for any other criteria deemed appropriate by the MMA Board President. For 2024, MMA Board President Caitlyn Perry Dial selected Tim Chester and Henry Matthews in recognition of their longtime commitment and service to the profession.

The Peninsulas Prize for DEAI was presented to the Detroit Historical Society for its multi-year initiative, The Hustle: Celebrating Detroit’s Unsung Entrepreneurs. This project chronicled the inspiring stories of Black Detroiter entrepreneurs through a series of quarterly exhibitions at the Detroit Historical Museum that were complemented by public events and education programs, celebrations, and a day-long resource summit. Highlighting basic issues of equity and inclusion in Detroit, these narratives brought to life the social justice and civic rights issues Black entrepreneurs in Detroit have confronted along their path to success and offered inspiration and context for conditions today.

The Detroit Historical Society (DHS) is committed to ensuring that ALL Detroiters can find their stories in its museums. For that reason, DHS centers Diversity Equity Accessibility and Inclusion (DEAI) in all of its efforts. Nevertheless, the stories of Detroit’s successful Black entrepreneurs had never been celebrated either in the Detroit Historical Museum or other cultural institutions around the city. This omission prompted DHS to create a multi-year, one-of-a-kind celebration to tell these important stories and build an expanded constituency for our work. Since The Hustle debuted over 65,000 people have enjoyed free admission to the museum and nearly 20M people have seen a news story, virtual program or social media post covering Black entrepreneurs who are making history in Detroit.