In 2016, The Andrew Mellon Foundation awarded the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library a three-year grant to establish the AUC Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) Center for Collaborative Teaching & Learning. The AUC GLAM Center – consisting of the AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library and Archives Research Center, the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, and the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art – provides faculty training in object-based learning pedagogy as well as digital access to the culturally rich holdings of the AUC GLAM institutions’ collections.
The AUC GLAM Center develops cross-disciplinary teaching and learning methods that promote in-depth faculty and student engagement with archival material and artworks from the Atlanta University Center’s Robert W. Woodruff Library, Archives Research Center, Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, and Spelman Museum of Fine Art collections.
AUC GLAM Institutions
The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art inspires and enriches the Spelman College community and the general public, primarily through art by women of the African Diaspora. Women artists of the African Diaspora create dynamic, important work that contributes to the history of visual culture. By presenting exhibitions, organizing programs, and expanding the permanent collection, the Museum makes this work accessible to all.
Clark Atlanta University Art Museum’s (CAUAM) purpose is to collect, preserve, research, and exhibit fine art works that document the role of African Americans in American history and culture. The primary goal of the institution is to maintain and cultivate a representative collection of American and African Diaspora art, and to encourage scholarly research giving special attention to the development of African American artists in relation to the historical context of American art and transnational art historical movements.
Robert W. Woodruff Library was constructed in 1982 to serve as a shared resource serving a consortium of four independent Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College, and Spelman College. As the “center of the Center,” the AUC Woodruff Library is the intellectual and information hub of the Atlanta University Center.
The AUC Woodruff Library Archives Research Center, located within the AUC Woodruff Library, is noted for its extensive and unique holdings of materials on the African American experience, including the John Henrik Clarke African and African American Collection, the Henry P. Slaughter, Countee Cullen Memorial Collection, Atlanta Student Movement Collection, Maynard Jackson mayoral administrative records and countless others. In addition, at the request of Morehouse College, the library serves as custodian of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection, as well as student publications, yearbooks, magazines, and photographs of the current and historical institutions of the Atlanta University Center. With over 8,000 linear feet of materials, it contains over 105 unique collections, including the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection.