Clark Art Institute Research and Academic Program (RAP) Fellowships

The Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program (RAP) awards funded residential fellowships to established and promising scholars with the aim of fostering a critical commitment to inquiry in the theory, history, and interpretation of art and visual culture.

As part of our commitment to fostering diverse engagements with the visual arts, RAP particularly seeks to elevate constituencies, subjects, and methods that have historically been underrepresented in the discipline. In addition to the general Clark Fellowships, which are open to any topic, time period, and geographic focus, RAP offers a number of special fellowships for specific research interests that are intended to nurture a variety of disciplinary approaches and support new voices in art history. These include:

Caribbean Art and Its Diasporas Fellowship

The Caribbean has been home to some of the most influential critical theorists, poets, writers, and artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This fellowship seeks to support art historians, artists, critics, and writers who are engaging with the complexity of critical Caribbean scholarship, art, and visual practices today.

Futures Fellowship

This fellowship supports artists, educators, scholars, writers, and art critics who are reimagining the possibilities of museums, scholarship, and public engagement. Projects that examine social justice and the arts, reimagine the canon of art history, or consider the role of performance art in exposing erased histories are particularly welcome.

Florence Gould Foundation Fellowship

Endowed by the Florence Gould Foundation, dedicated to French-American cultural exchange, this one-semester fellowship is awarded annually to a senior scholar or curator, with priority given to an applicant from a French museum or institution of higher education or to an individual pursuing a project in the field of French art and visual studies.

The Jacqueline Lichtenstein CFHA-Clark Fellowship

This fellowship is jointly sponsored by Le Comité français d’histoire de l’art and the Clark Art Institute to support a summer residency at the Clark Art Institute for a curator or an academic based in France or its overseas territories. Named in honor of Jacqueline Lichtenstein, the fellowship is meant to support a scholar that will produce path-breaking research in the field of art history, museum studies, or visual arts. The residency is for a five-week period and the fellow will be provided with housing, an office, and a $5,000 stipend.

All fellows receive a stipend; are provided offices in the open-stack, 280,000-volume art history library of the Manton Research Center; apartments in the gracious residence across the street from our 140-acre campus; and reimbursement of travel expenses. Fellowships typically last for one semester, but longer- and shorter-term opportunities are available.

For more information and application details, please visit clarkart.edu/rap/fellowship.

The application portal may be directly reached at clarkart.smapply.io.

Applications are due by October 15, 2025 for the fellowship period covering summer 2026–spring 2027.