Smithsonian American Art Museum Announces 2022 – 2023 Fellowship Appointments and Residencies

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the appointment of 16 fellows and the arrival of two deferred fellows for the 2022-2023 academic year. The museum’s program hosts fellows appointed by the Smithsonian Office of Academic Appointments and Internships and also grants its own awards for scholars and students to pursue research at the museum, including graduate, predoctoral, postdoctoral and senior fellowships. 

"Exciting new directions in American art scholarship are demonstrated in the research projects undertaken by this year's SAAM fellows," said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "We are pleased to be able to support such groundbreaking studies through our premier fellowship program--the oldest and largest program for the study of American art."

The 2022-2023 appointees are:

• Rachel Burke, Harvard University, “On Uncertain Ground: Destabilizing the American Landscape through Henry 'Box' Brown's ‘Mirror of Slavery’,” Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Ariel Evans, University of Texas at Austin, “Pussy Porn and Other Arguments: Feminist Photographies in American Art, 1979-1984,” William H. Truettner Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Manon Gaudet, Yale University, “Beyond Landscape: Property and the Contested Ground of North American Visual Culture, 1900-1945," Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Connor Hamm, University of California, Los Angeles, “Coastal Modern: Art and the Lowcountry since the Civil War,” Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Madeleine Harrison, The Courtauld Institute of Art, “A Quiet Renaissance: Interwar Portraits, Still Life, and Landscapes by Black American Modernists,” Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Amy Kahng, Stony Brook University, “From the Frontier to Unrooted Global Citizenship: Twentieth-Century Asian American Landscape,” Patricia and Philip Frost Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Maki Kaneko, University of Kansas, “Collaged Memories: Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani's 'Sidewalk Art'," Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Patricia Eunji Kim, New York University, “Visible Ephemeralities: Race, Gender, and Classical Narrative in Twentieth-Century Art," George Gurney Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Grace Kuipers, University of California, Berkeley, “Mineral Modernism: The Mexican Subsoil and the Remapping of American Form,” Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Jessica Larson, City University of New York, The Graduate Center, “Building Black Manhattan: Architecture, Art and the Politics of Respectability, 1857-1914,” Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Sarah Emily Rogers Morris, University of Illinois, Chicago, “Photographic Infrastructures: The Framing of American Architectural Photography, 1890-1940,” Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Elizabeth Driscoll Smith, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Build/Live/Work: Artist-Built Environments and the Expanded Vernacular in the Twentieth Century,” Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Ellen Yoshi Tani, Rochester Institute of Technology, “Black Conceptual Practice in Contemporary Art,” Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Zoe Weldon-Yochim, University of California, Santa Cruz, “Atomic Afterlives: Visualizing Nuclear Toxicity in Art of the United States, 1979-2011,” Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The following in-residence fellowships were deferred from the 2021-2022 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

Additionally, the following fellowships received federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center: 

• Amy E. Crum, University of California, Los Angeles, “Beyond the Wall: Exploring Strategic Intermediality in Chicanx Muralism,” SAAM Predoctoral Fellow in Latinx Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Marisa Lerer, Manhattan College, “Latinx Public Memorials,” George Gurney Senior Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Since 1970, the museum has provided 747 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 2023–2024 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.

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