The Getty Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation have announced the final cohort of grantees for the Conserving Black Modernism initiative, which focuses on preserving the work of Black architects.
This year’s grantees range, which each receive $150,000 for a total of $750,000 for the cohort from an urban park to a shopping mall. The funding will primarily be used to support historic structures report for the buildings that will help guide their future preservation.
The five awardees are the Central City Plaza in Milwaukee, the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanities Center at Texas Southern University in Houston, the Park-Johnson Hall at Fisk University in Nashville, the Southwest Corridor in Boston, and St. Mark AME Zion Church in East Chicago, Indiana.
Several of the buildings are designed by groundbreaking architects: Alonzo Robinson Jr. (of Central City Plaza) was Wisconsin’s first licensed Black architect; Wendell Campbell (St. Mark AME Zion Church) was a co-founder and the first president of the National Organization of Minority Architects; Moses McKissack III (Park-Johnson Hall) was the principal of the oldest Black-owned architecture firm in the US; and John Saunders Chase Jr. (Martin Luther King Jr. Humanities Center) was the first licensed Black architect in Texas and the first African American to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
The grantees, which range in completion from 1954 to 1987, also hold their own historical significance. The Central City Plaza was the first Black-owned and operated shopping mall in Milwaukee, while TSU’s Humanities Center was constructed in 1969, the year after King’s assassination.
The Southwest Corridor was built on land that was initially cleared for the construction of a highway but canceled after community activism; the resulting project, which includes the extension of the MBTA’s Orange Line and a 52-acre park that follows the metro route, “prioritized community participation and included recreational facilities, community gardens and paths connecting to other Boston park systems,” per a release.
“Conserving Black Modernism has helped communities in nearly every region of the U.S. protect the work of Black architects and has helped broaden the very definition of modernist architecture,” Getty Foundation director Joan Weinstein said in a statement. “Teaming up with the National Trust over the past five years has allowed us to take actionable steps to preserve underrepresented sites that embody Black excellence in design, activism and resilience.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Humanities Center, Texas South University.
Courtesy Texas Southern University
Conserving Black Modernism, which is managed by the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, launched in 2022 after the Getty realized that its Keeping It Modern initiative, which gave a total of $11.8 million to conserve modernist structures across the US between 2014 and 2020, did not include a single building by a Black architect.
Conserving Black Modernism first started as a two-year grant-making project and was then expanded to run until 2026. It has given 26 historic sites a total of $4.85 million during its run. The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has raised over $200 million since its establishment in 2017 toward the preservation of Black heritage in the US.
“Getty’s grants have supported our larger effort with the Action Fund to invest in communities that are preserving the full American story—from the struggles for freedom and civil rights to the achievements of Black educators, architects, entrepreneurs, faith leaders, and culture bearers,” said Brent Leggs, the National Trust’s newly elected president who established the Action Fund in his previous role. “By supporting local stewards and communities, we are helping ensure these stories endure for generations to come.”
The National Trust, a privately funded organization chartered by Congress in 1949, has been at odds with the second Trump administration over the president’s bypassing of historic preservation laws and congressional approval to make changes to important buildings in Washington, D.C., like the Kennedy Center and the White House. The Trust has filed suit against the administration regarding Trump’s proposed name change to the Kennedy Center and a two-year renovation, as well as his demolition of the White House’s East Wing for a ballroom.
