As part of our commitment to the study of American art, the Carter hosts fellows whose research would benefit from close examination of our archives, art, and library collections.

Davidson Family Fellowship

The Davidson Family Fellowship was established in 1996 by a generous gift from the Davidson Family Charitable Foundation. It provides support for scholars holding a PhD (or equivalent) or for PhD candidates to work on research projects that advance scholarship on American art by connecting with objects in the Carter's collection. During their stay, all fellows are expected to actively participate in the scholarly life of the Museum, and at the end of their appointment they are asked to present research progress in the form of a lecture or roundtable discussion.

Funding: $3,000 per month, from a minimum one-month to a maximum four-month period of full-time research at the Museum. Housing and travel expenses are to be managed and funded by the fellow, although the Museum is available for assistance in locating accommodations.

Application Deadline: We are now accepting applications for 2024-25 Davidson Family Fellowship. Applications are open through July 1, 2024, for a fellowship to begin on or after October 1, 2024, and end by September 30, 2025. Housing and travel expenses are to be managed and funded by the fellow. If you have questions, please email us.

Application form

Current and Former Fellows

  • Meagan Anderson, PhD candidate, Art History, University of Oklahoma: “Conceptualizing Place: The Great Barrier Canyon Mural”

    Kevin Hong, PhD candidate, History of Art, Yale University: “Photography on Shifting Ground: Cameraless Techniques in the United States, 1937–1956”

    Lauren Rosenblum, PhD candidate, Art History, City University of New York: “Technicalities of Apprenticeship: June Wayne and the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in The Art, Craft and Labor of Lithography during the American Print Renaissance, 1952–1968”

    Colin Young, PhD candidate, History of Art, Yale University: “Seeing in Black and White: Frederic Remington and the Buffalo Soldiers in Arizona Territory”

  • Molly Eckel, PhD Candidate, Department of Art & Archaeology Princeton University: “Plant, Animal, Object, Human: Still Life and Empire in the United States, 1815–1875"

    Katherine Fein, PhD, Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University: “The Garb of Nature: Art, Nudity, and Ecology in the Nineteenth-Century United States”

    Lauren van Haaften-Schick, PhD, History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University: “Collaboration, Critique, and Reform in Art and Law: Origins and Afterlives of ‘The Artist’s Contract’”

    Michaela Haffner, PhD Candidate, History of Art, Yale University: “Air, Water, Sun, and Citrus: The Visual Culture of Naturopathy & the Fashioning of White Wellness”

    Samuel Allen, PhD candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University: Old West: Mining Towns and Historical Consciousness in Group f.64 Photography

    Alyssa Bralower, PhD Candidate, Art History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Ellen Auerbach’s Transnational Attachments: Photography, Gender, and the Grey Zones of Modernity

    Wendi Sierra, PhD, Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media, North Carolina State University: Historicizing Native American Characters in Digital Games

  • Carolin Görgen, PhD, Université Paris-Diderot & École du Louvre: “From the Periphery: Re-reading the photo-history of the American West”

    Alexis Monroe, PhD Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University: “The Crisis of the 1850s: American Land and Landscape, 1848-1861”

    Alexandra Nicolaides, PhD candidate, Art History, Stony Brook University: Experiments and Failures: The Display of Color Photography, 1950-1976

  • James Denison, PhD Candidate, University of Michigan: “The Stieglitz Circle, Race, and the Historiography of Modern American Art”

    Jessica Orzulak, PhD Candidate, Duke University: "Beyond Curtis: Photographing the Nations of Native America"

  • Ellery Foutch, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Middlebury College: “Martin Johnson Heade’s ‘Gems of Brazil’”

  • Erika Pazian, PhD Candidate, The Graduate Center, City University of New York: Mexican War images (topic)

    Birgit Spengler, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Goethe University: “Women’s Contributions to Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth- century Photography of the American West”

    Catherine Barth, PhD Candidate, Emory University: American Photography of the Mid-Twentieth Century: Clarence John Laughlin, Wynn Bullock, and Frederick Sommer”

    Louise Siddons, Associate Professor of Art History, Oklahoma State University: “‘Good Pictures are a Strong Weapon’: Laura Gilpin and the Politics of The Enduring Navaho

  • Katherine (Kappy) Mintie, PhD Candidate, University of California, Berkeley: “An Unoriginal View? The Trial of William Henry Jackson’s The Palisades, Alpine Pass

    Emily Burns, Associate Professor of Art History, Auburn University: “From the Prairie to Paris: Bronzes of the American West in France, 1897–1900”

  • Emily Voelker, PhD Candidate, Boston University: “A ‘Collection of American Types’ in Paris: The Transnational Dissemination and Reception of William Henry Jackson’s Photographs of North American Indians (1877)

  • Layla Bermeo, PhD Candidate, Harvard University: “Borderlands between Text and Image: The United States, Mexico, and Mapmaking, 1821–1848”

    Nika Elder, Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow, Princeton University: “William Harnett’s Curious Objects”

    Sedrick Huckaby, MFA: A Dialogue With an Unknown People (series of works on paper)

  • Jennifer Henneman, PhD Candidate, University of Washington: “The American Cowgirl, an Icon of Unintended Consequence; or, How Tomboys Tamed the West”

  • Monica Steinberg, PhD Candidate, Graduate Center of The City University of New York: “Name-Games: Documenting the Development of Alter-Egos in the Los Angeles Art World of the 1960s”

  • Maggie Cao, PhD Candidate, Harvard University: “Martin Johnson Heade and the Un-grounding of Landscape”

  • Timothy G. Andrus, PhD Candidate, Virginia Commonwealth University: “Stuart Davis’ New Mexican Landscape and the American Scene”

  • Aaron Carico, PhD Candidate, Yale University: “Portrait as Still Life: Slavery, the Politics of Realism, and William Harnett’s Attention, Company!

  • Nancy Palm, PhD Candidate, Indiana University: “Thomas Cole’s National Landscapes and the Context of Indian Identity Construction in Nineteenth-Century America: Preliminary Findings at the Amon Carter Museum”

  • Mark White, Associate Professor, Oklahoma State University: “Art as a Social Expression: Stuart Davis, Communication, and the Agency of Abstraction”

    Shirley Reece-Hughes, PhD, Independent Scholar: “Uncovering America's Vernacular Past: Artist Immigrants and Cross-Culturalism in the Age of Early Modernism”

Gentling Fellowship

The Gentling Fellowship was established in 2018 as part of a larger initiative to honor and advance the artistic legacy of brothers Scott and Stuart Gentling. The Gentling Fellowship provides support for scholars at the PhD or equivalent level, in a variety of disciplines, whose projects work to secure the Gentlings' rightful place among the foremost American painters of the last half of the 20th century. Submission of a publication-quality essay and/or participation in a public lecture may be a requirement of select awards.

Funding: $4,000 per month with a $1,000 travel stipend, from a minimum of nine months to a maximum of twelve months of full-time research at the Museum. Housing and travel expenses are to be managed and funded by the fellow, although the Museum is available for assistance in locating accommodations.

Application Deadline: Applications for 2022-23 are closed.

Current and Former Fellows

  • Luci Marzola, PhD, Program Coordinator, Cinema and Media Studies, USC School of Cinematic Arts: Karl Struss monograph.

    Karen Barber, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Mississippi: Karl Struss Monograph

    Ted Fisher, Assistant Professor, Department of Art, Delta State University: Karl Struss documentary

  • Katie Robinson Edwards, PhD, Executive Director and Curator, UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum: Charles Truett Williams monograph.

    S. Janelle Montgomery, Independent scholar: Charles Truett Williams monograph.

  • Barbara E. Mundy, Professor of Art History, Fordham University: Gentling retrospective monograph

  • Scott Barker, Independent Scholar: Gentling retrospective monograph

  • Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies and Chair of Department, University of Notre Dame: Gentling retrospective monograph