African Americans who migrated to the North and West “didn’t go there as immigrants, they went there as refugees and exiles from terror.”—Bryan Stevenson, founder of
@eji_org
and subject of the film
#JustMercy
, on rethinking the Great Migration
Today,
@FordFoundation
,
@MellonFdn
&
@MacFound
announced the transfer of sole ownership of the Ebony & Jet archives to the
@NMAAHC
and the Getty Research Institute (with a further $30M commitment from Getty to digitize the collection):
[1/2]
Black people who migrated to the North and West “didn’t go there as immigrants, they went there as refugees and exiles from terror.” —
@eji_org
Founder and Executive Director Bryan Stevenson on rethinking “The Great Migration.”
“If you took a vote, the majority of people would never have voted to end racial segregation. It took a commitment to the rule of law.”—Bryan Stevenson, founder of
@eji_org
and subject of the new film
#JustMercy
As many as five million Indigenous Americans were enslaved between the 16th and 19th centuries. Axios reports on
@NatBoundUnbound
, a massive new digital humanities project that will uncover their stories:
#MellonGrant
“You think about the kind of hearts, souls, and minds that were required to endure and survive [slavery and racial terror]…and still have the capacity to love.””—Bryan Stevenson, founder of
@eji_org
and subject of the new film
#JustMercy
How can colleges and universities evolve in their efforts to increase access for students who have historically been denied entry? Watch here to learn more about the possibilities and challenges in
#highered
today:
#Mellon50
“If you took a vote, the majority of people would never have voted to end racial segregation. It took a commitment to the rule of law.”—Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director, Equal Justice Initiative (
@eji_org
)
Amanda Gorman, the first-ever
@librarycongress
National Youth Poet Laureate, will go on to achieve another first next Wednesday as our nation's youngest-ever inaugural poet:
#Inauguration2021
#Poetry
“The argument that the Internet Archive isn’t a library is wrong. If this argument is accepted, the results would jeopardize the future development of digital libraries nationwide.”
“You think about the kind of hearts and souls and minds that were required to endure and survive [slavery and racial terror]…and still have the capacity to love.”—Bryan Stevenson, founder & exec. director, Equal Justice Initiative (
@eji_org
)
As America evolves, how do we address monuments and historic sites that do not fully reflect our cultural values—and mindfully build new ones that do?
@SavingPlaces
’
@BrentLeggs
and others shared their thoughts at our
#Mellon50
symposium:
"Of the more than 95,000 entries on the National Register of Historic Places—the list of sites deemed worthy of preservation by the federal government—only 2% focus on the experiences of black Americans."
#TellTheFullStory
@SavingPlaces
“The arts and humanities…teach us who we are and where we are, and give us a sense of our reason for being.”—
@WyntonMarsalis
. Watch the
#Mellon50
film directed by
@StanleyNelson1
:
Ebony’s Photo Archive Goes for $30 Million, for Future in Public View—"We...cannot even fully measure what it is going to mean to have these images available," says
@MellonFdn
Pres. Elizabeth Alexander (
@ProfessorEA
): (via
@nytimes
'
@juliebosman
)
"We're at a moment where we have to decide who we're going to be."
@NAACP_LDF
’s Sherrilyn Ifill (
@Sifill_LDF
) on
#diversity
in America and why demography does not necessarily define our destiny:
“Being in a place, standing on the land, is a spiritual act in which you begin to form a relationship with the very molecular structure of the place.”—
@JudyBaca
, founder, Social and Public Art Resource Center (
@sparcinla
)
#Mellon50
@FordFoundation
@macfound
@NMAAHC
“This archive is not only unprecedented in its sweeping and scrupulous documentation of Black life in the US, but also unmatched in its celebration of the Black American experience throughout the 20th century.”
— Elizabeth Alexander (
@ProfessorEA
)
[2/2]
“We affirm the right of those who are incarcerated to robust participation in the imaginative & intellectual life of American society, & we are determined to do our part to help rectify systemic inequities that currently exclude them.”—Elizabeth Alexander
“African American history is essential to understanding who we are…and remembering not just what we want to remember—but what we need to remember.”—
@SmithsonianSec
Lonnie G. Bunch III on establishing
@NMAAHC
#MellonEvent
Did you know that April is
#NationalPoetryMonth
? Earlier this year, the Foundation made its largest grants to date in support of poetry, to the Academy of American Poets (
@POETSorg
):
Carrie Mae Weems is the first African American woman to win the Hasselblad Award, one of the most prestigious honors bestowed on a living photographer.
.
@MellonFdn
President Elizabeth Alexander (
@ProfessorEA
) on providing $5 million of seed funding to
#ArtistRelief
, a fund that will give $5,000 emergency grants to individual artists in partnership with
@USAforArts
and other grantmakers:
“What we’re aspiring to is a teaching cadre at the highest levels that represents the glorious
#diversity
of this country.”—
@MellonFdn
Pres. Elizabeth Alexander (
@ProfessorEA
). Watch & learn more about the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship:
#MMUF30
Today, February 13,
@haymarketbooks
and Mellon Foundation are pleased to announce the inaugural cohort for the Writing Freedom Fellowship.
The Fellowship aims to support and uplift the voices of writers impacted by the criminal legal system. Learn more:
“A collective act made by teams of people…requires assembling an enormity of different perspectives.” Michael Murphy of
@MASSDesignLab
discusses how artists, architects, and activists can co-create to deliver a shared vision for the future:
We would like to welcome our next President, Distinguished Writer, Poet, Scholar, and Arts Advocate Elizabeth Alexander
@ProfessorEA
, who will will lead the Mellon Foundation in drawing new partners in to support the arts and humanities.
@ProfessorEA
Together with
@FordFoundation
, we are excited to announce the 2022
#DisabilityFutures
Fellows—a grant administered by
@USAforART
that increases the visibility of disabled creative practitioners and elevates their voices individually and collectively.
Why examining our past opens up a world of ideas and hope—“I think it's the only way towards the future, that we are able to accurately tell the truth of our history,” said Michael Murphy of
@MASSDesignLab
at our
#Mellon50
symposium:
#architecture
#history
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is pleased to announce that Alondra Nelson (
@alondra
), president of
@ssrc_org
and the Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at
@the_IAS
, has been elected to its Board of Trustees:
The Long 19th Amendment Project at
@RadInstitute
hopes to redefine our understanding of the
#WomensSuffrage
movement by exploring its achievements and shortcomings—and their implications for our lives today:
“Education belongs to all of us. It’s not just for people who can pay.”—Ruth J. Simmons, President of Prairie View A&M University (
@PVAMU
), on possibilities and challenges in
#highered
today:
#Mellon50
#MonumentsProject
will transform the way our histories are told through the reimagining and rebuilding of commemorative spaces that celebrate and affirm all of the communities that make up the US:
#Monuments
#Memorials
#Grants
This morning NYU announced that
@ProfessorEA
—poet and president of
@MellonFdn
—will be the
#NYU2019
All-University Commencement speaker! She will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree, honoris causa, at
@yankeestadium
.
Following her groundbreaking tenure at Baltimore’s
@centerstage_md
, we are thrilled to welcome theater leader and arts equity advocate
@saybarra
as our next Program Officer in Arts and Culture:
An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the
#humanities
strengthen our
#democracy
, says a new survey.
Read the full report from Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (
@americanacad
), here:
💃🏾📰📚🏛✏️🗳
Over the past five decades,
@MellonFdn
grantees have used the
#arts
and
#humanities
to deepen our understanding of the human condition and experience. Their transformative work is celebrated in the
#Mellon50
film directed by
@StanleyNelson1
:
“The website itself is a reflection of our goal to create an open-source, open access, digital discovery tool to understand the lives of the enslaved. We also see ourselves as being part of a broader conversation about race and racism."—
@DaryleWilliams
Today we are proud to share with you our new Mellon identity. Dynamic, nimble, and inspired by many voices, the new Mellon look is but one part of the new expression of our enduring mission. (1/2)
Mellon President
@ProfessorEA
revisits her seminal essay on Rodney King & discusses how videos of police brutality against King, George Floyd & others have “forged a traumatized collective historical memory” all the way through today's
#TrayvonGeneration
:
“What pushes us forward are usually little, teeny, tiny decisions.”—
@michele_norris
, journalist and founder of
@RaceCardProject
, on achieving enduring and transformational change for social justice:
#Mellon50
“If you want to understand American history, you have to understand the South,” said Amarie Cemone Gipson, a curator, archivist and new research fellow at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
We are thrilled to announce that Phillip Brian Harper, currently dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at
@NYUniversity
, will be joining us as our new program director for
#HigherLearning
effective October 1:
#HigherEd
#Philanthropy
Mellon President Elizabeth Alexander (
@ProfessorEA
) will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from
@UPenn
alongside philanthropist
@LaurenePowell
Jobs, US Poet Laureate
@JoyHarjo
, and others:
With a $15 million Mellon grant,
@LibraryCongress
will create new opportunities for historically underrepresented communities to participate in creating, sharing, and preserving a more inclusive American story for our nation’s public library:
Congratulations Thelma Golden on being awarded the J. Paul Getty Medal for transforming the
@studiomuseum
into “one of our nation’s most dynamic visual arts institutions.” Read the museum's Case Study to learn more about its success
“We continue to call on others to join us in supporting artists so they may continue to illuminate our path forward from this prolonged pandemic.”—Elizabeth Alexander (
@ProfessorEA
)
#Artists
can apply for
@ArtistReliefOrg
grants through the end of 2020:
We are happy to announce that Maria Sachiko Cecire (
@mscecire
) will join the Foundation as program officer in
#HigherLearning
effective January 2021:
Learn how a
@UCLA
community
#archives
program is helping communities reclaim the power to construct their own narratives while providing access to histories and voices that might otherwise be lost:
#HigherEd
#humanities
“If we believe in the pursuit of truth and justice, then we must seize every opportunity...to shift the telling, shift the focus, and in turn, shift the cultural narrative towards fuller histories.”—Pres. Elizabeth Alexander (
@ProfessorEA
) at
#Mellon50
:
As we ready our national response to arts organizations devastated by coronavirus,
@MellonFdn
has joined a $75-million NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund for small and mid-sized arts and cultural organizations, as well as social service providers: …
Some statistics suggest a measure of progress in
#highered
equity and access in recent decades, but the numbers don’t tell us all, say
@GeorgiaStateU
’s Mark Becker &
@PVAMU
’s Ruth J. Simmons:
#Mellon50
Almost 850 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows have earned PhDs, enlivening
#humanities
scholarship and bolstering
#diversity
throughout America’s colleges and universities. Watch and learn more:
#MMUF30
#HigherEd
How can communities whose voices are not represented in traditional library archives preserve their histories? Learn about our open call for grant proposals for community-based
#archives
projects across the US: (To be considered, apply by July 1.)
If you’re part of a grassroots or community-based organization actively engaged in archiving past and present day histories, visit our website to learn how you can apply (by June 26) for grant funding for
#communityarchives
projects:
JUST IN: Elizabeth Alexander (
@ProfessorEA
) honored with a National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category for “The Trayvon Generation,” which appeared in the
@NewYorker
last year. Read it here:
@ASME1963
#ellies
"Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade will for the first time allow anyone from academic historians to amateur family genealogists to search for individual enslaved people around the globe in one central online location," reports
@washingtonpost
: