Announcements

Announcements presents news of developments at museums, colleges and universities, foundations, and other institutions of interest to those involved in the study and appreciation of historical American art. Items may include personnel changes, major acquisitions, and new initiatives and programs, including online and digitization projects. To download a pdf of Announcements, click here.

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Recent Announcements

The Smithsonian American Art Museum announces the appointment of 22 new fellows for the 2008–2009 academic year. The museum’s program grants awards for scholars and students to pursue research at the museum, including senior, predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships. The 2008–2009 museum fellows are:

Makeda Best, predoctoral fellow, Harvard University; “Alexander Gardner—Photography into History, 1858–1868”
Sarah Carter, predoctoral fellow, Harvard University; “A Basket, a Needle, a Penknife: Object Lessons in 19th-Century American Material and Visual Culture”
Ellery Foutch, Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania; “Arresting Beauty: The Perfectionist Impulse in Peale’s Butterflies, Heade’s Hummingbirds, Blaschka’s Flowers and Sandow’s Body”
Joanna Frang, Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow, Brandeis University; “Becoming American on the Grand Tour, 1740–1830”
Jason Goldman, predoctoral fellow, University of Southern California; “Arousing Possibilities: Deviant Sexuality and Underground American Art, 1955–1969”
Kenneth Haltman, Terra Foundation for American Art Senior Fellow, University of Oklahoma; “Preparing a Critical Translation of René Brimo, ‘L’Évolution du goût aux États-Unis’”
Valerie Hellstein, Patricia and Phillip Frost Predoctoral Fellow, Stony Brook University; “The Politics of Metaphysics in the Club: John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Ad Reinhardt”
Jamie Jones, predoctoral fellow, Harvard University; “American Whaling in Commerce, Culture and Memory: Contexts in American Art of the Inland and Maritime Frontiers”
Jason LaFountain, predoctoral fellow, Harvard University; “A History of New England Puritan Art”
Crawford Alexander Mann III, Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow, Yale University; “When in Rome: Italian Travel and the Pursuit of the Ideal Male Body in Antebellum American Art”
Holly Markovitz, Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Boston University; “Reframing the Frontier: Rephotography, Repetition and Return”
Leo Mazow, senior fellow, Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University; “Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound”
Frank Mehring, Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Fellow, Free University Berlin; “Transatlantic Encounters with the Colors of Democracy: The Life of the German American Artist Winold Reiss (1886–1953)”
Leta Ming, predoctoral fellow, University of Southern California; “Performing Counterculturalism: San Francisco Conceptual Art, 1969–1979”
Nancy Palm, predoctoral fellow, Indiana University; “Unsettling Identities: Indian Iconography in Thomas Cole’s National Landscapes”
Jody Patterson, Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Fellow, University College London; “Modernism for the Masses: Painters, Politics and Public Murals in New Deal New York”
Janneken Smucker, James Renwick Predoctoral Fellow in American Craft, University of Delaware; “From Rags to Riches: Amish Quilts and the Crafting of Value”
Jeannine Tang, Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow, Courtauld Institute of Art; “Conceptual and Post-Conceptual Art in the Cold War”
Robin Veder, senior fellow, The Pennsylvania State University; “Embodied Modernism: American Art, Exercise and Dance, 1880–1940”
Annemarie Voss, predoctoral fellow, Rutgers University; “Incremental Remedies: Women Artists and Ecology Since 1980”
Miranda Wallace, postdoctoral fellow, Queensland Art Gallery; “A Time of Images: Photography and Film in American Art Since 1970”
Mary Peterson Zundo, predoctoral fellow, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; “Mapping Destiny: Cartography and 19th-Century American Art of the Frontier”

In addition, John Fagg (The University of Nottingham), Betsy Fahlman (Arizona State University) and Marc McClure (Lees McRae College) have received short term research appointments at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Since 1970, the museum has hosted more than 340 scholars who now occupy positions in academic and cultural institutions across the United States. For more information about fellowships or for fellows’ abstracts, please visit www.AmericanArt.si.edu/fellowships. To request a brochure, call (202) 633-8353 or write to saamfellowships@si.edu. The deadline for applications is Jan. 15, 2009.

The National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Virginia, is now accepting applications for a Registrar/ Curatorial Assistant. The curatorial assistant will report to the Curator of the Art Department. Duties include assisting the curator with installation/de-installation of exhibitions, processing loan agreements and serving as a liaison with lending museums, researching art and artists in the permanent collection, writing labels and wall text, and maintaining the collections database. This position is 40 hours/week with occasional Saturdays and evening hours. B.A. in Art History or Museum Studies is preferred. An ideal candidate will have previous experience handling art and/or working in an art museum. The candidate should possess strong writing/research skills and be computer literate. Experience with MS Office suite required; familiarity with collections database software and/or Adobe Photoshop a plus. Please mail or email a cover letter with resume to Elizabeth Tobey, Director of Communications & Research, National Sporting Library, P.O. Box 1335, Middleburg, VA 20118 or etobey@nsl.org , Attention: Curatorial Assistant position. No phone calls. To learn more about the National Sporting Library, please visit www.nsl.org.