Research Program

The Center encourages new research and exhibition initiatives related to its concerns by providing fellowships to visiting scholars and curators. Particular attention is given to furthering interdisciplinary study of the social and cultural contexts of contemporary art, curatorial practice, and the history of exhibition, including comparative studies of the contemporary visual arts and their exhibition throughout the world.

In 1995 the Center initiated a program of visiting research residencies that has enabled curators and scholars to spend up to a semester at the Center to conduct research and teach in the graduate program. An award to the Center from the Getty Grant Program provided substantial support for this residency program and for a series of research conferences. Curators and scholars awarded residencies include Susan Cahan, Mary Jane Jacob, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Stephen Melville, Ivo Mesquita, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Marcia Tucker, John Vinci, and Martha Ward.

In 1996, with grants from the ArtsLink Partnership and the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Center also initiated a program of visiting fellowships for curators from Central and Eastern Europe. Fellowships have been awarded to Lech Lechowicz, curator at the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, Poland; Ivona Raimonova, curator at the Center for Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic; Viktor Misiano, director of the Contemporary Art Centre in Moscow, Russia; Iaroslava Boubnova, curator at the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria; Anda Rottenberg, director of the National Gallery of Contemporary Art Zacheta, Warsaw, Poland; Maria Hlavajova, director of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Bratislava, Slovakia; and Piotr Piotrowski, professor of art history, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland.