The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by

Andrew Mellon Andrew William Mellon (; March 24, 1855 – August 26, 1937), sometimes A. W. Mellon, was an American banker, businessman, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector, and politician. From the wealthy Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylv ...

of the

Mellon family The Mellon family is a wealthy and influential American family from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The family includes Andrew Mellon, one of the longest-serving U.S. Treasury Secretaries, along with prominent members in the judicial, banking, financi ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

, Pennsylvania. It is the product of the 1969 merger of the Avalon Foundation and the Old Dominion Foundation. These foundations had been set up separately by

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Ailsa Mellon Bruce (June 28, 1901 – August 25, 1969) was a prominent American socialite and philanthropist who established the Avalon Foundation. Early life Ailsa was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on June 28, 1901. She was the daughter of t ...

and Paul Mellon, the children of Andrew Mellon. The foundation is housed in New York City in the expanded former offices of the

Bollingen Foundation The Bollingen Foundation was an educational foundation set up along the lines of a university press in 1945. It was named after Bollingen Tower, Carl Jung's country home in Bollingen, Switzerland. Funding was provided by Paul Mellon and his wife ...

, another educational philanthropy once supported by Paul Mellon. Poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander is the foundation's current president. Her predecessors have included Earl Lewis,

Don Randel Don Michael Randel (born December 9, 1940) is an American musicologist, specializing in the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Spain and France. He is currently the Chair of the Board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a trustee ...

William G. Bowen William Gordon Bowen (; October 6, 1933October 20, 2016) was an American academic who served as the president emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, serving as its president from 1988 to 2006. From 1972 until 1988, he was the president of ...

John Edward Sawyer John Edward Sawyer (May 5, 1917 – February 7, 1995) was a prominent academic and philanthropic administrator. He was educated at Worcester Academy and then Deerfield Academy, Williams College, and Harvard University. He served as the 11th preside ...

and Nathan Pusey. In 2004, the foundation was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Core areas of interest

Higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after comple ...

, including the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

libraries A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...

, and

scholarly communication Scholarly communication involves the creation, publication, dissemination and discovery of academic research, primarily in peer-reviewed journals and books. It is “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evalu ...

and

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...

Museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

s and

art conservation The conservation and restoration of cultural property focuses on protection and care of cultural property (tangible cultural heritage), including artworks, architecture, archaeology, and museum collections. Conservation activities include prev ...

* Performing arts *

Conservation Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws. Conservation may also refer to: Environment and natural resources * Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...

and the environment

Research group

Mellon has a small research group that has investigated doctoral education, collegiate admissions, independent research libraries, charitable nonprofits, scholarly communications, and other issues to ensure that the foundation's grants would be well-informed and more effective. Some of the recent publications of this effect include ''Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education'', ''Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values'', ''JSTOR: A History'', ''The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values'', and ''The Shape of the River''. Mellon's endowment has fluctuated in the range of $5–6 billion in recent years, and its annual grantmaking has been on the order of $300 million.

Projects & initiatives

Aluka Aluka was an online digital library focused on Africa-related material. It focused on globally connecting scholars by building a common platform for online collaboration and knowledge sharing. Aluka's intended audience was higher education and r ...

Artstor Artstor is a nonprofit organization that builds and distributes the Digital Library, an online resource of more than 2.5 million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences, and Shared Shelf, a Web-based cataloging and image manageme ...

* JSTOR *

Open Library of Humanities The Open Library of Humanities is a nonprofit, diamond open access publisher in the humanities and social sciences founded by Martin Paul Eve and Caroline Edwards. Founded in 2015, OLH publishes 27 scholarly journals as of 2022, including a meg ...

*The Monuments Project *The Maniobra Initiative (The work of one's hands initiative) *Creatives Rebuild New York

References

External links

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation official site

Mellon Program in Scholarly Communication

Mellon Program in Museums and Art Conservation

Mellon Program in Research in Information Technology

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowships

The UCL Mellon Program

Finding aid to the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Records
at the Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh {{Authority control 1969 establishments in New York City Organizations established in 1969 Conservation and restoration organizations United States National Medal of Arts recipients Foundations based in the United States

Core areas of interest

Research group

Projects & initiatives

See also

References

External links