SAAM Fellows Lecture

Join the 2022–2023 class of Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) research fellows as they present new scholarship on a range of topics and time periods, media, and messages. Speakers will share research discoveries and offer fresh perspectives on works of American art from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17, to Friday, May 19.

Session I: 1:00 to 2:45 p.m., Wednesday, May 17

Moderated by Melissa Ho, curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

• Manon Gaudet, Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, Yale University, “Picturing (Dis)Possession: Land, Likeness, and the General Allotment Act”
• Amy Kahng, Patricia and Philip Frost Predoctoral Fellow, Stony Brook University, “Unsettled and Unrooted Ground: Chiura Obata’s Internment Landscapes”
• Zoe Weldon-Yochim, Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Cruz, “Fighter Jets and Fallout: Attending to Militarized Western Shoshone Lands and Diverse Multi-Being Assemblages in Jack Malotte’s The End ”

Session II: 3:15 to 5:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 17

Moderated by Robin Veder, executive editor of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

• Elizabeth Driscoll Smith, Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Building Feminist Bloodlines: Tressa ‘Grandma’ Prisbrey’s Bottle Village and the Los Angeles Woman’s Building”
• Jessica Larson, Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow, The Graduate Center, CUNY, “‘No Substitute for Justice Withheld’: Visualizing Black Charitable Landscapes in Nineteenth-Century Manhattan”
• Connor Hamm, Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles, “Unsettling the Florida Sub-Tropical Exposition”

Session III: 1:00 to 2:45 p.m., Thursday, May 18

Moderated by Eleanor Harvey, senior curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

• Katie Loney, Wyeth Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of Pittsburgh, “American Orientalism’s Transimperial Economies”
• Sarah Emily Rogers Morris, Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, University of Illinois, Chicago, “A Photographic ‘Trip Around the World’: Visual Instruction in a Transnational Frame, 1890–1940”
• Grace Kuipers, Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art, University of California, Berkeley, “‘The Surface Has Hardly Been Scratched’: Spratling Silver, Mineral Imperialism, and U.S. Developmentalism in Mexico”

Session IV: 3:15 to 5:00 p.m., Thursday, May 18

Moderated by Grace Yasumura, assistant curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

• Rachel Burke, Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow, Harvard University, “Fugitive Grounds: Writing in the Archival Absence of Henry Box Brown’s Mirror of Slavery”
• Madeleine Harrison, Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, “Palmer Hayden on Paper”
• Claire Ittner, Will Barnet Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, “Materiality, Objecthood, and (Self) Possession in Eldzier Cortor’s Sea Islands Works”

Session V: 1:00 to 2:45 p.m., Friday, May 19

Moderated by Saisha Grayson, curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

• Ellen Yoshi Tani, Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellow, Rochester Institute of Technology, “Black Conceptual Practice”
• Amy E. Crum,SAAM Predoctoral Fellow in Latinx Art, University of California, Los Angeles, “Projecting the Barrio: Los Four at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1974) and Murals of Aztlán at the Craft and Folk Art Museum (1981)”
• Ariel Evans,William H. Truettner Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas at Austin, “‘Talk that talk’: Reinventing Documentary with Carrie Mae Weems’ Family Pictures and Stories”

Session VI: 3:15 to 4:30 p.m., Friday, May 19

Moderated by Randall Griffey, head curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

• Maki Kaneko, Terra Foundation Senior Fellow in American Art, University of Kansas, “Unnamable Friendship: The Art of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani”
• Marisa Lerer, George Gurney Senior Fellow, Manhattan College, “Memorializing Tragedies Across Borders in the Work of Antonio Martorell and Freddy Rodríguez”

This program is free and takes place in the McAvoy Auditorium at the museum. For more information, visit the SAAM website.