These fellowships enhance the educational experiences provided by academic course work and teaching assistantships at the university, allowing students to extend their range of academic specializations and expertise, and to augment research skills by direct contact with objects in the collections.
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Applications are now closed for the 2026–2027 Graduate Museum Fellowships.
Academic Year 2026–2027 Graduate Museum Fellowships
Curatorial: Elizabethan Splendor: Portraiture in England 1580-1620
Supervised by Edward Town, Assistant Curator of Paintings and Sculpture
Full academic year
The Department of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) seeks to appoint a Graduate Museum Fellow (GMF) for the academic year to assist with the development and realization of a forthcoming exhibition exploring the history of portraiture in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (1580-1620). This was a moment of profound artistic and cultural transformation, as England united with Scotland to become Britain and asserted itself on the global stage through expanding political, commercial, and colonial networks.
The exhibition draws on more than a decade of sustained research at the museum and will make a significant contribution to scholarship on early modern portraiture. Grounded in art-historical inquiry and technical examination of the YCBA’s holdings, the project has also involved close study of major collections of Elizabethan portraiture in the United States and the United Kingdom. Working in partnership with these institutions, the curators have made a series of discoveries concerning the identities of sitters and artists, shedding new light on these striking images of wealth, power, and status. The exhibition will examine the motivations behind portrait commissions, the strategies patrons used to signal authority and influence, and the complex emblematic language that gives Elizabethan portraiture its distinctive character.
The Graduate Museum Fellow will support the project during a critical phase of planning and preparation. Responsibilities will include assisting with research and materials for the accompanying publication, maintaining and updating the object checklist, undertaking original catalogue research, and contributing to interpretive content. The fellowship offers first-hand experience of working toward a major loan exhibition and a multi-author scholarly publication grounded in original research and technical analysis. This position will particularly suit a graduate student with a strong interest in the early modern period, technical art history, and object-based research, as well as excellent attention to detail.
Education
Supervised by Hannah Kinney, Head of Education
Fall 2026
The Education Department at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) invites applications for a Graduate Museum Fellow (GMF) for the fall 2026 semester. The fellow will play a central role in developing workshops and curriculum guides to support teaching STEM subjects using artworks from the YCBA’s exhibition of paintings by John Constable and related collection material. These workshops and teaching resources will model how sustained engagement with works of art can enrich scientific inquiry and interdisciplinary thinking, ultimately laying the foundation for expanding the YCBA’s object-based teaching in this area.
Working at the intersection of art history, environmental studies, and the sciences, the GMF will conduct focused research on selected works in the Constable exhibition and related collections—particularly landscape and seascape paintings produced during the early Industrial Revolution. The fellow will also assist in the delivery of two interdisciplinary workshops—one for Yale faculty and one for Yale graduate students – exploring how close engagement with works of arts can support scientific observation, environmental inquiry, and interdisciplinary dialogue. These workshops will inform the development of teaching guides and curricular materials for STEM-focused teaching.
The GMF will gain insight into museum-based approaches to environmental history, climate-related inquiry, and the role of visual culture in shaping scientific and ecological ways of thinking. They will also gain substantial experience designing and facilitating programming for non–art-historical audiences, translating scholarly research into accessible teaching resources, supporting academic program development, and facilitating courses in the museum. The successful candidate will demonstrate strong research and writing skills, an ability to communicate effectively with non-specialist audiences, and a clear interest in object-based teaching and interdisciplinary collaboration. Prior experience with object-based research or teaching is preferred.
Curatorial: “An Art So Curious:” The Mysteries of Mezzotint
Supervised by Elizabeth Wyckoff, Curator of Prints and Drawings
Full academic year
The Department of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) seeks to appoint a Graduate Museum Fellow (GMF) for the academic year to assist with the development of a future exhibition exploring the history of mezzotint engraving—the earliest intaglio technique capable of producing tonal effects—and the circumstances surrounding its emergence and popularization in Britain and beyond.
Drawn from the YCBA’s exceptional holdings, the exhibition aims to reframe and expand existing scholarship on mezzotint as both a technical process and a cultural phenomenon. Mezzotints continue to captivate viewers with their rich, velvety tonal range, prompting fundamental questions about the mechanical production of tone and the material conditions from which images emerge. The technique developed in the seventeenth century, a period marked by scientific experimentation, political upheaval, and military innovation, and knowledge of its origins circulated rapidly across Europe. Although often described as the most “British” of printmaking techniques, mezzotint has important cross-channel roots in Germany and the Netherlands. The exhibition will also explore the close relationship between mezzotints and the paintings they frequently sought to reproduce.
The fellowship offers an opportunity to work closely with the curatorial team on the development of the exhibition’s themes, checklist, and layout, as well as the preparation of interpretive and didactic texts. The GMF will gain hands-on experience working directly with works of art and may collaborate with conservators on the technical examination of prints in the YCBA’s collection. The successful candidate will bring strong research skills, an interest in European and British art history, and a desire to engage critically with the history of printmaking across artistic, technical, and cultural contexts.
Eligibility
Graduate Museum Fellows at the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery are open to Yale University PhD candidates in all disciplines. The number of fellowships offered may vary each year. Graduate Museum Fellows are designed to provide Yale University doctoral students, in their second through sixth year, the opportunity to work as part of an intellectual team on a major scholarly project at one of the museums.
These positions are assigned at the TF20 level.
Contact the Research department at
ycba.research@yale.edu | +1 203 432 2824