Description

Since 2019, the AAP has been funding curatorial fellowships to complement its support for early career professionals provided through the annual dissertation fellowship program. This proposed grant will fund a two-year curatorial fellow at Historic Deerfield (HD) a museum of early American art and life in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The institution includes 55 historic buildings and a state-of-the-art collection center that houses 32,000 objects made or used in America from about 1650 to 1900. Already known for its undergraduate summer fellowship program, HD will provide an excellent site for mentorship by a professional team of curators, preservationists, and historians, drawn from HD and across the Five College Consortium. The fellow will focus on exhibition and publication projects in HD’s expansive but relatively under-researched collections of paintings and works on paper.  
 
This grant advances the AAP’s strategic goal 2a: educating and training museum professionals capable of initiating and carrying out the anti-racist practices and projects required in 21st-century museums.