Getty Invests $2.6M in Unearthing Black Art History
The Getty Foundation will expand its Black Visual Arts Archives initiative, amplifying lesser‑told stories through grants to 12 institutions nationwide. Save to My Ocula
The Getty Foundation is investing $2.6 million (USD) in a system of grants designed to uncover hidden Black art histories.
The recently announced funding will extend the art foundation’s Black Visual Arts Archives programme to libraries, museums, and universities across the United States.
Launched in 2022 as a pilot with just over a million in grant money available, the initiative funds the cataloguing and digitisation of long-scattered and inaccessible collections, in an effort Getty Foundation senior programme officer Miguel de Baca says seeks ‘a fuller understanding of the influence of Black artists, architects, and cultural institutions’.
Among the grants to the 12 institutions newly receiving support is $275,000 to the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans to process the papers of artists like Senga Nengudi, and $140,000 to Clark Atlanta University as it establishes an official archive for the storied art collection of an institution that once gave Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White visibility when mainstream museums turned away.
By positioning archives as living sites of research and engagement, Getty reframes preservation as an act of cultural visibility—and a necessary intervention in shaping art history’s future.
According to de Baca, expanding the programme is a necessary move to ‘tell a more complete history of American art and culture, and we can work towards achieving this by investing in Black archives’. —[O]
Main image: Getty Center, Los Angeles. CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo: Victoriaearle.
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