The Metropolitan Museum of Art is pleased to announce the induction of 47 senior and junior scholars to its annual fellowship program. Culled from among hundreds of applicants working in the fields of art history, conservation science, and museum education, these emerging and established scholars will be engaged in a year of intensive, object-based research focused on the preservation, cultivation, and interpretation of the Met collection, jointly with Museum staff.
"For three generations, the Met’s Fellowship Program has been honored to support the scholarly promise, accomplishments, and demonstrated expertise of more than 1,700 art historians, conservators, and educators,” says Daniel Weiss, the Met’s President and CEO. “Through their formidable command of the history of art, combined with their dynamic application of rigorous scientific knowledge and instrumental expertise, this year’s fellows bring to bear the full weight of their collective scholarship on the Met collection. Through their efforts, the richness of 5,000 years of art is given even greater depth, body, and dimension.”
Reflecting the diversity of the Met collection itself, fellows work in each of the Museum's 17 curatorial and 6 conservation departments. This year’s projects include an examination of Buddhist metal icons produced in the Himalayas during the sixth through the ninth century; a study of transatlantic developments in fashion as examined through the portraiture of John Singer Sargent; an analysis of colonial-era Latin American prints copied or derived from European models; and an inquiry into the mutilation, destruction, and “deactivation” of ancient Egyptian statues.
While each fellow’s project is rooted within a single curatorial or conservation department, many flourish through their focus on collaborative studies crossing multiple fields. Within the Met’s Departments of Scientific Research and Conservation—including Objects, Paintings, Paper, Photograph, and Textile—fellows explore a host of innovative analytical techniques, treatment strategies, and preventative conservation methodologies. Among the topics undertaken this year are a technical study for identifying characteristics of natural red chalk drawings, matrices, and proofs; the analysis of the role of image composition in the degradation of daguerreotypes; and an exploration of how the raw material selection of cobalt blue allows inferences into production technology, skill, and social organization across the ancient Mediterranean world.
A complete list of 2017–2018 fellowship awards recipients, including their institutional affiliations and areas of study, can be found on The Met’s website.
For more information about the Met Fellowship Program along with information on how to apply for a 2018–2019 fellowship award, please see our website.
The Met thanks the following for their generous support of fellowships at the Museum: Mercedes T. Bass, Bothmer Fellowship Fund, Sylvan C. Coleman and Pam Coleman Memorial Fund, Chester Dale Fellowship Fund, Douglass Foundation, Sherman Fairchild Foundation, Inc., The Hagop Kevorkian Fund, Leonard A. Lauder and Anonymous Gifts to The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc., The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, J. Clawson Mills Charitable Trust, Theodore Rousseau Fellowship Fund, Joseph and Sylvia Slifka Foundation, Hanns Swarzenski and Brigitte Horney Swarzenski Fellowship Fund, Marica and Jan Vilcek, Polaire Weissman Fund, and Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellowship Fund.
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October 19, 2017
Image: Participants in The Met’s 2017–2018 Fellowship Program. Photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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