Smithsonian American Art Museum Announces 2026–27 Fellowship Appointments

SAAM welcomes twenty-one fellows for the 2026–27 academic year (see directory at https://americanart.si.edu/search/fellows?content_type=fellow&begin_year=2026). Among this year’s cohort are four senior scholars, four postdoctoral fellows, and thirteen predoctoral fellows.

Using the Smithsonian’s vast interdisciplinary collections, these scholars will conduct research on topics as diverse and timely as Indigenous monumentality; the Arctic imaginary; sound and time in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century art; visual narratives of war and counterinsurgency; changing conceptions of gender and disability; and artists’ reimagining of power, community, and belonging.

Since 1970, the museum has provided 689 scholars with financial aid, unparalleled research resources, and a world-class network of colleagues. Former fellows now occupy prominent positions in academic and cultural institutions across North and South America, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, and Europe.