14 Graduate Students Earn Research Grants

by Sara Long

As pandemic restrictions begin to lift, graduate degree candidates are hoping to continue their research at museums, historic houses, and archives around the globe. The Decorative Arts Trust is pleased to announce the following 14 beneficiaries of our 2021 research grant program. 

Laura Beltrán-Rubio, PhD candidate in American Studies at William & Mary, will journey to museums and archives in Colombia to study colonial Latin American fashion in textiles, paintings, and sculptures.

Catherine Cyr, MA candidate in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, will study Maine’s lakeside seasonal cottages, known as “camps,” from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Susan Eberhard, PhD candidate in Art History at the University of California, Berkeley, will investigate silver objects circulated between Chinese agents and their English and American trading partners during the Qing era (1644–1911). DARTS Grant

Kelly Fu, MA candidate in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Decorative Arts, will research the history of an 18th-century lacquer miniature desk-and-bookcase with concealed wunderkammer compartments.

Jena Gilbert-Merrill, MA candidate in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, will research an early-20th-century do-it-yourself furniture making treatise, Louise Brigham’s Box Furniture: How to Make a Hundred Useful Articles for the Home. Marie Zimmermann Grant

Michael Hartman, PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Delaware, will visit museums and plantations in the American South to examine enslavers’ use of scientific instruments such as telescopes, clocks, and surveyor’s instruments.

Delanie Linden, PhD candidate in History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will explore the theory of color juxtaposition used in tapestries and paintings in early 19th-century France.

Alexandra M. Macdonald, PhD candidate in History at William & Mary, will investigate the conceptions of time in the 18th century by studying embroideries, ceramics, metal goods, and other non-mechanical timekeepers.

Morgan McCullough, PhD candidate in History at William & Mary, will analyze material objects tied to Indigenous, Black, and White Southern women’s embodied experiences, including bedding, sleeping spaces, and early childhood objects.

Ramey Mize, PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Pennsylvania, will examine a beaded valise depicting the “Battle of the Little Bighorn” created by Standing Rock Sioux artist Edith Claymore.

Lauryn Smith, PhD candidate in Art History at Case Western Reserve University, will study the cabinets of Amalia van Solms-Braunfels (1602–1675), Princess of Orange, to illuminate her patronage and collecting practices.

Astrid Graves Tvetenstrand, PhD candidate in American and New England Studies at Boston University, will research the roles that late-19th-century American landscape painting played in the creation of second home culture.

Rachel Winter, PhD candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will investigate the impact of the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C. on the exhibition of immigrant craft, culture, and tradition, including the embroidery of Ethel Wright Mohammed.

Margaret Wood, MA candidate in Decorative Arts and Design History at George Washington University, will explore early-20th-century interior decorator and historic preservationist Nancy McClelland’s scholarship and use of wallpaper in the Colonial Revival movement. 

Sara Long is the Communications and Marketing Manager at the Decorative Arts Trust. 

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