Art Department Partners With Phillips Collection on Student Programs

Photo by the Phillips Collection 

A new partnership between the University of Virginia Department of Art and the Phillips Collection in Washington will give undergraduate and graduate students in-person education and research opportunities at the modern art museum.

Beginning in fall, the collaboration between the museum and the University will support two programs: an annual predoctoral fellowship in modern and contemporary art history and a summer undergraduate internship. The students will work at the Phillips, allowing them to fully benefit from museum resources.

Art history professor Douglas Fordham, who chairs the Art Department, said the department has been expanding its modern art coverage in terms of faculty expertise. “At the same time” he said, “our undergraduate majors and [doctoral] students now come from a wider array of backgrounds and life experiences than ever before. In this dynamic disciplinary moment, a close working relationship with the Phillips Collection will strengthen these developments and enable students from all backgrounds to ask new questions of modern art and its place in a changing world.”