Graduate Fellows: Block Museum - Northwestern University
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Block graduate fellow CC McKee

Graduate Fellows

The Block Museum currently offers two graduate research fellowships each year: an Art History Graduate Fellowship, selected from applicants studying within the Northwestern University Department of Art History and an Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, studying anywhere within Northwestern.

About the Fellowship Program

The Block Museum’s Fellowship program offers opportunities for Northwestern University doctoral students from various academic programs and disciplines who are interested in exploring museum professions. There are many exciting opportunities in museums for PhDs, and museums benefit from working with professionals with diverse degrees, including history, performance studies, indigenous studies, African American Studies, and other fields. The fellowship provides hands-on experience within the context of a dynamic university museum and is geared toward students whose work engages with visual culture, history, museum practice, and the questions of shaping and exhibiting knowledge.

The Graduate Fellows bring diverse and global perspectives and the ability and desire to work beyond the student’s area of specialization to support the museum’s inclusive artistic program. The Program shares the Block’s collaborative ethos and commitment to diverse perspectives.

The positions are nine to twelve months, beginning with the academic year in September and concluding in June or  August according to the graduate's schedule. Applications for the fellowships are generally due in winter or spring of the previous academic year. The Fellowship includes a stipend and tuition waiver equal to a teaching assistantship.

APPLY FOR THE 2024-25 Graduate Fellowship

For general information, please contact Corinne Granof at c-granof@northwestern.edu

Past Fellows

Past Fellows
Year Fellow Name Position
2023-24 Ruslana Lichtzier
2023-24 Madison Brown
[Interdisciplinary Fellow]
2022-23 Ash Deosaran Curated The Living Image of Sound: Notes on Jazz and Protest at Northwestern
2022-23 Felipe Gutierrez [Interdisciplinary Fellow] Co-curated Rosalie Favell: Indigenous Artists Facing the Camera
2021-22 Sarah Dwider In-house co-curator for Taking Shape: Abstractions from the Arab World, 1950s-1980s
2021-22 æryka hollis o’neil [Interdisciplinary  Fellow] Work with Block Cinema and Dario Robleto exhibition
2020-21 Bethany Hill Research on A Site of Struggle, Creation of digital teaching model, Authored A Site of Struggle - Care Guide
2020-21 Rikki Byrd
[Interdisciplinary Fellow]
Curated Behold, Be Held, Creation of digital teaching model
2019-20 Cait DiMartino Co-curator for For One and All: Selected Prints from The Block’s Collection (2021), Curated Regional Modernisms: Works from the Block’s Permanent Collection
2019-20

Simran Bhalla
[Interdisciplinary Fellow]

Curated Block Cinema Series Morning Will Come: Modernity in Indian Cinema, Contributed to Modernisms
2018-19

Evelyn Kreutzer
[Interdisciplinary Fellow]

In-house co-curator for Pop América, 1965–1975, Curated cinema program Migrating Berlin
2018-19 Sarah Estrela Assisted with  Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, education resource website and related undergrad class.
2017-18

Beth Derderian 
[Interdisciplinary Fellow]

Curator of Break a Rule: Ed Paschke's Art and Teaching
2017-18 Tamar Kharatishvili  Assisted with research of Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time.  Assisted with Hank Willis Thomas: Unbranded
2016-17 Talia Shabtay Curator of Mining Pictures: Stories from Above and Below Ground
2015-16 C.C. McKee Curator of Keep the Shadow, Ere the Substance Fade: Mourning during the AIDS Crisis
2014-15 Antawan Byrd Contributed to Kader Attia: Reflecting Memory
2013-14 Jake Leveton Curator of Ecological Looking: Sustainability & the End(s) of the Earth
2012-13 John Murphy Curator of Blacklisted: William Gropper's Capriccios and The Left Front: Radical Art in the "Red Decade," 1929-1940
2011-12 Ashley (Miller) Dunn Contributed to Drawing the Future: Chicago Architecture on the International Stage, 1900-1925
2010-11 Jason Roberts Contributed to Block Cinema & the Film Criticism Conference, 2011
2010-11 Bettina Hessler Contributed to research on Lovis Corinth prints, William Hogarth prints, and works from the Bernard Friedman gift.
2009-10 Austin Parks Contributed to research on the Pritchard Collection
2008-09 Elizabeth Benjamin  Curator of Selections from the Collection
2007-08 Edna Togba Contributed to Design in the Age of Darwin: From William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright
2006-07 Margaret O’Neill Contributed to Nonsense and Experimentation: Dada Film Shorts
2005-06 James Glisson Contributed to The Anatomy of Gender: Arts of the Body in Early Modern EuropeComic Art: The Paris Salon in Caricature, and Philipon’s La Caricature and the Street
2004-05 Alison Fisher Contributed to Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature
2003-04 Justine DeYoung Contributed to Honoré Daumier: Public and Private Domains and American Expressionism: Art and Social Change, 1920s–1950s
2002-03 Carman Niekrasz Produced booklet on artist Max Beckmann
2001-02 Meghan Wilson Contributed to The Last Expression: Art and Auschwitz
2000-01 Nina Rowe Contributed to Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age
1999-2000 David Areford Contributed to Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age
1998-99 Stephanie Smith Contributed to research on Works Progress Administration prints and the Henry Simon collection
1997-98
2000-01
Nina Rowe Contributed to Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age
1996-97 Dabney Hailey Contributed to William Hogarth and 18th-Century Print Culture
1995-96 Jane Friedman
1993-94 Jodi Lox Contributed to general collections and exhibitions
1992-93 Elizabeth Seaton     Contributed to Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Depression–Era Prints from the Collection of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art