Funding:Fellowship Opportunities in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Fellowship Opportunities in American Art 2011–12
The Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery invite applications for research fellowships in art and visual culture of the United States. Fellowships are residential and support full-time independent and dissertation research.
The collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum spans the nation’s artistic heritage, representing outstanding visual accomplishments from the seventeenth century to the present day. Comprising more than 42,000 objects, this unparalleled collection includes special strengths in nineteenth- and twentieth-century marble and bronze sculpture, nineteenth-century landscape painting, Gilded Age and American impressionist paintings, twentieth-century realism, photography and graphic art, folk art, Latino art, and African American art. Artists represented in depth include George Catlin, William H. Johnson, Sean Scully, Lee Friedlander, Christo, Nam June Paik, and William T. Wiley, among others. The collection is housed in a National Historic Landmark building, shared by the National Portrait Gallery and the Archives of American Art, where the expansive holdings of the Luce Foundation Center for American Art can be accessed on a daily basis. American craft is featured in the Renwick Gallery, a curatorial department of the Museum located across from the White House in a restored building designed in 1858 by James Renwick. The gallery’s permanent collection includes works in glass, ceramic, wood, fiber, and metal.
Each scholar is provided a carrel in the Fellowship Office located across the street from the Museum. Available research resources there include a 180,000-volume library that specializes in American art, history, and biography; the Archives of American Art; and the graphics collections of the American Art Museum and NPG; as well as a variety of image collections and research databases. Conveniently located in downtown Washington, D.C., the Museum and Fellowship Office are a short walk from other Smithsonian museums and libraries, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the National Gallery of Art. During their stay at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, scholars will be part of one of the nation’s oldest and most distinguished fellowship programs in American art, and will have the opportunity to attend a wide variety of lectures, symposiums, and professional workshops. Short research trips are also possible.
The museum hosts fellows supported by the Smithsonian’s general fellowship fund as well as the following named fellowships:
- The Terra Foundation Fellowships in American Art seek to foster a cross-cultural dialogue about the history of art of the United States up to 1980. They support work by scholars from abroad who are researching American art or by U.S. scholars who are investigating international contexts for American art. Postdoctoral and senior Terra fellows are eligible for a substantial stipend supplement to assist with research, relocation, and housing costs.
- The Douglass Foundation Fellowship in American Art is given for scholarly research in American art.
- The Patricia and Phillip Frost Fellowship is offered to support research in American art and visual culture.
- The James Renwick Fellowship in American Craft is available for research in American studio crafts or decorative arts from the nineteenth century to the present.
- The Sara Roby Fellowship in Twentieth-Century American Realism is awarded to a scholar whose research topic is in the area of American realism.
- The Joshua C. Taylor Fellowship is supported by alumni and friends of the fellowship program.
- The Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship is awarded for the advancement and completion of a doctoral dissertation that concerns the traditions of American art.
For further details and application procedures see the website:Â http://americanart.si.edu/research/opportunity/fellows
