Doctoral candidate in Art History Katherine Gregory has been selected as one of the 2022 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellows in American Art. The Luce/ACLS program supports early-career scholars as they pursue dissertations on the history of the visual arts of the United States, including all facets of Native American art.
The awards are designed to promote emerging leaders and advance cutting-edge scholarship in American art history, welcoming research approaches that elevate voices, narratives, and subjects that have been historically underrepresented and under-studied in the academy. Each fellow will receive $42,000 to support one year of research and writing as well as fellowship-related travel during any nine-to-twelve-month period between July 2022 and May 2024.
Gregory will use the Luce/ACLS fellowship to continue research on her dissertation titled, "Freedom of Movement, Freedom of Mind: Robert S. Duncanson in Europe and America," which studies the international career of Robert Duncanson, a nineteenth-century landscape painter. Duncanson was known for his imaginative and pastoral landscapes, which fused European Romanticism with the naturalism of the Hudson River School. Duncanson was the first recorded African American artist to complete a Grand Tour and he spent several years in London, Rome, Edinburgh, and Canada. His international career has been under-studied and this project analyzes how he moved throughout the milieu of nineteenth-century painters abroad. Gregory's dissertation discusses Duncanson’s participation and success within an international creative elite, unsettles how we think about European art and landscape painting, and explores the challenges and freedoms he experienced as a nineteenth-century artist of color.
In the process of her research, Gregory plans to travel to London, Scotland, and Rome to reconstruct Duncanson’s 1853 Grand Tour and explore how it was both similar to and diverged from White artists’ travels through Europe. In the current scholarship on Duncanson, his international travels and exhibitions have received less attention than his American career. Gregory's dissertation argues that these travels inspired his subject matter and compelled his stylistic evolution beyond the influence of the Hudson River School. She will look to other American artists who completed Grand Tours around this time, such as William Sonntag, to determine who Duncanson met or collaborated with abroad, as well as examine the archives of artists, such as Hiram Powers, for traces of Duncanson in these collections.
Gregory and the six other 2022 recipients join more than 300 former fellows who are now some of the country’s most distinguished college and university faculty, museum professionals, and leaders in the cultural sector.
The full list of recipients and their dissertation abstracts can be found on the Luce/ACLS Fellowship announcement page.