MESDA Summer Institute
The Backcountry: The Cotton South and the Lower Southern Piedmont
June 16 through July 12, 2019
Applications due February 15, 2019
The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem Museums & Gardens is seeking applications to join its 2019 class of Summer Institute Fellows. The 2019 MESDA Summer Institute will emphasize the decorative arts and material culture of the Cotton South, including the Georgia Piedmont and Upcountry South Carolina. This important region is defined by craftsmen and consumers of Native American, African, and European ancestry and the Institute will look closely at objects, buildings, and landscapes they left behind.
The Summer Institute at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts is a month-long, hands-on multidisciplinary, material culture field school. Fellows will learn current methods of object-based research, interpretation, and analysis. They will also learn how to apply these skills as public-facing historians engaged in creating compelling object- and place-based histories.
Now in its 43rd year, the MESDA Summer Institute is presented in partnership with the University of Virginia, which awards three hours of graduate credit through the Graduate Program in the History of Art and Architecture. Significant fellowships-including media specific fellowships for the study of ceramics and architecture and for the support of young and emerging scholars-are available to qualified applicants.
The MESDA Summer Institute is led by visiting scholar Dr. Carroll Van West and MESDA Curator Daniel Ackermann. Dr. West is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University and is Tennessee's State Historian. During the Institute students will also work with distinguished outside scholars and curators, including Dr. Jennifer Van Horn, Assistant Professor of Art History and History at the University of Delaware and Dale Couch, Curator of Decorative Arts and Director of the Henry D. Green Center for the Study of the Decorative Arts at the Georgia Museum of Art. Students will also work closely with the staff of Old Salem Museums & Gardens and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts including Robert Leath, Chief Curator; Gary Albert, MESDA Editorial Director and Adjunct Curator of Silver; Johanna Brown, Curator of Moravian Decorative Arts; Martha Hartley, Director of Moravian Research; June Lucas, Director of MESDA Research; and Frank Vagnone, President and CEO of Old Salem Museums & Gardens and author of The Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums.
For more information and an application please visit:
http://www.mesda.org/SI