Expanding the Architectural Canon: Mellon Foundation Recognizes Tara A. Dudley and Charles L. Davis II
Since its establishment in 1969, the Mellon Foundation has become one of the nation’s most prominent supporters of the arts and humanities. Through its grants, the Mellon Foundation seeks to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.
Tara A. Dudley: Fostering Intersections in the Black Built Environment
Tara A. Dudley, Assistant Professor of interior design and architectural history, was named a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship, an award that supports faculty members in deepening their knowledge through advanced systematic training. Dudley’s proposal, “Fostering Intersections in the Black Built Environment,” outlines a comprehensive three-year course of interdisciplinary study that will expand her expertise in African and African diaspora studies, public history, and digital humanities.
Known for her award-winning book Building Antebellum New Orleans, which examines the overlooked contributions of free people of color to the city's early architecture, Dudley will focus her next major project on African American builders and architects in Austin from its founding through the Jim Crow era. Through targeted training in Black studies, geographic information systems (GIS), museum exhibition design, and public history methodologies, Dudley will translate her research into accessible and impactful public programming, enhance her classroom offerings, and launch digital platforms that make research on the Black built environment more widely accessible. Her fellowship promises to deepen cross-disciplinary collaborations while also modeling how architectural history can serve as a tool for change.
Dudley is also writing a book on School of Architecture alumnus John S. Chase for University of Texas Press, chronicling Chase’s contributions to the field of architecture, to the communities where he lived, and to the people for whom he designed. It will be the first biography about the architect whose name now graces the school’s landmark library.
Charles L. Davis II: The Black Space Project
Charles L. Davis II, Associate Professor of architectural history, has also received Mellon support for “The Black Space Project,” which seeks to pluralize the historiography of Black architectural modernity through exhibitions, symposia, publications, and workshops.
Blending digital humanities, oral history, and architectural documentation, the project aims to create a digital archive of nonlicensed contributions to the built environment. Working in partnership with local organizations, Davis’ team will document historic East Austin sites, digitally storing 2D and 3D architectural drawings, photogrammetry, and oral histories gathered directly from community members. These records will then be made publicly accessible, helping to preserve cultural memory while empowering residents to retain ownership of their historical materials.
Davis first launched the project through “The Black Home as Public Art” symposium and exhibition organized with the Center for American Architecture and Design in 2024. An expansion of this exhibition will commence in 2027 in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Center, featuring comparative case studies of Black civic and domestic spaces as sites of cultural production, architectural improvisation, and community memory. Considering locations across Texas and Illinois, the exhibition will collectively frame spatial practices and material experiments that emerged along the North-South axis of the Great Migration that disseminated Black vernacular practices across the country.
In future phases, “The Black Space Project” will examine unconventional worship spaces and their role in cultural and political movements. An original public art piece will accompany this phase, serving as a catalyst for oral history collection across Central Texas.
