Smithsonian American Art Museum Announces 2020–2021 Fellowship Appointments and Residencies

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the appointment of 21 fellows in the 2020–2021 academic year. The museum’s program hosts fellows appointed by the Smithsonian Office of Fellowships and Internships and grants its own awards for scholars and students to pursue research at the museum, including senior, predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the museum’s fellowship program, which is the oldest, largest and premier program for the study of American art.

In response to COVID-19 precautions, the museum is deferring all fall residencies or allowing fellows to participate in the program remotely. The 2020–2021 appointees are:

• Anila Quayyum Agha, Herron School of Art and Design, “A Place to Call Home,” artist research fellow, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program
• Chloe Chapin, Harvard University, “Full Dress: Masculinity, and Power in Antebellum America,” Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Beatriz Cordero Martín, Saint Louis University, Madrid, “Beyond Guernica: The Influence of the Spanish Civil War on American Art,” George Gurney Postdoctoral 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
• Theo Gordon, Courtauld Institute of Art, “Is there a Homosexual Aesthetic in Contemporary Art?” Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Ellen Harvey, independent artist, “LOVE/LOSS/USA,” artist research fellow, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program
• Cyle Metzger, Stanford University, “Deep Cuts: Transgender History in American Art after World War II,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Pierre-Jacques Pernuit, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, “Light In media res: The Art of Mobile Color in America, 1910–1970,” Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Ali Printz, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, “Appalachian Regionalism: Reimagining Modernism on the Periphery of American Art,” William H. Truettner 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
• Giuseppe Rizzo, Ruprecht Karl Universität, “Transmission of Taste and Techniques for Bronze Sculpture from Florence to the United States, 1850–1900,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Allison Robinson, University of Chicago, “The Political Biography of Dolls: Pedagogy and Reform through Work Projects Administration Programming, 1933–1946,” 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
• Howard Singerman, Hunter College, “Acts of Art and Cinque: Networks and Geographies of Black Art in Manhattan, 1969–1975,” senior fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Amanda Thompson, Bard Graduate Center, “Piecing Relations: Miccosukee and Seminole Patchwork, Craft, and the Mediation of Settler Colonial Encounters,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• 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
• Rachel Vogel, Harvard University, “‘The Machine that Makes the Art’: Printmaking and Conceptual Practice, 1965–1980,” Patricia and Phillip Frost Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The following fellows have confirmed that their in-residence fellowships are deferred until the 2021–2022 academic year:

• Elizabeth Hutchinson, Barnard College, Columbia University, “Muybridge’s Pacific Coast: Guatemala,” senior fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Matthew Limb, University of California, Santa Barbara, “‘Living on the Edge’: Ceramics and the Environment in the American West, 1961–2000,” Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Kelvin Parnell, University of Virginia, “Casting Bronze, Recasting Race: American Sculpture in the Mid- to Late Nineteenth Century,” Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Sirpa Salenius, University of Eastern Finland, “Edmonia Lewis, Sallie Mercer, and Sarah Remond: 19th-Century African American Women in Italy,” Terra Foundation for American Art Senior Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Since 1970, the museum has provided 694 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 the North America, Asia, 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, 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, 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 2021–2022 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.

About the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the home to one of the most significant and most inclusive collections of American art in the world. Its artworks reveal America’s rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today. The museum’s main building is located at Eighth and F streets N.W., above the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail station. Its Renwick Gallery, a branch museum dedicated to contemporary craft and decorative arts, is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. Follow the museum on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Museum information (recorded): (202) 633-7970. Smithsonian information: (202) 633-1000. Website: americanart.si.edu.

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