The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has announced more than $16 million in funding to six organizations in Richmond, Virginia, and in support of projects that are examining, preserving, and reimagining the city’s rich historical narratives.

Richmond and its institutions have extensively studied and interpreted their role in shaping the early United States through the Revolutionary and Civil wars, but the city’s more complex histories, including its role in the slave trade, the establishment of Jim Crow laws, and the development and proliferation of Confederate iconography, has been less openly explored. The grants include $11 million to the city to help create the Shockoe Heritage Campus Interpretive Center in Shockoe Bottom, which will be designed to recognize and commemorate histories of the domestic slave trade and of freed people, Virginia’s Indigenous groups, Jewish communities, and other immigrant populations. Other grantees include the JXN Project ($1.5 million), the Valentine Museum ($1.2 million), Cary Forward ($1 million), Untold RVA ($850,000), and Reclaiming the Monument ($670,000). 

“Richmond has been the site of many stories that have shaped our understanding of who we are as Americans, but public commemoration in Richmond historically has been limited to only a few,” said Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander. “Today, the people of this city are lifting up the collective memory of its historic Black communities, unflinchingly addressing the city’s past as the capital of the state with the most enslaved people prior to the Civil War, and participating in the reimagining of the city’s public spaces to better reflect the fullness of its history. We are proud to support the remarkable grantees across the city leading this work.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Sean Pavone Photo)