Untold Stories

More than 300,000 negatives capture the only African American–owned art space in 1930s–60s Philadelphia.

Precious exhibition ephemera from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. Rare photos of Black artist collaborations in Washington, DC. These are among the archival materials housed in libraries, universities, museums, and community centers across the United States—institutions dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of Black art.

But with large archives that stretch to millions of items, these institutions sometimes struggle to make materials readily available to researchers, curators, and the public. Too many collections remain hidden due to limited resources, backlogged catalogs, and technological barriers.

“Knowledge is power, and we constantly promote the fact that African American history is American history,” says Diane D. Turner, curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University. With the support of a Getty grant, she and her team are working to digitize rarely seen photographs and create educational resources to interact with them.

The Blockson Collection is one of five organizations receiving support through the Getty Foundation’s Black Visual Arts Archives initiative. Since 2022, the program has also partnered with the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum, Fisk University Galleries, and the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection to activate their archives through improved finding aids, digitization efforts, and public programs.

“We want everyone to know that Black brilliance in the arts is, and continues to be, a source of affirmation and inspiration,” says Miguel de Baca, the senior program officer at the Getty Foundation overseeing the initiative. “Greater discoverability and accessibility of archival repositories whose records tell the history of African American art are one way we can reach this goal.”

Here’s a look at how three of these organizations are celebrating the important but underrecognized achievements of Black artists in the United States.

Photographs Worth a Thousand Words

Archivist Leslie Willis-Lowry is part of the team digitizing more than 300,000 negatives from the Blockson Collection’s John W. Mosley Photograph Collection, a chronicle of four decades (1930s–60s) of day-to-day African American life in and around Philadelphia. Mosley was a photojournalist and staff photographer for the Pyramid Club, a social organization founded in 1937 by prominent African American professionals as a space for cultural, civic, and social engagement. The club evolved into a dynamic hub attracting the likes of Duke Ellington, Alain Locke, and Marian Anderson and notably defied segregation laws by presenting the work of both Black and white artists.

Mosley’s photographs give a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the club’s exhibition openings and receptions, and also document artists in their studios. In one image, sculptor Selma Burke works on a bas-relief portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that inspired the design of the dime. Willis-Lowry notes that snapshots of figures like Burke or Dox Thrash discussing their artworks with patrons, or gallerygoers playfully posing with the art, not only celebrate moments of joy but also commemorate Black people creating their own space in a society that systemically excluded them.

“The preservation we’re able to accomplish is invaluable and gives people an opportunity to reflect,” Willis-Lowry says. The Blockson Collection’s “We Recall, We Remember” community outreach program also invites the public to share their stories and identify people in these photos, she adds. “You should see the people. Their faces light up. They’ll say, ‘Oh, I remember this,’ and, ‘That’s so-and-so.’ For me, that’s what makes it all worth it.”

A selection of these pictures is the centerpiece of a new VR game in development called Virtual Blockson | The Pyramid Club: Black Leisure and Cultural Empowerment. The game lets local university students assess and interpret primary sources and interact with non-player characters (NPCs) to simulate the varied experiences of conducting archival research. Digital scholarship librarian Jasmine Clark, who has spent countless hours programming the game, developed it to address the archival intimidation that many students of color face when entering predominantly white research settings.

“This project corrects the erasure our history typically faces,” Clark says. “It also ensures that future generations have access to accurate, meaningful representations of themselves.”

New Discoveries in a 100-year-old Collection

In Harlem, curator Tammi Lawson heads the Art and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She and her team have used their Getty grant to produce finding aids with more detailed descriptions, enhanced artist files, and even an informational zine for the center’s year-long centennial celebration, beginning this May 2025.

The Schomburg Collection was formerly housed in the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, a cultural hub during the Harlem Renaissance and New Negro Movement. As part of its efforts to serve the interests of the city’s diverse cultural neighborhoods, the library acquired the vast collection of books, artworks, photographs, and ephemera related to the African diaspora assembled by visionary Afro-Latino curator Arturo Schomburg. The center’s collection has since grown to over 11 million items that are complemented by exhibitions, talks, screenings, and other public programs.

In addition to updating descriptions for artists’ files, Lawson and her team unearthed records of the Schomburg library’s exhibitions and events, internal correspondence, and news clippings that verified exhibition dates, venues, and participation. “What we learned was really surprising and gave us an opportunity to look at the types of exhibitions that were held, the artists who were in them, and where we have gaps in the collection,” Lawson says.

One of those gaps: inadequate records related to Black women artists. The team has now bolstered artists files with newly discovered information, revealing insights such as the collection’s most loaned artists and the number of exhibitions featuring their art. Augusta Savage, for instance, opened an art school in the basement of the 135th Street Branch Library as part of her many efforts to create opportunities for Black artists and was also one of the top exhibitors.

“The collection highlights Black people doing miraculous work, years out of slavery, with this thirst for knowledge of self,” Lawson says. “It's incredible and inspiring that we have this information in one place. This grant enabled us to make this information more accessible for people. We preserve this information so that our users learn about themselves in a positive way.”

Putting Hidden Treasures on View

At the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum (ACM), staff have used Getty support to delve further into the museum’s own history and trace the robust connections between Black artists and arts organizations in the greater Washington, D.C., region since its founding in 1967. Among the records the project team is digitizing are papers related to the District of Columbia Art Association (DCAA), founded by public school art teachers to champion the arts in their communities; exhibition files of nearly 60 years of art installations at ACM; and the personal papers of curator Edith I. Martin (1920–2008).

For archivist Jennifer Morris, the Edith I. Martin Papers collection is especially meaningful for revealing collaborations between Black artists. From program flyers to exhibition postcards, and posters, the wide-ranging collection documents Martin’s career as a curator, museum technician, and artist who also advocated for other artists, especially Black women. Among Martin’s many accomplishments was co-organizing what would have been the first major survey of contemporary Black women artists in 1979. Unfortunately, the exhibition was canceled due to insufficient funding, but archives like the planning records of Martin and her collaborators offer compelling proof of the vital artmaking practices of generations of Black women artists who deserve more visibility in art history.

“Learning about these artists in their formative years, when they’re just beginning or getting acknowledged for their work, adds a whole different layer to their story and the story of American art,” Morris says. “We get a deeper understanding of their motivation and background that just wasn’t available before.”

The digitization of the DCAA files also revealed new links among local African American artist-educators who helped inform the ACM’s current exhibition, A Bold and Beautiful Vision: A Century of Black Arts Education in Washington, DC, 1900–2000. In collaboration with museum curators, the team discovered that the collection held previously unseen materials like photographs of artist, educator, and DCAA member Georgette Seabrooke Powell (1916-2011) conducting an art therapy demonstration at the museum. Long before today’s trend of mindfulness in museums linking art and wellness, Powell recognized the healing power of the arts, became a licensed art therapist, and founded a nonprofit focused on using art to empower youth, community building, and social activism.

Morris has already seen an uptick in requests from scholars to view these recently surfaced records. She hopes the museum can collect more materials by these artists and organizations. “It’s about preserving their stories, how artists collaborated and supported each other, and what they were able to do,” she says. “We also hope to encourage other institutions to mine their archives for records related to African American art and make those hidden treasures public.”