Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library Fellowships

Founded by Henry Francis du Pont, Winterthur (pronounced “winter-tour”) is the premier museum of American decorative arts, reflecting both early America and the du Pont family’s life here. Its 60-acre naturalistic garden is among the country’s best, and its research library serves scholars from around the world.

Fellows can utilize the 20,000 American and European imprints, 3,000 record groups of manuscripts, as well as trade catalogues, ephemera, photographs, and archives of the Winterthur Library, an independent, world-class research collection. They can also examine Winterthur Museum’s expansive object collections of more than 90,000 artifacts that help us broadly understand four centuries of everyday life in America in a global context. They can look at these collections with specialists and experts and consult with conservators and scientific staff to request testing to better understand objects and interpret them at a chemical level. They can explore 7,500 plant specimens and more than 1,000 acres of landscape and gardens, using these spaces and materials for research, or for respite and recharging.

Winterthur offers the following:

• Dissertation Fellowship: Doctoral candidates conducting research or writing a dissertation receive four to nine month fellowships.
• Maker-Creator Fellowship: Our two to six week research fellowships are designed for artistic and creative professionals to examine, study, and immerse themselves in Winterthur’s vast collections to inspire production of new work. Past fellows have utilized the museum’s landscape, gardens, museum collections, and library for inspiration, precedent, instruction, and material for their creations
• NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship: Applicants at any level or rank who have completed their Ph.D. by the start of their residency may apply for a four-month fellowship to pursue advanced research or revise research for publication.
• Remote Fellowship: First created to maintain vital access to collections for fellows during the pandemic, we recognize that other obligations and limits to budgets and time can be barriers to residential research. A limited number of remote fellowships will be offered each year.
• Short-Term Fellowship: Open to independent or institutional researchers and scholars of all levels, including graduate students. Applicants may apply for fellowship periods ranging from two to six weeks.
• Winterthur Postdoctoral Fellowship (offered annually): The NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship supports residence at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library for a duration of four or eight months as a junior or senior scholar whose project holds the potential for wider impact upon the humanities, rooted in research using Winterthur’s collections.