麻豆村

Meet Our 2025-2026 Grantees

The Lepage Center is delighted to announce its latest cohort of funding recipients! In keeping with the Lepage Annual Series theme, our grantees' projects explore the concept of 鈥淐risis Moments.鈥�

BLACK LUNG: Silica, Struggle, and the Legacy of Disease (Stacy Kranitz, Shaun Slifer)

鈥淏lack Lung: Silica, Struggle, and the Legacy of Disease鈥� is a one-year photographic exhibition and public program series that examines one of the most devastating and enduring occupational health crises in American history: black lung disease. Caused by inhalation of coal and silica dust, black lung has shaped the lives of generations of miners and their families, revealing deep connections between labor, health, race and politics.

By tracing the disease鈥檚 historical arc from the 1930s to the present, this project uses art and history to explore how crises emerge, how communities resist and why struggles for justice remain unfinished. This project spans three primary formats: a photography exhibit, an associated publication and school tours that educate children about miners' decades-long fight against black lung.

Justice in Context: Legal History and the Practice of Crisis Response (The American Bar Association, Anna Snyder, Jacob Rasch, JD)

Dirty Days in Fun City (Elana Myers, Katie Heiserman and Joey Magee)

"Dirty Days in Fun City" is a documentary about two crises in American labor and civil rights history: the New York City and Memphis sanitation strikes of 1968. In New York, a nine-day standoff between sanitation union leaders and city officials escalated into a public health emergency, with 120,000 tons of uncollected garbage transforming the landscape and forcing panicked New Yorkers to confront an invisibilized workforce.

After New York鈥檚 union settlement, Memphis鈥� predominantly Black sanitation workers strike after two men were killed by unsafe equipment After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.鈥檚 assassination during a visit with picketers, the strike became a pivotal moment in civil rights history. Composed entirely of archival footage 鈥淒irty Days in Fun City reconstructs these moments of rupture, revealing how crises are manufactured, resisted and resolved.

The Red Bank Archaeology Project (Jennifer Lawrence Janofsky, PhD, Robert A. Selig, PhD)

The Red Bank Archaeology Project is a collaboration between historians, archaeologists, scientists and the public to recover and honor the remains of fifteen 15 Hessian soldiers who died at the Battle of Red Bank in 1777. Discovered in 2022 during a routine archaeology project at Red Bank Battlefield Park, these remains offer a rare and poignant window into the Revolutionary War and the lives of German soldiers fighting on American soil. Employing osteological analysis, forensic techniques and DNA studies, the project aims to interpret not only the physical remains but also the life stories of these individuals.

Climbing Gold Mountain (Mark. T Johnson, Rich Lee)

Climbing Gold Mountain is an illustrated history that explores the lives, struggles, and resilience of Chinese immigrants in the American West during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Climbing Gold Mountain is a study of interconnected crisis moments鈥攑olicy reversals, racial violence, economic collapse, and transnational separation鈥攖hat shaped Chinese immigrant lives in the American West and southern China alike. Based on over a decade of research, this project brings those intersecting crises to life through the compelling visual medium of the graphic history. The illustrated format, created in partnership with Asian American artist Rich Lee, makes complex historical content accessible and emotionally resonant.