Mellon Foundation

06/10/2026

At Georgetown’s historic Blues Alley, the Miles Davis Centennial Celebration brought together jazz greats to honor Davis’s enduring influence on jazz music.

The performances featured Jazz Legacies Fellows Billy Hart, Buster Williams, and more.

The debacle at the Montgomery Pier, where enslaved people were once offloaded and sold, is described as a “brawl.” The August 5 attack on a Black dock worker, Damien Pickett, who attempted to do his job should be described as a vicious and racist attack, not a brawl. 

06/08/2026

In Ivins, Utah, Center for the Arts at Kayenta’s Summer Arts Showcase celebrates new work by Southern Utah artists, spanning visual art, writing, theater, music, film, and more.

Kayenta Arts announced its Summer Arts Showcase, a monthlong multidisciplinary celebration of original work by Southern Utah artists, featuring music, theater, poetry, film, and visual art at the Center for the Arts at Kayenta.

06/04/2026

A new online atlas is changing how we see American history. 🗺️

For decades, information about America’s historic places has been scattered across agency hard drives and hard-to-read surveys.

Though thousands of properties are designated as historic, no one has ever actually documented them at scale.

Without clear access to that information, we don’t know where those properties are and to what extent they are protected by federal, state, and local laws.

The National Preservation Atlas is changing that. Founder Sara Bronin breaks it down.

📷: National Preservation notes, National Register form, Little Bethel A.M.E. Church, courtesy of Land Use Atlas, Inc.; Residents of Little Liberia in Connecticut, courtesy of Bridgeport History Center; Bronx House, courtesy of NYC Department of Records; New York, courtesy of Paul Sahner; New York, courtesy of Library of Congress

06/04/2026

🎉 Today, the Literary Arts Fund announced $7.7 million in grants to 40 literary arts organizations and publishers nationwide.

The grant recipients organize local book festivals, present readings and conversations with authors, host writing workshops, offer writers’ retreats and residencies, and are responsible for a vast amount of poetry and works in translation published each year.

They play a critical role in sustaining literary culture yet operate within the most underfunded artistic discipline in the nation.

The Literary Arts Fund targets chronic underfunding of literature, directing unrestricted support to literary arts nonprofits by distributing at least $50 million over the next five years.

The Literary Arts Fund has announced $7.7 million in grants across 40 organizations in 19 states. The recipients include the National Book Foundation and the North Carolina Writers' Network.

06/03/2026

100 Osage blankets: an oral history project

In Osage Nation communities, blankets have long held cultural and ceremonial value, exchanged with deep intention and meaning attached to each one.

“This giving ritual is steeped in human connection, stories, and history,” says Dr. Moira RedCorn, the project leader for the Blanket Relations Initiative, a community art and oral history project.

Over the next two years, the Blanket Relations Initiative will photograph and record the stories of 100 people who have received Osage blankets, preserving memories tied to this deeply personal tradition.

“[Blankets] are physical manifestations of these relationships that we have, of these things that we hold dear, of these stories, of these memories,” says Marla RedCorn-Miller, Director of the Osage Nation Museum and an oral history participant.

“That story, that blanket, gets handed down, and that gift enriches the story of the blanket,” she adds.

The project began by photographing elders with their blankets, documenting how different blankets—and the people who gifted them—came into their lives.

Learn more about the Osage Nation Foundation and its Blanket Relations Initiative at on.mellon.org/4vnlGIo

📷 Elise Boulanger

06/02/2026

Colorado College receives a $1.5M Mellon grant to launch an initiative to examine language during the advent of AI.

Colorado College has received a $1.5 million grant to launch a three-year curricular initiative called “Generative Futures: Critical Language Inquiry in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”

05/30/2026

Whitman College in Wall Walla, Washington receives a $1.5 million grant from Mellon to build humanities programs focused on Indigeneity, immigration, and incarceration.

A $1.5 million Humanities for All Times grant from the Mellon Foundation will create opportunities for students to learn from diverse communities in the Walla Walla Valley and understand how studying the humanities can fuel real-world change.

05/29/2026

We’re still celebrating! 🎉 Last week, Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander was honored at the The Gordon Parks Foundation’s 20th anniversary gala.

The event brought together changemakers across film, music, fashion, art, and philanthropy in a joyful evening honoring the legacy of the pathbreaking American photographer.

Honorees also included award-winning artist and activist Chance the Rapper, EGOT-winning artist and producer John Legend, celebrated artist Henry Taylor, and business leader and philanthropist Lonnie Ali on behalf of the Muhammad Ali Family.

📷 Noam Galai - Getty Images for the Gordon Parks Foundation

05/28/2026

Our future with AI can and will be what we make it.

This is the foundational principle of Humanity AI, a $500 million collaborative philanthropic initiative working to build a people-centered future for AI.

"AI is already reshaping how people learn, work, and participate in public life — and the humanities have a vital role to play in ensuring our choices about AI reflect our deepest values as a society,” said Maria Sachiko Cecire, Mellon Foundation Program Officer for Higher Learning.

Humanity AI announced the recipients of its inaugural grants, totaling more than $18 million to shape AI for the public good.

📖 Learn more at https://on.mellon.org/4uLEbGs

05/27/2026

In Providence, Rhode Island, the AAPI History Museum is a first-of-its-kind museum centered on the lineage of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the U.S. With Mellon support, the museum’s exhibitions frame AAPI stories as a part of America’s evolution.

Under the Radar speaks with AAPI History Museum founder and executive director Jeannie Salomon and University of Connecticut professor Jason Chang about the history’s significance.