For Immediate Release
September 23, 2020
CLARK ART INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PROGRAM FELLOWSHIPS FOR 2020–2021
Williamstown, Massachusetts—The Clark Art Institute announces the appointment of a distinguished class of scholars and art historians as Fellows in the Clark’s Research and Academic Program (RAP) for the 2020–2021 academic year. The Clark is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts.
The residential fellowships range from one to nine months, beginning in September 2020. During a residency, each fellow pursues an independent research project and has the opportunity to participate in a number of RAP programs considering diverse art historical topics and larger questions and motivations that shape the practice of art history. While at the Clark, each fellow also presents a free public lecture related to their work. Given current restrictions, these lectures will be presented on a virtual basis for this semester. (Visit clarkart.edu for a full schedule of these events.)
Fellowships are awarded annually to established and promising scholars with the aim of fostering a critical commitment to inquiry in the theory, history, and interpretation of art and visual culture. To date, the community of Clark Fellows numbers more than 350 individuals hailing from thirty countries, creating a global network of scholars united through the shared experience of academic pursuits undertaken on the Institute’s Williamstown campus. The Clark’s revered library collection—recognized as one of the leading art history libraries in the United States—serves as a central resource for the researchers. Scholars are housed in apartments close to the Clark’s campus, providing a collegial environment that fosters collaboration, ongoing dialogue, and exchange of ideas.
Support from the Center for Spain in America, the Florence Gould Foundation, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, The Manton Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Prospect Hill Foundation, the Sperry Fund, and The Starr Foundation helps to underwrite fellowships in the Research and Academic Program.
Fellowships for the 2020–2021 academic year are awarded to:
Clark Fellow: Virginia Burrus (Syracuse University, New York)
Burrus’s project explores the relation between memory and place, shuttling between a contemporary exhibition in Marfa, Texas, and a fourth-century literary work from Paphos, Cyprus.
Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow: Timothy Hyde (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston)
Hyde’s project examines a set of unremarkable architectural objects—huts, research stations, warehouses—in their physical states of transformation over time to reveal their participation in the constitution of systems of modernity.
Michael Ann Holly Fellow: Joan Kee (University of Michigan)
Kee examines the rich and surprisingly understudied area of the relationship between artists of Asian and African descent from the 1960s to the present, considering the various relationships that formed amidst critical historical junctures from civil rights struggles in 1960s America to the declaration of martial law in South Korea.
Manton Fellow: Saundra Weddle (Drury University, Springfield Missouri)
Weddle’s urban history examines the everyday spatial practices of nuns, sex workers, and widows in early modern Venice, where marginalized status presented obstacles to and opportunities for women’s agency.
Futures Fellow: Jessica Vaughn (Visual Artist, Brooklyn)
Vaughn’s project focuses on labor, space compliance, and race in the workplace as she creates text-based artworks rewriting institutions’ and corporations’ statements on diversity and inclusion while considering larger histories of structural inequalities in the United States.
Beinecke Short-Term Fellow: Olivier Bonfait (Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France)
Bonfait traces the history of the large-format painting in the art of European and later American painting from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, analyzing its origins, its peculiar characteristics from Rubens to Richter, and its important role in the formation of modern state nations.
Florence Gould Foundation Fellow: Amy Freund (Southern Methodist University, Dallas)
Freund explores hunting art—from monumental paintings of the royal hunt to dog portraits and decorated guns—privileged masculinity, violence, and sensuality in eighteenth-century France, revising the modern understanding of the Rococo and the early Enlightenment.
Clark Fellow: Jennifer Nelson (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Nelson examines a wide variety of material ranging from German warcraft manuals and encyclopedias of New Spain and East Asia to cartography and fortification of the eastern Mediterranean to explore the limits of Christianity in the sixteenth century.
Beinecke Fellow: Glenn Peers (Syracuse University, New York)
Peers’s book project applies media theory to the Byzantine era, considering how the media of music, animals, war, and time made Byzantine subjects and how analysis across media like icon, book, instruments, determine how “human” was historically translated.
Class of 1974 Curatorial Fellow: Robert Schindler (Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama)
Schindler conducts research for the exhibition Anna & Rachel: Two Sister Painters in 17th-century Amsterdam, exploring the work of flower painters Anna and Rachel Ruysch, organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art.
ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library, consisting of more than 275,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.
The Clark, which has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide, is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Its 140-acre campus includes miles of hiking and walking trails through woodlands and meadows, providing an exceptional experience of art in nature. Galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, children 18 and younger, and students with valid ID. Free admission is available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; and EBT Card to Culture. For more information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.
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