Smithsonian American Art Museum Announces 2023–2024 Fellowship Appointments and Residencies

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the appointment of 26 fellows for the 2023–2024 academic year. The museum’s program hosts fellows appointed by the Smithsonian’s 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 2023–2024 appointees are:

• Sadé Ayorinde, Cornell University, “Scaled to be Seen: Visual Constructions of Black Masculinity in Late 20th-Century America,” Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Aleia Brown, East Carolina University, “Disrupting the Loop of Recovery: Black Women, Textile Art and Political Thought,” postdoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Hua-Tzu Chan, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, “Exploring Hybrid Ways for Improving Accessibility in Visual Art Museums,” Smithsonian-Fulbright Fellow
• Lesley Dill, “Healing with Unseen Energies,” Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow
• Molly K. Eckel, Princeton University, “Robert S. Duncanson’s Antislavery Allegories,” Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Elizabeth Fair, University of California, Berkeley, “Migration and Memory in Chinese American Architecture and Material Culture,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Sonja Gandert, City University of New York, The Graduate Center, “La resolana: Chicano Artistic Imaginaries of Place, Race and Activism in New Mexico and Texas, 1969–1985,” predoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Cassandra Good, Marymount University, “Female Politicians: Women’s Political Power in the United States’ First Century,” senior fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Kelly-Christina Grant, Paris Nanterre University, “Loïs Mailou Jones and Landscape Painting in the 20th Century: Travels, Documentation and Cultural Experience,” Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Kéla B. Jackson, Harvard University, “UnBecoming: Lessons on Rupture, Reclamation and Black Girlhood,” Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Adela Kim, Yale University, “Beyond Institutional Critique: Tearing Up in the Work of Andrea Fraser, 1986 to Present,” Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Lisa Oppenheim, “Ancient Libraries for Future Reference,” Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow
• Phillippa Pitts, Boston University, “Pharmacoepic Dreams: Art and America’s Medical Democracy, 1800–1860,” Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Audrey Sands, independent scholar, “FLASH! The Shape of Light: History, Ethics and Aesthetics of Flash Photography,” postdoctoral fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Alex Dika Seggerman, Rutgers University-Newark, “Art Histories of American Islam,” Patricia and Phillip Frost Senior Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Tyler Shine, University of Pennsylvania, “There Is No End to Out: Ecological Art in the Black Diaspora, 1941–2001,” Will Barnet Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Brisa Smith Flores, University of California, Los Angeles, “Picturing Diaspora: Tony Gleaton and Familiarity in Afro-Latin Portraiture,” Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Francesca Soriano, Boston University, “Feathers and Skins: Art and the Avian Economy in the 19th Century,” Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Jenni Sorkin, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Deviant Scale: Cloth at the Body’s Margins,” senior fellow in American craft, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Namita Wiggers, Critical Craft Forum, “Making Craft History: Exhibitions in U.S. Craft Museums, 2000–2020,” senior fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program
• Ashley Williams, Columbia University, “Unfree Artists on the Borders of U.S. Empire, 1850–1930,” William H. Truettner Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Natalie E. Wright, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Functional Fashions: Dress and Disability in the United States, 1950–1975,” George Gurney Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The following fellowships received federal support from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center:

• Asia Adomanis, Ohio State University, “Inscrutable Surfaces: Confronting Abstraction, Authenticity and Cold War Racial (Il)legibility in Seong Moy’s Color Woodcuts, 1946–1965,” predoctoral fellow in Asian American art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Chaeeun Lee, City University of New York, The Graduate Center, “Abstract Tendencies in Asian American Art: Race, Gender, Identity and the Politics of Aesthetics, 1960s–1970s,” predoctoral fellow in Asian American art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The following fellowships received federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the National Museum of the American Latino:

• Gabriela Rodriguez-Gomez, University of California, Los Angeles, “Murals Without Walls, Muralism Without Borders: Womxn Artists and Their Portable Murals of the Chicano Art Movement in Colorado and California,” predoctoral fellow in Latinx art at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Li Machado, Temple University, “Testimonios: The Portrait as Archive and Activism in Queer Chicanx Los Angeles,” predoctoral fellow in Latinx art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Since 1970, the museum has provided more than 760 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 Asian American art supported by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center; 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 2024–2025 academic year will open in September and are due by Nov. 1. Information about how to apply is available on the museum’s website or via email.

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 flagship museum in the United States for American art and craft. It is home to one of the most significant and inclusive collections of American art in the world. The museum’s main building, located at Eighth and G streets N.W., is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. The museum’s Renwick Gallery, a branch museum dedicated to contemporary craft, is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Check online for current hours and admission information. Admission is free. Follow the museum on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Smithsonian information: (202) 633-1000. Museum information (recorded): (202) 633-7970. Website: americanart.si.edu.

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