Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Private foundationwww.mellon.org
29
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20
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Search complete. 29 mentions across 20 episodes found for "Andrew W. Mellon Foundation".
Sep 19, 2026
Donald TrumpSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Why should I raise and put up and do all of this work, not only building it, which I'll do a better job building it than anybody else.
Jonathan CapehartHOST
Joining us now, Will Sommer, senior reporter at The Bulwark, and Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, inaugural poet for President Barack Obama's first inauguration in 2009, and the author of the new book, beautiful new book, Signals Across Vast Distances, Essays and Tales.
Jonathan CapehartHOST
Welcome both to the weekend, Elizabeth.
Jonathan CapehartHOST
And I call you Elizabeth because we're friends instead of Dr. Alexander.
Ali VelshiHOST
But she hasn't stopped doing the work.
Ali VelshiHOST
Hayden is now a senior fellow at the Mellon Foundation, where she continues to work on expanding access to libraries, to archives, and American historical documents.
Ali VelshiHOST
10 years after Carla Hayden made history herself, she's still working to make sure the rest of us have access to ours.
Ali VelshiHOST
Her light is still shining.
Tai S. EdwardsGUEST
So this is a full color book for folks that haven't seen it, which is unbelievable.
Tai S. EdwardsGUEST
Part of that is because the second part of the project, so we were on two grant projects and the second grant project was funded by the Mellon Foundation.
Tai S. EdwardsGUEST
So part of the text is funded by Mellon's grant.
Tai S. EdwardsGUEST
which is part of the way we could afford to do this.
Tai S. EdwardsGUEST
So I think we, at least initially, wrote, oh, we want to oral history interview these people that are part of the grant because they were working on it.
Tai S. EdwardsGUEST
And then, like Charlie said, then other things revealed themselves as we went along.
Tai S. EdwardsGUEST
So we were at one of the Mellon Foundation workshops.
Tai S. EdwardsGUEST
And Charlie was there on Zoom and I'm physically there.
Carolyn WoodardHOST
And they are also one of the founding members of Humanity AI, which I mentioned maybe a couple months ago.
Carolyn WoodardHOST
Uh, the coalition of foundation leaders include, uh, Doris Duke Foundation, Ford Foundation, Lumina, Kapor, Ca-- uh, the MacArthur Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Packard Foundation, and the Seigel, um, Family Endowment.
Carolyn WoodardHOST
And those, you know, like other founders are joining them, but they are, um...
Carolyn WoodardHOST
This is a collective, uh, it's called Humanity AI.
Mitzi RapkinHOST
She composed and recited the poem Praise Song for the Day for President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration.
Mitzi RapkinHOST
She is currently the president of the Mellon Foundation.
Mitzi RapkinHOST
Her new book is called Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales.
Mitzi RapkinHOST
It offers a personal look at Elizabeth Alexander's lessons and insights and inspirations from her life and the culture we live in.
Gabriela GlickHOST
You mentioned the audit, but tell me more about the rest of the project.
Sarah HotchkissGUEST
Three years ago, they received $3 million from the Mellon Foundation.
Sarah HotchkissGUEST
San Francisco was one of a number of cities across the country.
Sarah HotchkissGUEST
Some of them were dealing with Confederate statues.
speaker_4HOST
Oh, absolutely.
speaker_4HOST
She is a celebrated poet, a prominent scholar, and the president of the Mellon Foundation.
speaker_4HOST
She has done so much.
speaker_4HOST
But the reviewer for this book, Lashmi Rivera Amin, immediately connects this new essay collection back to Alexander's previous book, her 2015 memoir titled The Light of the World.
Autumn BreonGUEST
As I said, I've been obsessed with maroons, and that's what all of my work has been related to the past couple of years.
Autumn BreonGUEST
The Maroon Station is a public art project that I got to do with Dyson and Womack, L.A. County, with support from the Mellon Foundation.
Autumn BreonGUEST
It's a giant inflatable slide that anybody can climb up, slide down, and then go into this dome.
Autumn BreonGUEST
I think that we already know what it feels like to maroon, to create freedom on our own terms and to decide, hey, I can leave.
Steve HaywardHOST
And I thought, you know, if we got rid of the tax to for it, it would clip the wings of, well, let's start with a lot of private liberal arts colleges where a lot of alumni would quit giving their annual gifts if they couldn't deduct it on their taxes.
Steve HaywardHOST
So, you know, what's not to like? And it would also clip the wings a bit of some of the huge left-wing foundations, you know, Ford, Rockefeller, Soros, for that matter, and Mellon Foundation and others.
Steve HaywardHOST
So I threw it out as a thought experiment, and it got a lot of buzz and controversy.
Steve HaywardHOST
And anyway, when I hear people talk about the nonprofit sector, it just gets my back.
Steven HaywardHOST
And I thought, you know, if we got rid of the tax to deductibility for it, it would clip the wings of, well, let's start with a lot of private liberal arts colleges where a lot of alumni would quit giving their annual gifts if they couldn't deduct it on their taxes.
Steven HaywardHOST
So, you know, what's not to like? And it would also clip the wings a bit of some of the huge left-wing foundations, you know, Ford, Rockefeller, Soros, for that matter, and Mellon Foundation and others.
Steven HaywardHOST
So I threw it out as a thought experiment, and it got a lot of buzz and controversy.
Steven HaywardHOST
And anyway, when I hear people talk about the nonprofit sector, it just gets my back.
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