Mellon welcomes inquiries from organizations whose work aligns with our current strategies.

With AR, you can just build your own monuments and place them wherever you want.

Kinfolk Executive Director idris Brewster (left); Chief Strategy Officer Micah Milner, right. 

Two people in a sunlit room. One person with a beard is perched on a stool; the other is standing next to the seated person. On the wall are framed works of art showing different figures.

New Technology Opens Doors to Meet People and Places of Our Past

Artists are workers and have a work product that’s crucial to the health of their communities.

Artists move us through the darkness in such obvious ways, but many people think art is a luxury.

How history inspired Artists At Work and other creative employment programs

Sculptors at work in New York under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. Photo: Archive of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Artists work in pairs around small paint-stained benches in a messy studio. In black and white, their hair and clothes indicate that this photo was taken in the early 1900s. Artists work on various stages of sculptures. One artist paints a statue of a camel.

A New Deal for Artists in the 21st Century

There’s nothing about the structure of our DNA nor the content of our blood that is any different from anyone else’s.

Caring for the culture also means caring for the people that make it up.

Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes, Ashé Cultural Arts Center chief equity officer.

Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes

New Orleans Creatives Get to the Heart of the Matter

Libraries are deeply integrated into our community spaces; and, while we always need more libraries, they pepper the entire landscape of the United States.

Radical librarians aim to center community voices and scrutinize how institutional resources are allocated. 

Three people stand in a library with shelves on either side of the group. Together, they hold a book in front of their faces so they are not visible to the camera.

Libraries Are Vital Community Spaces (and, They Need to Evolve)

How can intellectual and imaginative communities transcend the experience of incarceration?

Event Imagining Freedom

Originally livestreamed on February 23, 2023. This event included Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander, Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Jesse Krimes.

Imagining Freedom

For me, public knowledge means ensuring that knowledge access and production are treated as public and social goods ... for purposes that matter to people.

Everyone should have access to public knowledge resources, but certain challenges, like the so-called
digital divide, continue to prevent equitable access.

Patricia Hswe serves as program officer in the Public Knowledge grantmaking area at Mellon Foundation.

Headshot of Patricia Hswe

Defining Public Knowledge with Program Officer Patricia Hswe

Apprentice carver Lee Burkhart (Tlingit), pictured, helps artist Nicholas Galanin (Lingít/Unanga) create a totem pole that will feature crests of the Kaagwaantaan clan. Photo: Bethany Sonsini Goodrich/Sealaska Heritage

An Indigenous carver is using a tool to shave wood from a large piece of wood that will be shaped to be a totem pole.

Raising Indigenous Art and Stories in Alaska’s Capital

NPR reports on the ”Imagining Freedom” initiative and some of the arts and humanities projects being funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Media NPR

NPR: ‘Imagining Freedom’ will give $125 million to art projects focused on incarceration

A class of 2019 graduate. Photo: courtesy of Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, Babita Patel, 2019. 

A smiling graduate wearing a cap and gown stands in a room before other graduates. The graduate is holding up a diploma and a child.

Higher Learning

Headshot of Phillip Brian Harper

Program Director

Phillip Brian Harper

With its most recent round of funding, Mellon has committed over $60 million to increase higher education opportunities in carceral environments since 2015. 

Mellon Announces Over $5M in Funding for Higher Education in Prisons

The US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) has announced the third cohort of the Latinx Artist Fellowship. The fellowship recognizes 15 compelling Latinx visual artists working in the United States today.

US Latinx Art Forum Announces New Latinx Artist Fellows

Photo: courtesy of Bryon Summers. Artwork © Joseph Stella

A woman and child stand before a five-paneled painting in a gallery. The panels each depict abstract scenes of bridges in fantastical colors.

A news announcement about Leadership in Arts Museums, a $11M+ collaborative initiative to increase racial equity in US museum leadership roles. 

New Investments for More Diverse Leadership in Art Museums

“Fast Company” on “Imagining Freedom” initiative, featuring interviews with recipients of grants on their work in supporting people who are impacted by the criminal legal justice system.

Media FastCompany

Why the Mellon Foundation is spending $125 million to fight the criminal legal system

A news announcement of funding for selected US museums to create and support curatorial positions with expertise in Latinx art.

New $5M Initiative Designed to Advance Latinx Art in Museums

Mellon makes grants to support communities through the power of the arts and humanities.

Get news about what we are supporting and more by subscribing to our newsletter.

The work of dancer, choreographer, and multi-disciplinary artist nora chipaumire explores gender and the Black performing body and aesthetic, while defying and deconstructing narratives born out of lived experiences of liberation wars, exiles, and racial and social differences. Photo: Erik Tanner for Mellon Foundation

Artists as Catalysts Hero Image

Artists as Catalysts

Nora Chipaumire 3040 x 3800

Artists as Catalysts Navigation Image

Beyond Incarceration

A side profile of a Black poet who is wearing glasses and a hat with a feather hat pin.

Civic Engagement

Civic engagement navigation image - A large crowd of people who are far away and anonymous

Evolving Higher Education

A vertical image of an Indigenous person who is sitting on a chair in front of a backdrop.

Expanding Public Knowledge

Expanding Public Knowledge Navigation Image

Monuments and Memory

A large statue of a confederate general is covered in markings and graffiti. 

Multivocality

Five people stand together in a group photo. They are laughing and smiling.

Power of the Word

Five colorful neon signs hang on the wall with messages that include, "Freedom cannot wait," "Brown owned," and "America is for Dreamers."

Public Places‚ Public Stories

A group of Indigenous Maskoke people stand and sit in the wooden frame of a structure in a woods

Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora

In a vertical image, a black leather vest is adorned with colorful pins across the front of it. Embroidery on the vest reads: "Felícitas "La Prieta" Méndez" 