Driskell Center Receives $225,000 Getty Foundation Grant

May 22, 2026 Arts for All | David C. Driskell Center for the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora

An artist looks directly at the camera. He holds a pen in his hand and a piece of art is in front of him on a table.

The grant will support digitization, archival processing and expanded public access across The Driskell Center Archives.

By ARHU Staff

Since its founding in 2001, the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland has worked to create an intellectual home for scholars seeking a fuller understanding of the American art canon and the accomplishments of artists of African descent. Now, a new grant from Getty will help preserve and expand access to these archival collections for scholars, students and the public.

The Driskell Center has received a $225,000 grant from Getty in support of “Radical Legacies, Digital Futures: Preserving Black Art for Global Access.” The 18-month grant will support archival processing and digitization across five recently acquired collections in the Driskell Center Archives, along with an improved web interface designed to expand access to all 17 collections it holds.

The project will provide open access to digitized materials, finding aids and interpretive content, culminating in pop-up exhibition programming that brings the five collections into dialogue with contemporary audiences.

The effort to preserve and share the histories of artists of African descent was central to the work of the center’s late founder, David C. Driskell, a legendary artist and Distinguished University Professor. Over five decades, he assembled the archive that became the David C. Driskell Papers before donating it to the center in 2011.

Today, the Driskell Center Archives includes collections such as the Faith Ringgold Study Room Collection, the Hayes-Benjamin Papers on African American Art and Artists, the Alonzo Davis Collection, the Michael D. Harris Collection, the robin holder collection, the Okoe Pyatt and Shelley Inniss Archive of the Weusi Artist Collective and the Terrie S. Rouse-Rosario Papers.

The Getty funding will focus on the center’s five most recent archival acquisitions: the Crumpler Collection, the Robert L. Hall Collection, the Lewis Tanner Moore Collection, the Where We At Black Women Artists Archives and the Dindga McCannon Archives.

Together, the Driskell Center’s 17 archival collections span the breadth of African American and African diasporic visual art. The archives include materials created by artists, scholars, foundations, videographers, art collectors, educators, arts collectives and arts administrators, alongside the center’s own institutional records documenting 25 years of collections, exhibitions and programming.

“The collections are interconnected not simply as documentation of Black visual creativity, but through relationships among artists, institutions and movements that researchers can trace across the holdings,” said Jordana Moore Saggese, Driskell Center director and professor of art history. “Getty’s support for archival processing, digitization and expanded access will help illuminate those connections, enabling scholars to pursue questions that cross collection boundaries.”

The Driskell Center Archives is supported in part by major grants from Getty, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Photograph by Carol Harrison, courtesy of The David C. Driskell Center.