Smithsonian American Art Museum Announces 2021 – 2022 Fellowship Appointments and Residencies

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the appointment of 16 fellows and the extension of nine others for the 2021–2022 academic year. The museum’s premier fellowship program is the oldest and largest program for the study of American art. The museum’s program hosts fellows appointed by the Smithsonian Office of Fellowships and Internships and also grants its own awards for scholars and students to pursue research at the museum, including senior, predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships.  

The Smithsonian’s COVID-19 safety policy currently restricts on-site research, so the museum will continue to allow fellows to participate in the program remotely. The 2021–2022 appointees are:

• Fábio D’Almeida, Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris, “Modelling Sauk and Fox in South America: The Latin American Contribution to Ferdinand Pettrich’s ‘Indian Museum’,” Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Christine Filippone, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, “Systems and Utopias of Process in Conceptual Art,” Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Rebecca Giordano, University of Pittsburgh, “Muralism, Racial Discourse, and Cultural Anthropology in US Black Art, 1936–1955,” Patricia and Phillip Frost Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Robb Hernández, Fordham University, “Alien Skins: Transplanetary Arts of the Americas,” senior fellow in Latinx art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Choghakate Kazarian, The Courtauld Institute of Art, “Unquicken the Pace: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Ripening Paintings,” Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Elliot Krasnopoler, Bryn Mawr College, “Timescapes: Geology and Place in Contemporary Art,” George Gurney Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Nora Lessersohn, University College London, “A Perfect Union: Ottoman-American Visual Media and the Art of Affiliation in Nineteenth-Century America (1835–1895),” Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Alexis Monroe, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, “The Crisis of the 1850s: Western American Land and Landscape, 1848–1861,” Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Sara Morris, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Figurative Sculpture and the Crafting of Identity in Postwar American Art, 1960–1990,” predoctoral fellow in American craft, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Samantha Noël, Wayne State University, “Diasporic Art in the Age of Black Power,” Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Kaegan Sparks, City University of New York, The Graduate Center, “Mierle Laderman Ukeles and the Politics of Social Reproduction, 1969 to Present,” William H. Truettner Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Krystle Stricklin, NEA Curatorial Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Olga Tchepikova-Treon, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, “Disability on Screen: Medicine, Art, and Experimental Film Cultures,” Big Ten Academic Alliance Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Colin Young, Yale University, “Desert Places: The Visual Culture of the Prairies and the Pampas across the Nineteenth Century,” Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The following fellows have deferred their in-residence fellowships until the 2022–2023 academic year: 

• Claire Ittner, University of California, Berkeley, “Fellow Travelers: The Artist-Researchers of the Rosenwald Fellowship, 1940–1950,” Will Barnet Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Katie Loney, University of Pittsburgh, “Lockwood de Forest, The Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company, and the Global Circulation of Luxury Goods,” Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Additional funding has been provided to some scholars for paid extensions of their 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 fellowships that were interrupted by the closure of Smithsonian facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following scholars will be able to complete their on-site research: 

• Sarah Bane, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Join the Club: Regional Print Clubs in the United States During the Interwar Period,” Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Janine DeFeo, City University of New York, The Graduate Center, “Food and the Social Body in U.S. Art, 1962–1983,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Davida Fernández-Barkan, Harvard University, “The Mural at a Crossroads: The Paris International Exposition of 1937,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Faye Raquel Gleisser, Indiana University, “Guerrilla Tactics: Art and the Cultural Domestication of Militancy in America, 1967–1987,” postdoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program 
• Kyungso Min, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Post-translational Belonging: The Languages of the Future in Transnational New Media Art After 1984,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Dina Murokh, University of Southern California, “‘A Sort of Picture Gallery’: The Visual Culture of Antebellum America,” Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Z. Serena Qiu, University of Pennsylvania, “Visions of a Pacific Empire: The United States, China, and Japan at American World’s Fairs, 1876–1915,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Ana Rodriguez, The Courtauld Institute of Art; “Outbound/Inbound: Tracing Puerto Rican Graphic Arts, 1940s–1960s,” predoctoral fellow in Latinx art, Smithsonian American Art Museum 
• Lauren van Haaften-Schick, Cornell University, “Collaboration, Critique, and Reform in Art and Law: Origins and Afterlives of ‘The Artist’s Contract’ (1971),” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program

Since 1970, the museum has provided 732 scholars with financial aid, unparalleled research resources and a world-class network of colleagues. Former fellows now occupy positions in prominent academic and cultural institutions across North America, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Europe, Russia, the Middle East and South America. Fellowship opportunities include the Will Barnet Foundation Fellowship for research on American modern art and its influences; the Joe and Wanda Corn Fellowship for scholarship that spans American art and American history; the Douglass Foundation Fellowship for predoctoral research; the Patricia and Phillip Frost Fellowship for American art and visual culture; the George Gurney Fellowship for the study of American sculpture; the Smithsonian American Art Museum fellowship in Latinx art supported by the Smithsonian Latino Center; the alumni-supported Joshua C. Taylor Fellowship; the Terra Foundation for American Art Fellowships for the cross-cultural study of art of the United States up to 1980, the William H. Truettner Fellowship for up to six months of research on American art, a fellowship in American craft supported by the Windgate Foundation; and the Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship for the study of excellence in all aspects of American art. 

Applications for fellowships in the 2022–2023 academic year will open in September and are due by Nov. 1. For information about how to apply and previous fellows’ abstracts, visit americanart.si.edu/research/fellowships, call (202) 633-8353 or email saamfellowships@si.edu.

The museum maintains six online art-research databases with more than a half-million records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that documents more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide and extensive photographic collections documenting American art and artists. An estimated 180,000-volume library specializing in American art, history and biography is shared with the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. An active publications program of books, catalogs and the critically acclaimed peer-reviewed journal for new scholarship American Art complements the museum’s exhibitions and educational programs.

# # #