Release Date: March 16, 2018

National Gallery of Art Welcomes New Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellows

Left: Diana Greenwald, a 2017–2019 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, will conduct research on American and British paintings as well as the work of self-taught artist James Castle.; right: Kara Fiedorek, a 2017–2019 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, will assist the department of photographs with exhibitions and research on the Gallery's collection of postwar British photography.

Washington, DC—The National Gallery of Art welcomed two emerging curators to participate in its 2017–2019 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship. This fellowship, which provides curatorial training and supports scholarly research related to the collection of the National Gallery of Art, is a two-year commitment with the possibility of renewal for a third year.

Mellon Curatorial Fellows are fully integrated into a specific curatorial department with duties, privileges, and status equivalent to those of an assistant curator. Time is divided between specific projects and general curatorial work within the department, including research on the collection and new acquisitions, work on the presentation of the collection, participation in aspects of special exhibition projects, and opportunities to give public lectures. Fellows plan and complete a project in consultation with the supervising curator. Through weekly gatherings and discussions, fellows take part in research sharing and sessions that explore the inner workings of the Gallery.

Former Mellon Curatorial Fellows include Jamie Gabbarelli, assistant curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and exhibition curator for the Gallery's forthcoming exhibition Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints into Maiolica and Bronze; Karen Lemmey, curator of sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Naoko Takahatake, associate curator of prints and drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and many other leaders in their fields.

The fellowship is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is administered by the department of academic programs in the division of education. Information about the Gallery's internships and fellowships is available at nga.gov/opportunities/interns-and-fellows.html or by calling (202) 842-6257.

2017–2019 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellows
Kara Fiedorek
New York, New York

Fiedorek completed a BA (art history) from Yale University and a PhD (art history) from New York University. Her dissertation is titled "Priests of the Sun: Photography and Faith, 1860–1910." She has been a Connoisseurs Circle Fellow at NYU and a Junior Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. As a curatorial assistant in photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Fiedorek curated exhibitions such as Cuban Photography after 1980; Focus on Joel Sternfeld; India through the Camera's Eye; and a survey on the history of photography from its invention to the present day. She has assisted exhibitions at NYU's Grey Art Gallery and in the Photography Collection at the New York Public Library, in addition to writing catalog essays, artist biographies, and exhibition reviews for various publications. Fiedorek will be working on multiple exhibitions for the department of photographs and conducting research in the Gallery's collection of postwar British photography.

Diana Greenwald
New York, New York

Greenwald completed a BA (art history) from Columbia University and an MPhil (economic and social history) and DPhil (history) from the University of Oxford. Her dissertation is titled "Painting by Numbers: Case Studies in the Economic History of Nineteenth-Century Landscape and Rural Genre Painting." Greenwald has been a Wiener-Anspach Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow for Economic History at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, a Junior Fellow at the Frick Collection's Center for the History of Collecting, a Visiting PhD Scholar in the art history and archaeology department at Columbia University, and a Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Greenwald has articles forthcoming in issues of The Economic History Review and Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Greenwald will assist the department of American and British paintings with permanent collections research. She will also assist the department of modern prints and drawings with research related to the self-taught artist James Castle, whose work is currently featured in the Gallery's exhibition Outliers and American Vanguard Art.

Press Contact:
Christina Brown, (202) 842-6598 or [email protected]