Wave Staff Report
LOS ANGELES — The Getty Foundation has awarded $1.8 million for eight grants through its Black Visual Arts Archives initiative, a national, multi-year program to enhance access to archival collections related to Black artists and arts organizations.
The new round of grants brings Getty’s total funding for the initiative to $4.5 million since it began in 2022, supporting a total of 20 grants across the United States at libraries, museums and universities.
Scholarly interest in telling the full story of American art is stronger than ever, but organizations that hold key historical records connected to Black art often lack the funding needed to process collections and make them available to the public. Getty’s grants are transforming the discoverability and visibility of artist papers, exhibition records, educational materials, photographic documentation and more by helping institutions process and digitize tens of thousands of archival documents.
Support also is making it possible for them to activate the archives through community events, exhibitions and other creative projects.
“These grants will help cultural institutions across the country uncover an abundance of untold stories of Black creativity and resilience,” said Miguel de Baca, senior program officer at the Getty Foundation. “We can’t wait to see how these projects will make such inspiring collections more available to researchers and community members.”
Projects will kick off at eight institutions, including Afro Charities, Inc. in Baltimore; Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Calif.; Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit; Morgan State University’s Beulah M. Davis Special Collections Department in Baltimore; South Side Community Art Center and South Side Home Movie Project at the University of Chicago in Chicago and the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland.
A common thread across projects is a focus on Black female artists, including the Auburn Avenue Research Library, which is digitizing historic records, photography and other exhibition planning materials tied to leading Black women arts administrators and artists in Atlanta, like Stephanie Hughley, Kathleen Joy Ballard Peters and Mary Parks Washington.
Celebrated abstract painter Alma Thomas is among the artists whose career and social life was chronicled in the AFRO, the oldest family-owned African American newspaper whose archives are being processed by Baltimore-based Afro Charities.
The Driskell Center is activating the archives of Where We At Black Women Artists, Inc., a collective that promoted the development of feminist artists like Faith Ringgold, Dindga McCannon and Kay Brown.
“Arriving as The Driskell Center marks its 25th anniversary, Getty’s grant secures the records that make Black art histories possible, ensuring they are preserved and widely accessible,” said Jordana Moore Saggese, director of The Driskell Center. “Through the processing and digitization of these vital collections, alongside a new digital platform for public access, the project extends David C. Driskell’s lifelong commitment to expanding who and what counts in American art.”
The initiative supports archives connected to a wide range of art forms. The University of Chicago’s South Side Home Movie Project will use funding to identify, digitize and make publicly accessible rare moving image documentation of mid-20th-century Black visual arts and arts institutions.
Public programming and a digital resource guide will activate unprocessed footage that documents the vibrant cultural life of Chicago’s South Side. The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, home of the nation’s largest institutional collection of quilts made by Black artists, will use their grant to digitize materials and create a finding aid for archival materials about quilts from the collection of Eli Leon, including slides and photographic documentation, artist files and field recordings.
“The significance of the African American Quilt Collection … does not truly emerge without the family names, historical details and stories that reside in the archive,” said Elaine Yau, associate curator and academic liaison at the Berkeley Art Museum. “Getty’s support of this work is especially meaningful at a university art museum, where there is exciting potential for students, researchers and quiltmaker descendants to collaborate and further amplify stories of creative ingenuity and love that are embodied in quilts.”
Getty formed the initiative in consultation with professional organizations and specialists in Black archives, including independent scholar and archivist Dominique Luster. Black Visual Arts Archives is one of several efforts by Getty to broaden awareness of and preserve Black cultural heritage, including Conserving Black Modernism, African American Historic Places Los Angeles and its joint acquisition of the Johnson Publishing Company archive and the archive of architect Paul R. Williams.
