Landmark gift launches $100,000 Museum-building challenge as Diamond Rivers Reborn—a new film returning Bill Benenson to the Brazilian landscape that helped launch his filmmaking career after Peace Corps service—premieres November 10 in Washington, D.C.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, D.C. — September 24, 2026 — The Museum of the Peace Corps Experience (MPCE) today announced a transformative $100,000 gift from filmmakers and philanthropists Bill and Laurie Benenson, one of the most significant individual contributions in the Museum’s history. The gift provides critical investment as the museum startup expands its collection, exhibitions, and public programming while building toward a permanent cultural institution in Washington, D.C.
The Benensons’ gift will also serve as the catalyst for The $100,000 Museum Challenge, a new campaign inviting the broader Peace Corps community and public to collectively match their generosity with another $100,000—turning one extraordinary act of philanthropy into $200,000 of investment in the Museum’s future.
The announcement coincides with another homecoming. On November 10, Bill and Laurie Benenson will premiere their new documentary, Diamond Rivers Reborn, during the opening celebration for 65 Objects That Changed the World at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.
The news follows MPCE’s September 17 announcement of 65 Objects That Changed the World, a major exhibition marking 65 years of Peace Corps history through the things people carried, used, made, exchanged, saved, and brought home. The free exhibition opens November 10 and remains on view through March 7, 2027.
From Peace Corps Volunteer to Filmmaker
For Bill Benenson, the exhibition and film bring a story that began nearly six decades ago full circle.
Benenson served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bahia, Brazil, where drawing, watercolor, photography, printmaking, teaching, and relationships with Brazilian artists became part of his evolving visual practice.
His service also introduced him to the Chapada Diamantina, a former diamond-mining region in Bahia. After Peace Corps, Benenson returned with a camera to document the region. He had never made a film. The result was Diamond Rivers, (WNET / PBS 1977) which became one of his earliest documentaries and helped launch a filmmaking career spanning more than five decades. Benenson traced his documentary career back to that experience in Brazil and described learning filmmaking by doing it.
“Peace Corps connected me to a world far beyond the one I knew and, in many ways, gave me the beginnings of my life as a filmmaker. I went back to Bahia to make Diamond Rivers without really knowing how to make a film—I learned by doing it. Now, nearly sixty years after I first encountered this place, Diamond Rivers Reborn lets me return to the same landscape and ask what happened next. The diamonds are no longer the real treasure. The land, the water, the people, and the possibility of preserving them are.”
— Bill Benenson
Diamond Rivers Reborn
Diamond Rivers Reborn returns to Brazil’s Chapada Diamantina, once a thriving diamond-mining region whose economy collapsed as the industry declined. The new documentary traces the region’s transformation from extraction toward preservation and the creation of Chapada Diamantina National Park in 1985.
At the center of the film is Benenson’s return to Bahia and his reunion with another peace corps volunteer, botanist and park founder Roy Funch, who spent six years campaigning for the region’s protection. The film brings their stories together with those of descendants of mining communities, former prospectors, tour guides, volunteer firefighters, scholars, geologists, lodge owners, and Quilombo leaders.
The result is both a return and a reckoning. A landscape once defined by diamond-mining now faces new questions about conservation, tourism, agriculture, fire, water, and cultural memory. The film asks how a community shaped by extraction can become a steward of the same land. And also what one generation owes the next.
A Transformative Investment in a Museum in the Making
The Benensons’ $100,000 contribution comes at a pivotal moment for the Museum.
The independent nonprofit is building a permanent collection and national platform for preserving and interpreting the objects and first-person stories created through 65 years of Peace Corps service and cross-cultural exchange. Following the Washington presentation of 65 Objects, MPCE plans to develop a traveling exhibit designed for museums, universities, and communities across the United States beginning in 2027.
For a museum at MPCE’s stage of development, a gift of this magnitude does more than support a single exhibition or program. It creates capacity: to preserve collections, develop interpretation, reach new audiences, build partnerships, strengthen the institution, and plan beyond the next exhibition.
Bill’s own object contribution to 65 Objects that Changed the World exhibit demonstrates what that work can preserve: a block print he created while serving in Brazil, influenced by the artists he encountered in Salvador. Benenson has called the work a “timeless reminder” of how he lived and what he experienced there—a bridge to a past that has traveled with him throughout his life. He also connects the visual art he made during Peace Corps with his eventual leap into filmmaking.
“Laurie and I have spent much of our lives supporting stories we believe need to be told. What excites us about this Museum is that it starts with the evidence people carried home—the objects, photographs, artwork, films, and memories—and uses them to keep those human stories alive. A new cultural institution isn’t built by one person or one gift. We hope our contribution encourages others to join us—at whatever level they can—and help build a place where these stories can be preserved, questioned, shared, and passed on.”
— Bill Benenson
The Benenson $100,000 Museum Challenge
Inspired by the Benensons’ leadership, MPCE is launching The $100,000 Museum Challenge, inviting Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, families, friends, foundations, corporations, and others who believe these histories deserve to be preserved to help raise an additional $100,000.
The approach follows a simple philanthropic principle: one significant act of generosity can become more powerful when it inspires others to participate. The Benensons have provided the first $100,000. The Museum is asking its community to provide the next.
Funds raised through the challenge will support preservation and growth of the permanent collection; development of 65 Objects as a traveling exhibition; educational and public programming; institutional capacity; and planning toward a permanent Washington, D.C. home.
Opening November 10 in Washington, D.C.
65 Objects That Changed the World opens November 10, 2026, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., and remains on view through March 7, 2027. Admission to the exhibition is free.
The November 10 opening celebration will include the premiere of Diamond Rivers Reborn.
The evening will bring together the Peace Corps community, friends of the Museum, partners, storytellers, and supporters to celebrate the exhibition and the histories it preserves.
Save the date. Additional event information and registration details will be announced soon.
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
Washington, D.C.
About Bill and Laurie Benenson
Bill Benenson is a filmmaker, producer, environmentalist, philanthropist, and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer whose filmmaking career spans more than five decades. His early work includes Diamond Rivers, and his subsequent credits include Dirt! The Movie, The Hadza: Last of the First, and The Lost City of the Monkey God.
Laurie Benenson is a writer, editor, filmmaker, and philanthropist who founded and served as editor-in-chief of Movieline Magazine and was a Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times. Her producing and executive-producing work includes Dirt! The Movie, The Lost City of the Monkey God, Fantastic Fungi, Kiss the Ground, Common Ground, Ground Swell and Diamond Rivers Reborn. She is chairman of the board of the Amazon Conservation Team, which works to preserve the territories and traditional cultures of the Amazonian Region.
About the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience
The Museum of the Peace Corps Experience is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing the stories and objects shaped by Peace Corps service and cross-cultural exchange. Through exhibitions, collections, education, research, and public programming, the Museum explores the complex and enduring relationships created when people encounter one another across cultures.
The Museum is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is not part of the U.S. Peace Corps, a federal agency.
Media Contact:
Jennifer Erie
Board Member and Communications Committee Chair
communications@peacecorpsmuseum.org
Museum of the Peace Corps Experience
