The organization funds the destruction of our heroes and founding principles.
Credit: Jorge Salcedo Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative player…
In early February, President Trump announced the creation of a “National Garden of American Heroes,” featuring 250 statues of “the greatest Americans who ever lived.” While the endeavor is new, the project of memorializing significant Americans has long been a risk. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has been leading efforts to “transform” our memorial landscape for some time.
The Mellon Foundation is considered “the nation's largest funder of the arts and humanities” and evaluates historical monuments through the lens of power, such as critical theory.
For example, the foundation partnered with Monument Lab, another Philadelphia-based nonprofit, to conduct a “National Monuments Audit,” which found that “the list of the 50 most frequently depicted individuals on our monuments does not include a single Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, or self-identified LGBTQ+ person born in the United States.” The Mellon Foundation has also pledged $500 million to transform “the nation’s memorial landscape to ensure a more complete and accurate representation of our collective history.”
The broader conflict over monuments goes beyond individual legacies (though we certainly owe a debt of gratitude to figures like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington). It highlights a deeper disagreement about how we should view America.
Is America’s ethos best represented by a fair reflection of identity? Or is it our unifying maxim, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, which points to our common human dignity and capacity for self-government? The answer to this question informs and shapes our perception of monuments.
Mellon Foundation Initiatives
The Mellon Foundation believes that equity is a key element in portraying America. In 2020, the Foundation decided to focus its grantmaking initiatives on social justice to impact cultural, public, and private education. Since then, its grants and initiatives have included:
- $5 million in 2022 will go to Theater Offensive, Inc., an organization whose mission is to “present liberating art by, for, and about queer and trans people of color that transcends artistic boundaries, celebrates cultural diversity, and dismantles oppression.”
- $15 million in 2020 will be awarded to Rutgers University to support “the creation of an institute for advanced studies of race and social justice.”
- In 2020, $5 million will be awarded to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for “Anti-Racist Literacy in Science and Medicine.”
- In 2022, $7.5 million will be awarded to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund; the National Trust owns James Madison's Montpelier and 26 other historic properties.
- $110,000 in 2022 for Allied Media Projects for EspicyNipples, a Puerto Rican transfeminist network that “documents the lives of members of the TILQAPBG+ community.”
Of course, this is not a complete list of grants, and some of Mellon's donations likely went to less controversial causes, especially given the enormous size of his budget. But they reflect the broad
Sourse: theamericanconservative.com
