PITTSBURGH, PA.- The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Carnegie Museum of Art $348,885 for ongoing work related to the museum’s Teenie Harris Archive. The archive contains more than 80,000 black-and-white prints and negatives taken by photographer Teenie Harris between 1936 and 1975 that document daily events in the life of Pittsburgh’s African-American community. The funding will allow the museum to conserve, catalogue, digitize, and post images on the museum’s web site, and archivally store approximately 26,963 negatives as Phase II of the Teenie Harris Archive Project. In addition, the Teenie Harris Archive has been chosen as a “We the People” project by the NEH. “We the People” is an initiative to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through the support of projects that explore significant events and themes in U.S. history and culture that advance knowledge of the principles that define America. Carnegie Museum of Art’s proposal was one of 38 applications supported by the NEH, and these represent about 15 percent of the total number submitted in this grant cycle.

“We are especially gratified that this worthy project has received critical funding through the NEH’s rigorous peer-review process; this support acknowledges the importance and value of the archive to scholars and the public,” says Richard Armstrong, the Henry J. Heinz II director of Carnegie Museum of Art. “Over time, appreciation of Teenie Harris’s work will affirm his historic status. Preserving and publicizing his work is crucially important."

“We thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for its help in preserving the works of one of the great masters of photography, not just for the people of Pittsburgh, but for anyone interested in the subjects captured by Teenie Harris,” says Carnegie Museum of Art Board Chairman William E. Hunt.

Phase I and Phase II of the project are part of an overall plan to preserve the life’s work of Charles “Teenie” Harris, an African–American photojournalist who was a lifelong resident of Pittsburgh who worked for the Pittsburgh Courier. With support from the Heinz Family Fund, the museum was able to purchase the materials that make up the archive, now considered the largest and most complete portrait of African–American urban life in existence. As in Phase I, the grant will expedite the preservation of negatives and images at the greatest risk of deterioration.

Additionally, this funding will enable the museum to continue its efforts to identify the people, places, and activities in the photographs. The individuals who are the key sources of this information are elderly, and efforts to communicate with them in a timely manner are crucial to the project’s success. Ultimately, the grant moves the museum closer to its goal of allowing access to the archive by its intended audiences—scholars and historians, teachers, students, media, publishers, museums and other organizations, and the general public.

“As the preeminent chronicler of African–American life in Western Pennsylvania for four decades, Teenie Harris produced an incredible archive of images, including many photographs documenting the pivotal figures and events in Pittsburgh’s Civil Rights Movement. It is critically important that his work be preserved and shared with future generations,” says Neil Barclay, president and CEO of the August Wilson Center for African–American Culture and a member of the Teenie Harris Archive Advisory Committee. “Already the August Wilson Center has made extensive use of the Teenie Harris collection in exhibitions, publications and signage, and as the inspiration for a world premiere dance work choreographed by Ronald K. Brown for Evidence Dance Company.”

In 2003, the museum initiated Documenting Our Past: The Teenie Harris Archive Project, a series of informal presentations of Harris’s work that invited audiences to assist with identification and dating of images. More than 1,600 responses were gathered from this initiative. In 2006, the museum opened Documenting Our Past: The Teenie Harris Archive Project, Part Two, which generated an additional 1,000 responses. A third project is anticipated in 2008.

In September 2006, Carnegie Museum of Art launched an online collection database on the museum’s web site, www.cmoa.org. Today more than 27,000 Teenie Harris images are posted there with a response mechanism for viewers to assist in the identification of the activities and people within the photos.

In 2005, Carnegie Museum of Art received a grant of $340,000 from the NEH to record, conserve, catalogue, and archivally store 26,400 Harris negatives, and to scan 33,850 negatives for public research and public access on the museum’s web site and other web-based locations as Phase I of the Teenie Harris Archive Project. The museum will have catalogued nearly 34,000 negatives and scanned more than 29,000 negatives by the end of the first grant period. New images are constantly being added to the museum’s web site.