The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has recently awarded three grants totaling $3.3 million in support of arts and humanities projects focused on deepening relationships with diverse and underrepresented communities.

The Chicago-based Floating Museum, co-directed by Indiana University Northwest School of Arts professor Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, has received a $1.29 million grant in support of the art collective’s inflatable monument series, Floating Monuments, which highlights the “under-told narratives of communities that make up Chicago’s past and present.” The grant will fund two to three new studio assistant and docent positions.

Classics professors Sasha-Mae Eccleston of Brown University and Dan-el Padilla Peralta of Princeton University have received $1 million to expand their annual conference, Racing the Classics—launched in 2017 to encourage a critical examination of race as a scholarly approach to ancient Mediterranean cultures—into a multiyear, cohort-based fellowship program at the two universities. Beginning in 2025, the program will support as many as 10 fellows per cohort—a mix of graduate students and early-career researchers—and include a summer workshop and full-year practicum focused on relationship building and mentorship.

Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, a photography education nonprofit founded in 1884, has received a three-year, $1 million grant that will support capacity building and staff retention efforts, the hiring of a community outreach coordinator, and the expansion of its project space for use by emerging artists, community members, and other nonprofit art organizations, while fostering dialogues on contemporary social issues.

(Photo credit: Floating Museum/Eric Perez)