Jan Weenix, Portrait of Agnes Block and her family at Vyverhof, 1674-1694. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum.
Doctoral candidate in Art History Catherine Powell has been selected as the recipient of the 2019-2021 Kress Institutional Fellowship at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The Kress Foundation supports six competitive institutional fellowships per year to art historians and art conservators in the final stages of their preparation for professional careers.
The Kress Institutional Fellowship at LUCAS will allow Powell to focus on her research and dissertation, which examines gender and networks in the production and patronage of art during the Dutch Golden Age. Conducted under the supervision and guidance of Dr. Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Powell’s research focuses on the ways in which Dutchwoman Agnes Block used networks to overcome the disadvantages she experienced due to her gender—such as her exclusion from formal institutions like universities and professional societies—in order to become an art patron and botanist of great reputation and influence.
Powell is currently based out of Amsterdam to conduct archival research, made possible by funding received from the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. Thanks to a short-term research fellowship from the Renaissance Society of America and a grant from the Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung, she will split her summer between Amsterdam and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, prior to her appointment in Leiden in the Fall.