The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has given artist Derrick Adams a $1.25 million grant to create an archive in Baltimore, dedicated to Black culture and artists.
The Black Baltimore Digital Database (BBDD) will be an archive that aims to catalogue and chronicle the works of Baltimore natives – primarily from creative arts, but also from the field of science and sports. Derrick Adams called the project a “collaborative counter–institutional space.” The archive would be stored both physically and digitally. The physical catalogue would be housed in the Black Waverly area, a historically Black neighbourhood. The site would also have a gallery, named after Henry Philips – a Baltimore-born photographer who died in 1993. There will also be an in-house lab that would store the digital archives.
Derrick Adams is a Baltimore-born artist who currently resides in Brooklyn. Adams had first envisioned BBDD in 2018, but could only make it a reality now – thanks to the grant by the Mellon Foundation. Adams has already hired two cultural experts to help him in the initiative. Jesila Blumberg, an architect based in New York, will be the creative director behind the research & development. Kali-Ahset Amen, professor of sociology at John Hopkins University, will be a project advisor.
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Speaking about the initiative, Derrick Adams said: “The Black American experience has strong roots in Baltimore—I am both honoured and eager to share this project with the city.” The project is scheduled to be finished in 2025, and the Mellon Foundation will be funding it for the first two years.
