- May 27, 2026
- By College of Arts and Humanities 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 $225,000 grant from the Getty Foundation through its Black Visual Arts Archives initiative will help preserve and expand access to the center’s archival collections for scholars, students and the public.
The 18-month grant will support archival processing and digitization across five recently acquired collections, along with an improved web interface designed to expand access to all 17 collections in the Driskell Center Archives. 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.
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.
“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.”