Grant Narrative

Modified: February 14, 2026 7:58 PM Created: September 17, 2025 3:27 PM Master Type: Notes Hide: No Starred: No Status: Unassigned

Grant Narrative

Founded in 1916, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (MBMA) is committed to enriching the lives of our diverse community through the museum’s expanding collection, varied exhibitions, and dynamic programs. MBMA is the largest art museum in the Mid-South - a center of learning and wonder for some 100,000 visitors annually. The museum stewards a growing collection of over 10,000 objects illuminating 5,000 years of human creativity and makes its collection accessible through permanent and rotating exhibitions of objects drawn from its holdings. Additionally, MBMA presents five or more special exhibitions and installations each year. MBMA is also home to Inside Art, Tennessee’s only hands-on family gallery devoted to visual literacy. The museum’s learner-centered programming serves 10,000 school children each year. MBMA offers a variety of outreach programming for other ages as well, such as gallery talks, symposia, film screenings, art-making workshops, and more. MBMA also serves as a community connector, providing a venue for cultural celebrations throughout the year and serving as a vital partner in collaborative projects with other nonprofit organizations. An integral part of the artistic and economic ecosystem of Memphis, MBMA continually pursues its vision of transforming lives through the power of art.

MBMA has recently established a new partnership with the National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM) centered around the shared acquisition, documentation, preservation, display, and interpretation of the photographic archives of the Hooks Brother’s Photography Studio. Founded in 1907, the Hooks Brother’s Photography Studio became the second oldest continuously operating Black-owned business in Memphis until its closure in 1979. The studio produced formal portraits of nearly every important African American person to come through Memphis – from Blues legends like W.C. Handy and B.B. King to early civil rights leaders like Booker T. Washington. Additionally, the Hooks Brother’s produced family portraits, graduation photos, and took their cameras out into the city to document daily life and major events in Memphis’ history. The resulting archive of over 5,000 prints and negatives represents an invaluable trove of information about Black life in Memphis, making an indisputable case for the significance of the Hooks Brother’s Photography Studio in the history of American photography.

For over 70 years, the studio chronicled the history, culture, and lives of Black Memphians. But the photography of the Hooks Brother’s is more than an expansive, extraordinary historical record. The images are indelible artifacts of a collaboration between photographer and subjects to construct a visual representation designed to transform the public image of Black Americans and challenge racist stereotypes. However, until now, the Hooks Brother’s archive has been privately owned and largely unavailable to scholars and the general public. Some of the prints and negatives have not been stored using archival preservation materials, techniques, or best practices, which further places this important collection at risk. Furthermore, some of the cellulose acetate negatives are in poor condition and will require cold storage, and ultimately conservator treatment to produce prints from the internegatives. Shared acquisition by MBMA and NCRM will expedite the care and rehousing of the photo archive and its digitization, ensuring that the collection is preserved for future generations and accessible to the public now.

Together, MBMA and NCRM are ideally positioned to undertake this project, each bringing different expertise and assets to the project. The NCRM has extensive experience in the handling and care of archival materials and will take the lead in re-housing the collection to increase accessibility to and preservation of the Hooks Brother’s archive. MBMA will bring its deep curatorial bench to the project to develop a large-scale exhibition and catalogue that will be shared by both partners.

MBMA has significant history in developing exhibitions about both the medium of photography, such as “Ernest C. Withers: Baseball Photographs” and “On Christopher Street: Transgender Portraits by Mark Seliger,” and about African Diasporic art, a genre to which the museum has a dedicated permanent gallery. In 2018, MBMA established a curatorial fellowship in African Art and the Art of the African Diaspora. MBMA created the position to both support the next generation of curators in these fields and to help the museum explore, expand, and share its collection of African Art and the Art of the African Diaspora. In 2021, private funders endowed the position, making the Blackmon Perry Fellowship the first endowed position in the museum’s history. MBMA’s current Blackmon Perry fellow, Efe Igor Coleman - who brings expertise in African and African American art, photography, and history – will be a key participant in the Hooks Brother’s project. MBMA intends to undertake rigorous research for this project, consulting with both local academic consultants and traveling to review similar collections held by other libraries and museums.

Together, MBMA’s and NCRM’s skilled museum educators will develop an outreach curriculum to engage Memphians in the interpretation of the collection. Outreach efforts will leverage NCRM’s extensive experience in teaching Civil Rights history, as well as MBMA’s expertise in teaching visual literacy and critical thinking centered around artmaking. This may include a traveling exhibition of high-quality prints that will tour community centers throughout the Midsouth region, around which programmatic offerings such as oral history programs and street photography workshops could be developed.

MBMA has three primary goals for the Hooks Brother’s collaborative project with NCRM:Collections Preservation & Accessibility - Safely document, rehouse, and store the Hooks Brother’s Photography Studio prints and negatives using archival preservation supplies and contemporary digital archiving best practices.

Exhibition & Publication - Develop an exhibition and catalogue documenting highlights of the collection. Different aspects of the exhibition will run concurrently at NCRM and MBMA before traveling nationally.

Outreach Curriculum - Create a new, collaboratively produced curriculum, along with a network of partners centered around the Hooks Brother’s Photography Studio archive.

MBMA plans to assess the contribution of its work by:Collections Preservation & AccessibilityEvaluating the number of objects that have been safely housed/rehousedEvaluating the number of catalogue entries created in a shared collections management system (TMS Collections) that document and make accessible to the public images of the Hooks Brother’s archive.Exhibition & PublicationCompletion of an exhibition and catalogueAttendance of the exhibition at each museumAudience engagement around the exhibition including attendance of associated programming, visitor comment books, etc.Touring partnershipsPress coverage of the exhibition and catalogueOutreach CurriculumEstablishment of one to two outreach partnershipsCompletion of curriculum developmentCompletion and delivery of programingSurveys of program participants

MBMA respectfully requests support from the Mellon Foundation for the following activities:Collection housing/rehousingCollection documentationCuratorial research to prepare the exhibition and catalogueExhibition preparation (matting, framing, crating, etc.)Design and production of exhibition catalogue

MBMA intends to pursue additional funding to support the development and implementation of the outreach curriculum.

Project Activity Timeline:

Summer 2023 Receive Hooks Brother’s Photography Studio archiveDraft Assistant Curator of Photography and Collections Specialist descriptions and recruit candidatesFall 2023 Assistant Curator of Photography and Collections Specialist startFall/Winter 2023 Collections assessmentPurchase archival preservation suppliesFall. 23-Nov. 24 Rehouse and digitize Hooks Brother’s prints and negativesFall 23 – Feb.2025 Create collections catalogue entries in shared TMS database and upload digital images to catalogue recordsApril-June 2024 General research for exhibition and catalogueResearch travel – New York, Schomburg Center for Research in Black CultureResearch Travel – Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art (Teenie Harris Archive)July-September 2024 Research and Research travel – Atlanta, Emory University (Robert Langmuir African American Photograph Collection)Research Travel – New YorkOctober-December 2024 Research and Research Travel – Washington DC, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Early African American daguerreotypists and photography of abolitionists) and National Museum of African American History and Culture (Henry Clay Anderson collection)

January 2025 Contract with external essayists for exhibition catalogueResearch Travel – New YorkJanuary-March 2025 In-house essays for catalogueMarch – May 2025 Image selection for exhibition and catalogueProof TMS catalogue records and prepare to make collection available onlineJune 2025 Complete finding aid for the collectionJune-July 2025 Select and obtain use rights for any comparative or reference images used in catalogue or exhibitionAugust 2025 All final catalogue text (internal and contract) and images due in-houseSeptember 2025 Exhibition catalogue copy editingOctober 2025 Begin developing exhibition textAll exhibition catalogue components compiled and delivered to publisherNovember 2025 Exhibition catalogue layout and copy editingDecember 2025 Prepare for museum relocationJanuary 2026 Anticipated occupancy of new museum in downtown MemphisFebruary 2026 Exhibition catalogue proof delivered and reviewed by curatorsMarch 2026 Photo production of all images selected for exhibitionExhibition text review and copy editing

Exhibition catalogue printedApril 2026 Mating and framing of Hooks Brother’s photographsFinal exhibition text complete and in productionGallery preparation for exhibition (painting, cleaning, etc.)Exhibition catalogue shippedMay 2026 Produce audio tourExhibition installation and lightingCreate evaluation tools for exhibitionCatalogue arrives at MBMA prior to exhibition openingJune 2026 Anticipated exhibition openingMake Hooks Brother’s collection publicly accessible via MBMA’s online collections catalogue

MBMA’s most significant partner in this project is the National Civil Rights Museum. Established in 1991, the museum is located in the former Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The museum is driven by its mission to share the culture and lessons from the American Civil Rights Movement and explore how this era continues to shape equality and freedom globally. The National Civil Rights Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and is a founding member of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. MBMA and NCRM will share ownership of the Hooks Brother’s Photography Studio archival. The two museums will work together to care for, preserve, document, interpret, exhibit, and promote this significant collection.

Sizable acquisitions, such as the Hooks Brother’s Photography Studio archive, require a large commitment of staff time and resources from the receiving museum. This often leads to a considerable delay between the receipt of a collection and the time when a museum can make items from the collection available to the public through exhibition, research, programming, or an online catalogue. Understanding the challenge this presents, in addition to the importance of and need to increase accessibility to the Hooks Brother’s photographic archive, MBMA plans to hire an Assistant Curator of Photography and a Collections Specialist, a position which it will share with NCRM. The new positions, along with the partnership with NCRM, will reduce the impact on both institutions, broaden the range of expertise with regard to the staff committed to executing the project, and will dramatically shrink the timeline for making the Hooks Brother’s archive publicly available.

MBMA also faces the potential challenge of delayed building construction as it plans a historic relocation to a new, custom-built facility on the downtown Memphis riverfront. In 2017, the City of Memphis published the Memphis Riverfront Concept, a redevelopment plan for a 6.5-mile stretch of the downtown Mississippi riverfront. The plan called for an unspecified “cultural anchor” at the north end of the redevelopment area. Accordingly, when the City of Memphis offered MBMA the opportunity to serve as that anchor, it was clear that we should answer the call. In its new location, the museum will complement the $5B regional boom in real estate development occurring in downtown Memphis. The new museum will transform an underutilized riverfront parcel into a civic asset that builds on the value of the Mississippi River and provides a world-class cultural experience that will attract residents and tourists alike. The new facility will broaden MBMA’s community impact, build organizational capacity, increase revenue potential, and create a new home for the museum that is environmentally responsible and resource efficient.

Early in the planning stages for the new museum, MBMA made the decision to remain open to the public in its current location in Overton Park, where it has operated for over 100 years, while actively planning for the move downtown. By maintaining a robust exhibitions and programming schedule, MBMA has been able to continue to reach the audiences required to fulfill its mission and demonstrate its value to the public and funders. Although ambitious and demanding, the opportunity presented by the new museum to both improve our service to our community and increase our organizational sustainability is undeniable. The decision will also help MBMA mitigate possible impacts to the Hooks Brother’s project plan should construction delay the museum opening. While not ideal (the proximity to the NCRM is better at the downtown location), MBMA could still successfully host the exhibition and programming at our current location if needed.