William L. Thompson Collections Fellowship
For emerging museum and house museum professionals
Call for Applications coming soon: FALL 2026
Up to four positions will be funded for the Fall 2026 opportunity. Fellows will participate in a week-long residency at Edgewater, the Foundation’s property in the Hudson River valley hamlet of Barrytown, New York. The Thompson Fellowship includes a stipend of $2,000 as well as financial support to reimburse costs associated with travel to and from Edgewater and meals during the week. Off-site hotel lodging will be provided. The Thompson Fellowship also provides travel support to attend the Decorative Arts Trust’s Emerging Scholars Colloquium, held during Americana Week in New York City in late January 2027, co-sponsored by the Jenrette Foundation.
Interested applicants are asked to submit a letter of interest and current CV via email to Grant Quertermous. The deadline is June 26, 2026.
The William L. Thompson Collections Fellowship for Emerging Museum Professionals and Graduate Students is a short-term residential fellowship designed for emerging museum professionals* and graduate students with an interest in a career focusing on collections and material culture within historic house museums. This fellowship is a program of the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation. Applicants who are emerging museum professionals are expected to be currently working in a collections-related museum position. Graduate student applicants will typically be completing a degree in art history, American studies, material culture, museum studies, public history, or a related field and should have completed at least one year of graduate study.
This fellowship is named in memory of William L. Thompson, the longtime partner of our founder, Richard H. Jenrette. Thompson was instrumental in the restoration, furnishing, and landscaping of each of the Jenrette Foundation’s properties, and he played an important role in building our significant collection of American decorative arts and fine art.
Meet the newest Thompson Fellows
Spring 2026
Catherine Doucette is a PhD candidate in Art and Architectural History at the University of Virginia specializing in the art and material culture of the early modern Caribbean. Catherine’s dissertation brings together and considers Jamaica's decorative arts from the late seventeenth-century to the early post-emancipation period to explore the ways enslaved and free African Jamaicans deployed material strategies to resist and forge their own identities and conceptions of Blackness in the early modern Atlantic world. At UVA, Catherine is an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow in Caribbean Literatures, Arts, and Cultures, and in Fall 2023, she was a visiting researcher in the Department of History and Archeology at the University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica. Her research has been supported by The Huntington Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the Clements Library, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, and The Paul Mellon Centre. Before starting her PhD, Catherine earned her master’s degree in Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art and she held positions at the Preservation Society of Newport County, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Graham Titus is the 2025-26 Tiffany & Co. Foundation Curatorial Intern in American Decorative Arts in The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is currently contributing to an upcoming exhibition at The Met of design drawings from the studios of Louis C. Tiffany and to another at Winterthur exploring still life painting as part of the Peale family's artistic legacy. His research focuses on glass and ceramics as lenses for exploring foodways, dining practice, domestic spaces, and gendered labor in the Atlantic world. He earned an M.A. in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware with a thesis examining pressed glass tableware, color, and working-class women in the 1920s and 1930s. He holds a B.A. in journalism and history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Abigail Sullivan is a Lois F. McNeil fellow in the Winterthur Program for American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. She is largely interested in how people interact with objects to ameliorate or exert control over their lives. Her master's thesis will investigate the personal and political economies of Gullah coiled basketry needles transitioning between animal bone and spoon handles around 1890–1910. Abigail earned a B.A. in Art History from Barnard College, Columbia University. She has also held positions at major American art institutions including the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, and David Zwirner Gallery. Born and raised in South Carolina, she is excited to continue studying the rich material life of the South.
Allison Donoghue is a Decorative Arts Research Fellow at the Preservation Society of Newport County. In 2024, she graduated with her master’s degree in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center. She approaches material culture and decorative arts through an interdisciplinary lens incorporating art historical, archaeological, and anthropological theory into her work. Her Qualifying Paper, “A bead, a thimble or some other pauble’: Thimbles and Self-Identity in Early New York,” interrogated the social and culture role of the thimble in the creation of identity for both settler women and Indigenous groups living in eighteenth-century New York. Prior to arriving in Newport, she worked as the Tiffany & Co. Foundation Curatorial Intern in American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attended MESDA Summer Institute (2025).
Meet some recent Thompson Fellows
Fall 2025
Phillippa Pitts is a Ph.D. candidate in American art at Boston University. Her dissertation outlines an art history of pharmaceuticals. Leveraging insights from critical disability studies, the project reveals how rhetorics of health, sickness, and medicine pervade antebellum cultural and visual production, from blown glass to grand manner landscape painting. Phillippa returned to doctoral study after a decade in museum practice at institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Philadelphia Art Museum, Portland Museum of Art, and Portland Art Museum. Her doctoral work has been supported by the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Wyeth Foundation, ACLS and the Luce Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Winterthur, the American Antiquarian Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Oak Spring Garden Foundation, among others. Her writing can be found in Panorama, Museums Etc., and The Journal of Museum Education. Phillippa holds an A.B. in Art History, Visual Art, and International Relations from Brown University and an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from Tufts University.
Seth Frost works with the curatorial department at the National Park Service's Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites in Hyde Park, New York. He earned his B.A. in history and archaeology and M.A. in public history from Northern Kentucky University, where his dissertation examined the original construction of an 1840s Greek Revival home. Seth is an alumnus of the Victorian Society in America's Newport Summer School and the Winterthur Institute. Primarily working with historic house museums, Seth's areas of study include the American presidency during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, material culture related to FDR's experience with disability, and the decorative arts of Eleanor Roosevelt's Colonial Revival furniture company, Val-Kill Industries. He has previously worked with the National Park Service at the homes of Presidents William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt.
Sarah Egan is a current graduate student at the Bard Graduate Center, studying late-19th- and early-20th-century American decorative arts and material culture with a special focus on the history of education and anthropology. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023, where she worked for their Center for Design and Material Culture and as a collections assistant for the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. She has also held positions with the Chazen Art Museum, the Wisconsin Arts Board, the Miller Art Museum, Preservation Long Island, and Emma Scully Gallery.
Bethany McGlyn is a PhD candidate at the University of Virginia, public historian, and curator specializing in 18th and 19th century craft labor and material culture in North America and the Atlantic World. Her dissertation at the University of Virginia explores the craft work of enslaved, incarcerated, and disabled men, women, and children in Early National Philadelphia. At UVa, Bethany also works with the University’s fine and decorative arts collection as the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Public History Fellow and is a historical researcher with the Gibbons Project under the President's Commission on Slavery and the University. She has worked in curatorial and public history roles at Historic Rock Ford, Winterthur, Historic Annapolis, and the National Parks Service. Bethany is a graduate of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (2020) and the MESDA Summer Institute (2019), and her work has been supported by institutions including the Attingham Trust, Decorative Arts Trust, Furniture History Society, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
Spring 2025
Anne Boyd is a Ph.D. Candidate in the American Studies Program at Boston University. She is interested in Civil War memory from World War II through present day, as seen through a variety of physical representations including monuments, school-naming practices, and war reenactments. Her dissertation is primarily focused on how the Lost Cause developed outside of the South, and how heritage organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy adjusted their messaging across time and space. This work sits at the intersection between history, material and visual culture, and popular memory. Anne earned her MA in American Studies from Boston University in 2022, and her BA in American Culture and Political Science from the University of Michigan in 2020.
Steven Baltsas is a Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture/University of Delaware interested in the junction of Southern European design and race in antebellum America. His master’s thesis studies the consumption of Renaissance Revival furniture in New York, New Orleans, and Paris between 1845–1861. Steven holds a BA in Art History and English from SUNY New Paltz. As an architectural historian, he has completed survey work on architecture and ironwork in the mid-nineteenth century Hudson Valley. He continues to research builders and craftspeople working in the region during the period.
Mya Rose Bailey (they/she) is a current graduate student at the Bard Graduate Center, completing their M.A. in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Their master’s thesis, “A Sense of Enslavement: Experiences of Time and Sound in Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and Poplar Forest,” merges their interests in multisensory anthropology, land and soundscape design, temporality, and memory in Black communities throughout American history. They hold a B.A. in Art History from SUNY New Paltz and have expanded interpretations of Black material culture and design within the Museum of Arts and Design, Historic Huguenot Street, and alongside author Lesa Cline-Ransome.
Grace Billingslea is the senior curatorial assistant for American art and arts of the Americas at the Brooklyn Museum where she most recently contributed to the development of Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, the reinstallation of the American art galleries. In 2022, she earned her M.A. in decorative arts, design history, and material culture from Bard Graduate Center. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century American material culture and the role of museums in illuminating the artistic outputs and lived experiences of women, working class people, Black and Asian Americans, and other underrepresented groups through curation, display, and interpretation. She earned her B.A. in art history and politics from New York University. Prior to the Brooklyn Museum, Grace has worked within the curatorial departments of the American Federation of Arts and the Museum of the City of New York.
Fall 2024
Emily Whitted, PhD Candidate, University of Massachusetts-Amherst: Emily Whitted (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her dissertation examines early American textile repair work as an integral, everyday practice completed with needles and thread to maintain fabric’s life cycles within homes, ships, and military camps. Her research has been funded through fellowships at the Winterthur Museum, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Decorative Arts Trust. Her past professional work includes projects with the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House and the Mercer Museum and Fonthill Castle. She also holds an M.A. in American Material Culture from the Winterthur Program at the University of Delaware.
Matthew Monk, PhD Candidate, University of Delaware: Matthew Monk, a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, specializes in Appalachian craft history and its intersections with cultural heritage preservation, mass tourism, commodification of the past, and the subsequent reinforcement of exclusionary, classist views of American history. His forthcoming dissertation, "A Useable Past: Appalachian Craft Revival and the Creation of a Regional American Cultural Identity, 1893-1961," explores the material history of the Appalachian Craft Revival, tracing its evolution from Progressive Era craft philanthropy to an internationally recognized ethno-nationalistic craft tourism model. Matthew holds an MA in Decorative Arts and Design History from the GW-Smithsonian program, an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto, and a BA in History and Medieval and Renaissance Studies from the University of Tennessee. Matthew works closely with the Southern Highland Craft Guild and other regional craft-affiliated organizations. He is a former Smithsonian Women's Committee Fellow and has done textile/coverlet cataloging and consultation for numerous museums, collections, and historic homes. Beyond his academic pursuits, he is an active spinner, novice weaver, knitter, and quilter, transforming raw fibers and fabrics into beautifully functional objects.
Hailey Chomos, Sobey Curatorial Assistant in European and American Art, The National Gallery of Canada: Hailey Chomos is a curatorial assistant in European and American art at the National Gallery of Canada. She received her master’s in art history from Queen’s University in 2023 where her research focused on the reception and collection of 19th century visual and material culture in North America. Hailey is interested in investigating the construction of the interior and its relationship to collecting practices of individuals and cultures. Her master’s thesis, funded by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, was a case study of early American collectors of French modernism exploring their use of historic revival architecture and decoration as a performance of individual and national identity. While perusing her master’s Hailey completed a curatorial internship at the National Gallery of Canada and a research fellowship in partnership with the MUNCH Museum, Oslo. She also holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts in History and Art History from the University of Toronto.
Astrid Tvetenstrand, PhD, The Polly Thayer Starr Curatorial Fellow in American Art at the Boston Athenaeum: Dr. Astrid Tvetenstrand, PhD is the current Polly Thayer Starr Curatorial Fellow in American Art at the Boston Athenaeum. She is a graduate of Boston University's American & New England Studies program where she successfully defended her dissertation, "Buying a View: American Landscape Painting and Gilded Age Vacation Culture, 1870-1910," in 2023. Astrid's work focuses on the materiality of land and landscape painting alongside collecting histories. She is a specialist in American art and is fascinated by the social and cultural histories imbued in its production. Astrid also frames artists as businesspeople and thinks about the ways in which they crafted careers in the arts. Astrid's work has been supported by the New York Public Library, The Preservation Society of Newport County--Newport Mansions, the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Fall 2023
Kayli Rideout, PhD
Katherine Carson Hughes, PhD
Lauren Drapala
Olivia Armadroff
Fall 2022
Alexandra Cade is a PhD candidate in the History of American Civilization at the University of Delaware and an adjunct curator at the Sigal Music Museum in Greenville, South Carolina. An interdisciplinary scholar and musician, Alexandra studies the material culture of music and performance in the early nineteenth-century Atlantic World. Alexandra received her BM in viola performance from the Eastman School of Music and her MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, where she completed her thesis on amateur-made antebellum American pianos. Additionally, Alexandra is an alum of two MESDA Summer Institutes.
Bryn Cooley is the Collections Manager at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., where she collaboratively manages a collection of over 350,000 architectural drawings, photographs, tools, toys, sculptures, and more. Bryn received her BA in English, History, and Humanities from Valparaiso University and her MA in Museum Studies from the George Washington University. While in graduate school, she completed internships at Blair House and The Office of the Senate Curator. She formerly managed the collection at Tudor Place Historic House & Garden in Georgetown and is also an alum of Historic Deerfield’s Summer Fellowship Program in Massachusetts.