The Chicago-based Rebuild Foundation has announced a two-year, $3.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to launch the Mellon Archive Fellowship Program.

The program will support research, scholarship, and artistic productions through engagement with the foundation’s archival collections at the Stony Island Arts Bank. The funding includes $1.5 million in support of archival initiatives and the fellowship and $2 million for the ongoing transformation of the St. Laurence School into an arts incubator, Rebuild’s largest site to date. Stony Island, the formerly abandoned bank, was restored to serve as a creative space for the preservation, redeployment, and amplification of art and cultural aspects of the South Side of Chicago and now houses four collections that evoke different approaches to objecthood and cultural histories in Black space.

The fellowship program, which aims to “interrogate, disrupt, and expand the knowledge of histories connected to the African diaspora,” will enable artists, musicians, and researchers to explore the archives and produce new work that can be presented publicly. The four inaugural fellows, who will receive up to $50,000 each over 18 months, are singer, songwriter, and musician Corrine Bailey Rae; interdisciplinary performing artist Yaw Agyeman; professor and performance studies scholar Honey Crawford; and composer and cornetist Ben LaMar Gay. Throughout the duration of the fellowships, additional programming will enable the public to engage with the ongoing research and exploration taking place in the archives. For example, a research cluster will be established, with select artists, curators, scholars, and other thought leaders convening monthly for discussions.

“Mellon’s commitment to embracing the intelligence of our diverse communities of color is an extraordinary pivot in the organization’s ambitions. Their ongoing support of Rebuild’s archival initiatives has allowed us to be daring and innovative in our programmatic efforts,” said artist Theaster Gates, who created the Rebuild Foundation. “From supporting the digitization of our material collections to empowering emerging local and internationally recognized scholars, this investment allows us to demonstrate the ways in which artist-led organizations can be amplifiers of lesser-known stories and creative conveyors of community-based scholarship.”

(Photo credit: Tom Harris © Hedrich Blessing, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)