New York University: NYU’s Latinx Project Receives $1 Million Grant to Expand Its Artistic, Educational, and Scholarly Programming
New York University’s Latinx Project has received a $1 million grant to expand its work in artistic and public humanities programming and collaborations.
The Latinx Project logo
Support Coincides with Growing National Significance of Latinx Communities
New York University’s Latinx Project has received a $1 million grant to expand its work in artistic and public humanities programming and collaborations. The grant comes at a time of increasing calls for recognizing the significance of Latinx communities in culture, politics, and scholarship and their impact on America’s future.
With this new $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation and previous support from the Mellon Foundation, the Latinx Project will be able to grow the Latinx enterprise at NYU, with the aim of becoming internationally recognized as a leading institution shaping the discussion on Latinx art, culture, and scholarship in the United States and globally.
Since its founding in 2018, the Latinx Project has hosted three artists-in-residence and organized multiple programs, including five art exhibitions, such as PELEA and Afro-Syncretic, and three national conferences, such as “Latinx Politics: Resistance, Disruption, and Power” and “Digitizing Race: Making Latinx in the 21st Century”.
“The Latinx Project was founded to address the lack of spaces focusing on the stories, histories, scholarship, and narratives about U.S. Latinxs,” says Professor Arlene Dávila, founding director of the Latinx Project. “This generous support from the Ford Foundation will aid in bringing greater visibility to Latinx creativity, history, and scholarship at a time when a better understanding of Latinxs’ critical role in U.S. society is most urgently needed.”
The Latinx Project, a faculty-driven initiative across academic departments and schools at NYU, reflects the enormous growth of Latinx Studies in the past decade—shown in the rise of national Latino/a/x Studies conferences, journals, book series, and graduate programs, among other initiatives. The Latinx Project’s focus on the arts serves as a bridge to insert humanistic thinking throughout the disciplines, placing Latinx in a range of cross-disciplinary humanistic conversations.
“We’re determined to continue to fill the void in Latinx Studies in higher education and to give a voice to our Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ communities by way of academic and artistic programming,” says Dávila.
“This unique support not only validates and legitimizes a field of study that has been long neglected, underfunded, and considered ‘illegitimate,’ but it also recognizes the critical and central role that Latinx Studies has in today’s vexed political, racial, and social climate in the United States,” adds Frances R. Aparicio, professor emerita at Northwestern University and a pioneer in the development of Latinx Studies as an interdisciplinary field.
“The Latinx Project is an interdisciplinary initiative and an innovative model of intellectual and artistic collaboration and community building, paving the way for those of us who work at the intersection of Latinx, Ethnic, and Black Studies,” adds Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin, chair of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.
The Latinx Project at NYU explores and promotes U.S. Latinx art, culture and scholarship through creative and interdisciplinary programs that examine and highlight the multitude of Latinx identities. Established in 2018, the Latinx Project has become influential as the first Latinx art and culture focused, interdisciplinary center at an east coast research university. Learn more about the Latinx Project at its website. @LatinxProjNYU