Research by the Universitys young alums often builds upon their first experiences in scholarship at JMU. One example is the exciting work of Katie McKinney, Class of 2011 and an Art History Double Major with History, who is now the Lois F. McNeil Fellow in American Material Culture at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Delaware, one of the leading American Decorative Art research centers in the world. This summer Katie completed a Fellowship as part of her field study with The Classical Institute of the South (classicalinstituteofthesouth.org/). Katie’s summer research focused on the documentation and study of decorative arts used or made in the Gulf South before or during the Civil War. She spent the month of July cataloging private and museum collections in Natchez, Mississippi, and Huntsville, Alabama. Katie is seen here photographing textiles and a vintage chandelier in an anonymous private collection as part of her research project. Katie is now completing her Master’s degree in the Winterthur Graduate Program in American Material Culture for May 2015. While at JMU she developed her expertise in American Art History, Museums and the Decorative Arts, especially textiles and dress, interning in the Sawhill Gallery on campus and at Colonial Williamsburg, and serving as a Summer Fellow in American Decorative Arts at the Historic Deerfield Museum in Massachusetts in 2011. She presented her research on premodern dress, working with Sarah Brooks, in the 2011 Art History Forum. Katie’s Honors Thesis considered nineteenth-century American art and material culture, focusing on the clothing worn during mourning, and contemporary American attitudes about death. At JMU Katie received the Junior Art History Achievement Award (2010), the Madison Writing Award (2011), and the Martha B. Caldwell Outstanding Senior Award in Art History (2011). To read more about Katie’s summer research, see the recent press coverage below.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 18:58:15 +0000