Getty Awards $1.8M to Increase Access to Black Visual Arts Archives

The Getty Foundation announced today it 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.

This new round of grants brings Getty’s total funding for the initiative to $4.5M 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 is also 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.; Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History; Morgan State University’s Beulah M. Davis Special Collections Department; South Side Community Art Center; South Side Home Movie Project at the University of 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 (BAMPFA), 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 at BAMPFA 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 BAMPFA. “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.

2026 grantees for Black Visual Arts Archives:

Afro Charities, Inc.

Baltimore, MD
Grant amount: $235,000

The oldest operating Black-owned business in Maryland, AFRO American Newspapers stands as a record of Black artistic life, chronicling the careers and social worlds of artists like Alma Thomas and Augusta Savage and the newspaper’s employment of leading visual and literary figures like Romare Bearden and Langston Hughes during an era of segregation. Getty funding will help Afro Charities process production files, research notes and business records spanning AFRO News’ regional editions in Baltimore, Washington D.C., Richmond, Philadelphia and Newark from roughly 1900–2011. Working with an art historian, the project archivist will identify artists from their soon-to-be processed archives to plan two public seminars.

Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History

Atlanta, GA
Grant amount: $220,000

The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History is the first library in the Southeast to offer specialized reference and archival collections focused on African American heritage and the African diaspora. The library will use Getty funding to reprocess and digitize two major archives central to Atlanta’s Black Arts Movement—the Neighborhood Arts Center and Phoenix Arts and Theatre Company records. They will digitize materials about leading Black women arts administrators and artists in Atlanta, like Stephanie Hughley, Kathleen Joy Ballard Peters and Mary Parks Washington, which will inform digital and physical exhibitions and content for the Digital Library of Georgia web platform. They are also planning traveling exhibitions for schools and community centers, programs, digital research guides and a conference on Black visual arts.

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley, CA
Grant amount: $250,000

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is home to the nation’s largest institutional collection of quilts made by Black artists, made possible by a single bequest of Bay Area collector Eli Leon, a largely self-taught scholar who emerged as a leading authority on African American quilt making in California. BAMPFA will process an archive of Eli Leon papers, which include notes on quilts, slides and photographic documentation, artist files and field recordings. These materials centered on Black artists and makers who moved West in the mid-20th century offer rare insight into the traditions and social practices through which quilts were made, preserved and passed down. Digitized materials, a finding aid and an exhibition will engage the public with the history of West Coast African American quilting traditions, which remains largely absent from major archival collections.

Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

Detroit, MI
Grant amount: $240,000

Located in Midtown Detroit, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History is one of the world’s largest and oldest independent African American museums. Amid Detroit’s 1967 uprising, art flourished in Black communities—a history that is not well known or studied, despite local artists having achieved national and international prominence. The Wright is processing and conducting research to strengthen documentation around eight unprocessed collections related to Detroit luminaries like Catherine Blackwell, Allie McGhee, Gilda Snowden and Shirley Woodson. The team will produce downloadable finding aids, a project website and periodic archiving workshops and programs to bring the newly processed collections to the public.

Morgan State University’s Beulah M. Davis Special Collections Department

Baltimore, MD
Grant amount: $235,000

Morgan State University’s Beulah M. Davis Special Collections Department is using Getty funding to process, digitize and produce finding aids for archival collections related to the founders of its Department of Fine and Performing Arts. Records relate to visual artist and founding chair James E. Lewis and the university’s first and second African American presidents, Dwight O. W Holmes and Martin D. Jenkins. The team is integrating oral histories to offer a fuller narrative of the department’s contributions to visual arts education. The project also includes a digital exhibition and LibGuide (a web-based, curated research guide) on the history of visual arts on campus and a searchable collective access database that will be integrated into the library’s Special Collections website, enabling researchers and the public to explore newly digitized materials.

South Side Community Art Center

Chicago, IL
Grant amount: $250,000

South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC) was founded as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and is the nation’s only WPA art center operating in its original location and observing its original mission as a community-based center for Black artists. A team of archivists is processing records tied to the Chicago Black Renaissance, in particular the papers of Dr. Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs, a Black artist, educator and co-founder of SSCAC and the Ebony Museum of Chicago (now the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center). The project will also process smaller collections, including Chicago artists William McBride and Douglas Williams, exhibition records and materials on artists who helped establish Chicago as a hub for Black muralists. To support community access to materials, SSCAC will develop archive policies for digital and on-site access and organize public programs focused on the activation of archival collections.

University of Chicago (South Side Home Movie Project)

Chicago, IL
Grant amount: $170,000

The University of Chicago’s South Side Home Movie Project collects, preserves and digitizes home movies created by Chicago’s South Side residents. Getty is funding a two-year project to identify, digitize and make publicly accessible rare moving image documentation of mid-20th-century Black visual arts. Collections include documentation of the collective mural “Wall of Respect,” an important gathering space during the Black Arts Movement; footage of the artist communities connected by relationships with the Lake Meadows Art Fair, the South Side Community Art Center and the DuSable Black History Museum; and films of events hosted by the Photographers Guild of Chicago. Artists, curators, collectors and historians who were active in Chicago’s arts community during this period will be invited to share insights on collection footage. A finding aid, enhanced catalog records, public programming and a digital resource guide will activate hundreds of pieces of unprocessed footage documenting the vibrant cultural memory of Chicago’s South Side.

University of Maryland

College Park, MD
Grant amount: $225,000

The Driskell Center is a leading hub for archives and scholarship on Black visual art, having acquired nine new archival collections and more than doubled its footprint since 2023. With Getty support, they are processing, digitizing and creating finding aids for five collections: records related to West Coast painter Dewey Crumpler; curator Robert L. Hall, whose career spanned Fisk University and the Anacostia Community Museum; Philadelphia collector Lewis Tanner Moore; the archives of Where We At Black Women Artists, Inc., a collective that nurtured feminist artists like Faith Ringgold, Dindga McCannon and Kay Brown; and McCannon’s personal papers. In alignment with the university’s commitment to open access, materials will be available online through integrated, web-based discovery tools, including full operability with its library systems. The team is also planning a pop-up exhibition and public programs to engage communities and increase awareness of its collections.