» Avery Research Center Awarded Funding

August 17, 2021
News & Notes

The Avery Research Center is glad to announce that we are the recipient of two grants to help us do work in the coming year in documenting, preserving, and providing access to information and materials about Black experiences in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Please see below for brief information about the projects and we look forward to sharing with you more in the coming months.


Documenting the Arc Oral History Project


The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation’s new “Broadening Narratives” grant, a groundbreaking
collections initiative that illuminates underrepresented stories. Grants total $579,000 to ten organizations in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Chicago;
Five Lowcountry-based grant recipients to each receive a range of $25,000 to $100,000 to fund new projects.


We are one of only five organizations in Lowcountry to receive this grant ($100,000), which will help fund the conducting of and making accessible video oral history interviews. The interviews will be with those who spearheaded the call for justice between 2014 and 2020, beginning with the formation of Black Lives Matter Charleston in late 2014 through the local George Floyd protests and civil unrest that marked the Summer of 2020.

Congrats to the other four Lowcountry recipients, Coastal Carolina University’s Joyner Institute for Gullah Studies, Drayton Hall Preservation Trust, Harbor Historical Association / South Carolina Maritime Museum, and the Penn Center.  


Learn more about this initiative on the foundation’s website.

Documenting Black Charleston: Providing Access to Black Life in the Lowcountry 


Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina awarded $685,000 to 37 nonprofit organizations in the Tri-County region that are Black-led and/or Black-serving in an effort funded by Facebook to support innovation, creativity, and resiliency in Black communities.


The Avery Research Center will be using the Coastal Community Foundation’s Facebook Grant for Sustaining Black Communities funds ($20,000) to digitize some of its vulnerable photograph collections, including the Coards Studio photographs and records and the photographs in the Walter N. Boags collection. Some items, such as the negatives in the Boags collection, are degrading and in urgent need of digitization to preserve the historic images.


Learn more about this initiative on the foundation’s website.

BUILDING CLOSURES: We will close at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 27th, and reopen for research and tours on Monday, December 2nd, at 10 a.m.

MUSEUM TOURS: We offer self-guided tours Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 1030AM-12PM and 2PM-330PM. Large groups limited 25 people or less per time slot.

ARCHIVES: Researchers must have a consultation BEFORE making a research appointment. Contact us in advance for further assistance

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