Lily Pilgrim died on March 19, 2017. In 2016 she established the Lily and Earle M. Pilgrim Art Foundation, dedicated to her husband, Earle Montrose Pilgrim, (1923-1976), Barbadian American Artist. The Foundation promotes the visual art of the African diaspora, an appreciation of artists who lack public recognition, and public access to art through best practices in preservation and placement of culturally important artworks. In 2017, the Foundation began supporting Another Kind of Girl Collective's Summer Session in memory of Lily. Founded in 2014 in response to the Syrian Refugee crisis, the Another Kind of Girl Collective (AKGC) equips teenage girls living as refugees with the creative and technical means to express their inner worlds and document their everyday lives – how it looks, feels and sounds from the ground, at the heart of their world.