The Met: Leonard A. Lauder Fellowship in Modern Art: Mid-Career Fellowship Grant

The Met: Leonard A. Lauder Fellowship in Modern Art: Mid-Career Fellowship Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Metropolitan Museum Of Art
Amount: Up to US $76,000
Last Updated: September 02, 2025

Summary

The Met's Leonard A. Lauder Fellowship in Modern Art offers a unique opportunity for mid-career scholars to engage in focused research on modern art. Established in 2013, this fellowship supports research spanning various disciplines, including art history, philosophy, and anthropology. The fellowship provides a stipend of $70,000, a research allowance, and health insurance. In addition to their research, fellows will mentor early-career scholars and lead seminars, fostering a collaborative academic community.

Overview

Mission Statement The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across time and cultures in order to connect all people to creativity, knowledge, ideas, and one another. Fellowships Applicants come from diverse backgrounds and nationalities and vary widely in their perspectives and training. Each year, The Met creates a close knit community of scholars whose individual interests collectively illuminate the Museum's collection of artworks spanning 5,000 years of human creativity. Exploring new avenues of research in the history of art and visual culture, education, public practice, and critical theory, fellows expand, challenge, and actively redefine the very limits and purview of these disciplines by introducing fresh ideas drawn from philosophy, anthropology, museum studies, historiography, conservation, and the material sciences. Leonard A. Lauder Fellowship in Modern Art Founded in 2013, The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art is a leading center for scholarship on modern art, by which we mean architecture, drawing, design (including exhibition, graphic, interior, and stage design), film, painting, performance, photography, and sculpture in the period from the last third of the nineteenth century through to the 1960s, from any country, region, or culture. Each year, The Met offers three fellowships in the Research Center: a two-year position for a predoctoral candidate who is embarking on a dissertation; a postdoctoral fellowship for a qualified scholar at an early career stage, which may be one or two years in duration; and a midcareer fellowship for an established scholar with an appropriate publication record. Fellowships in The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art offer an exceptional opportunity for scholars of modernism to conduct focused research on an independent project, while contributing to the activities and programs of the Research Center. Recent fellowships have supported the work of scholars focused on such topics as Art Brut, Czech Modernism, Dada, Brazilian modern art, interwar European Abstraction, Romanian avant-gardes, Russian Constructivism, and Surrealism, in addition to the agents, dealers, and reception of Cubism. Mid-Career Fellowship The Mid-Career Fellowship (formally Senior Fellowship) is for established scholars with an appropriate record of research/publication for the maximum duration of one year in the period from early September to the end of August. The annual stipend is $70,000, a research allowance of $6,000, plus return travel to New York and health insurance. A Mid-Career Fellow will mentor Pre-and Post-Doctoral Fellows in the Center in partnership with the Head of Center and the Distinguished Scholar. Later in the fellowship they will lead a closed seminar of invited early-career scholars from a range of university/college/museum contexts, including Leonard A. Lauder Fellows, on a theme to be agreed with the Head of Center. They will also give a public lecture on their work in the later stages of the Fellowship. Funding The annual stipend is $70,000, a research allowance of $6,000, plus return travel to New York and health insurance. A Senior Fellow will mentor Pre-and Post-Doctoral Fellows in the Center in partnership with the Head of Center and the Distinguished Scholar. Later in the fellowship they will lead a closed seminar of invited early-career scholars from a range of university/college/museum contexts, including Leonard A. Lauder Fellows, on a theme to be agreed with the Head of Center. They will also give a public lecture on their work in the later stages of the Fellowship.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Senior Fellows will be more established scholars with a record of publications commensurate with their career stage and may be on sabbatical from an academic post or be independent scholars.All Leonard A. Lauder Fellows must be in residence at The Met during the fellowship period.We encourage applications from those pursuing research in art history and in other humanities disciplines like history, anthropology, philosophy, and comparative literature, as long as they are focused on the visual arts. We accept applications from scholars originating from any accredited international university.The Fellowship Program is open to and regularly hosts international scholars. However, due to changes in travel and visa restrictions, which have fluctuated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Museum cannot guarantee that international scholars will be able to travel to New York for the fellowship period. Please consult the U.S. Department of State and New York State websites for updates on the current status of international and interstate travel. While we will make reasonable efforts to accommodate future unforeseen changes, we are unable to modify program dates on an individual basis.Applicants may only apply for one type of fellowship per application cycle. The only exception to this is the History of Art and Visual Culture Fellowship, which can be applied to concurrently with the Leonard A. Lauder Fellowship and the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellowship.

Ineligibility

We are unable to accept proposals for exhibitions, symposia, or similar programs. Applications in which such a project is the major objective of the proposal will be disqualified.