In March 2010 the Institute of Fine Arts was awarded a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a four-year project to examine the state of advanced research in the fields that are the primary components of the program at Institute of Fine Arts: art history, archaeology, and conservation. The aim of the project is to ask where these areas are going, what are the strengths in given areas of study, what do they require in terms of resources to pursue advanced research, how these resources are best managed, and how is learning best delivered in curriculum and training programs. The project acknowledges the Institute’s leading role in these fields, but is also intended to review the IFA’s current position, organization, and research activities and to suggest ways to enhance and to forward its leadership.
This initiative gives the IFA the opportunity to bring distinguished scholars to the Institute as project consultants and collaborators, as participants in workshops and symposia, and as visiting professors. The consecutive appointments of three two-year postdoctoral fellows will allow the IFA to support and to benefit from the highest caliber of new research by bringing promising young art historians into our community.
This ambitious project is divided into three components: 1. Advisory groups convened to study institutional aspects of research and to review the IFA’s place in promoting present and future research; 2. Workshops and conferences designed to explore trends, themes, and topics in current research; 3. Student affiliation with the workshops and working groups.
Three external coordinators have been invited to work with the IFA committee to develop workshops and conferences exploring key issues in conservation, archaeology, and art history as separate and as interlocking disciplines and in relation to other fields. The coordinators are: Jim Coddington (Chief Conservator, Museum of Modern Art); Jas Elsner (Humfrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University); and David Wengrow (Professor of Comparative Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University College London).
For a comprehensive report of the Mellon Research Initiative, including committee briefs and a list of members, please click here.
For information on upcoming and past conferences please visit the Initiative’s events page.
The IFA-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship:
Application
IFA-Mellon Fellow 2011-2013
Student opportunities:
Research Grants
Reading Group
For questions, please email the Mellon Research Activities Coordinator at: yaelle.amir@nyu.edu
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