Under its Black Visual Arts Archives Program, the Getty Foundation has granted $1.5 million to 7 museums, libraries, and universities.
The recipients of this year are: Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, California State University, Los Angeles, Clark Atlanta University, Emory University in Atlanta, Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C., and Visual AIDS in New York. The recipients were selected based on the recommendations of Dominique Luster, a visual artist specializing in Black visual art archives.
This is the second time the grant has been awarded, following the inaugural year of 2022. That time, an amount of $1.1 million was given to 5 recipients: the Anacostia, the Chicago Public Library, Fisk University in Nashville, the New York Public Library, and Temple University in Philadelphia. With this year’s grant, the Getty Foundation has released $2.6 million under this program.
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The grant aims to allow institutions to broaden their archiving efforts, including organizing, cataloguing, and digitizing the works in their collection. The New York Public Library, which received the grant in 2022, has used it to create a digital site to exhibit the works in its library. Temple University, on the other hand, used the funds to create a virtual reality game that allows users to interact with the various objects in the collection of its Pyramid Club. Emory, this year’s recipient, plans to use the funds to hire a dedicated archivist for the works of photographer Jim Alexander. Miguel de Baca, senior program officer at the Getty Foundation, said: “Black Visual Arts Archives delivers critical support to make these archives and the stories of creativity, resiliency, and community they hold more accessible to researchers and the general public.”
