2023 Fellows Lectures

headshots of 17 individuals

Photo: SAAM 2022–2023 Fellows, courtesy of subjects

Join the 2022–2023 class of Smithsonian American Art Museum research fellows as they present new scholarship on a range of topics and time periods, media and messages. Speakers will share research discoveries and offer fresh perspectives on works of American art.

Wednesday, May 17
Session I: 1–2:45 p.m. ET

Moderated by Melissa Ho, curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

  • Manon Gaudet, Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, Yale University, “Picturing (Dis)Possession: Land, Likeness, and the General Allotment Act
  • Amy Kahng, Patricia and Philip Frost Predoctoral Fellow, Stony Brook University, “Unsettled and Unrooted Ground: Chiura Obata’s Internment Landscapes”
  • Zoe Weldon-Yochim, Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Cruz, “Fighter Jets and Fallout: Attending to Militarized Western Shoshone Lands and Diverse Multi-Being Assemblages in Jack Malotte’s The End 

Session II: 3:15–5 p.m. ET
Moderated by Robin Veder, executive editor of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

  • Elizabeth Driscoll Smith, Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Building Feminist Bloodlines: Tressa ‘Grandma’ Prisbrey’s Bottle Village and the Los Angeles Woman’s Building”
  • Jessica Larson, Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow, The Graduate Center, CUNY, “‘No Substitute for Justice Withheld’: Visualizing Black Charitable Landscapes in Nineteenth-Century Manhattan”
  • Connor Hamm, Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles, “Unsettling the Florida Sub-Tropical Exposition

Thursday, May 18
Session III: 1–2:45 p.m. ET

Moderated by Eleanor Harvey, senior curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

  • Katie Loney, Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of Pittsburgh, “American Orientalism’s Transimperial Economies”
  • Sarah Emily Rogers Morris, Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, University of Illinois, Chicago, “A Photographic ‘Trip Around the World’: Visual Instruction in a Transnational Frame, 1890–1940”
  • Grace Kuipers, Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, University of California, Berkeley, “‘The Surface Has Hardly Been Scratched’: Spratling Silver, Mineral Imperialism, and U.S. Developmentalism in Mexico”

Session IV: 1–2:45 p.m. ET
Moderated by Grace Yasumura, assistant curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

  • Rachel Burke, Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, Harvard University, “Fugitive Grounds: Writing in the Archival Absence of Henry Box Brown’s Mirror of Slavery
  • Madeleine Harrison, Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, “Palmer Hayden on Paper”
  • Claire Ittner, Will Barnet Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, “Materiality, Objecthood, and (Self) Possession in Eldzier Cortor’s Sea Islands Works”

​Friday, May 19
Session V: 1–2:45 p.m. ET

Moderated by Saisha Grayson, curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

  • Ellen Yoshi Tani, Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellow, Rochester Institute of Technology, “Black Conceptual Practice”
  • Amy E. Crum,SAAM Predoctoral Fellow in Latinx Art, University of California, Los Angeles, “Projecting the Barrio: Los Four at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1974) and Murals of Aztlán at the Craft and Folk Art Museum (1981)”
  • Ariel Evans,William H. Truettner Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas at Austin, “‘Talk that talk’: Reinventing Documentary with Carrie Mae Weems’ Family Pictures and Stories

Session VI: 3:15–4:30 p.m. ET
Moderated by Randall Griffey, head curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

  • Maki Kaneko, Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art, University of Kansas, “Unnamable Friendship: The Art of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani”
  • Marisa Lerer, George Gurney Senior Fellow, Manhattan College, “Memorializing Tragedies Across Borders in the Work of Antonio Martorell and Freddy Rodríguez

 

Free | McEvoy Auditorium