Four Foundations, Including Ford Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Buy Historic Archives of 'Ebony' Magazine
A consortium of foundations—the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the MacArthur Foundation—has bought the historic archives of Johnson Publishing, the Chicago-based company behind Ebony and Jet magazines, for $30 million. Containing more than four million images and 10,000 hours of video and audio recordings, the archive is considered an irreplaceable record of 20th-century African American life and culture.
The foundations, which came together to buy the archive in just a week to keep it from disappearing into private hands, plan to donate it to the National Museum of African American History of Culture in Washington, DC; the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles; and other cultural institutions.
A purchase agreement was filed late Wednesday and the sale is scheduled to close on Friday, pending court approval, reports the Chicago Tribune. The valuable archive was being sold as part of the company’s bankruptcy proceeding.
“We’re thrilled with the outcome,” Ford Foundation president Darren Walker said in a statement. “This archive is a national treasure and one of tremendous importance to the telling of black history in America. We felt it was imperative to preserve these images, to give them the exposure they deserve and make them readily available to the public.”
According to the New York Times, the consortium came together just last week after Walker and Elizabeth Alexander of the Mellon Foundation learned of the impending auction and rapidly emailed one another to hatch a plan. After they brought on two more foundations and gained approval from their respective boards, they cast the winning bid. “I think we cannot even fully measure what it is going to mean to have these images available,” Alexander told the Times...