The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts announced today that it will award a total of $295,000 to six curatorial research fellows to encourage new scholarship in the field of contemporary art. Recipients will receive grants of up to $50,000 to support travel, archival research, interviews, and other activities.

The spring 2018 fellows are Emma Chubb, with the Smith College Museum of Art; Eric Crosby, with the Carnegie Museum of Art; Perrin Lathrop, with the Fisk University Galleries; Kate MacKay, with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Pavel Pyś, with the Walker Art Center; and Haema Sivanesan, with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

“These six curators are engaging with urgent cultural issues including income inequality, how we represent resistance, and how dominant narratives are shaped, and most importantly, by whom,” Joel Wachs, president of the foundation, said. “We’re confident this research will lead to significant contemporary art scholarship.”

Applications, which are open to curators at any stage in their careers, are reviewed through the foundation’s open biannual submission process. The number of awarded fellowships varies with each round based on the strength of the proposed projects. The next application deadline is September 1.

Among the projects being backed through this grant cycle are a midcareer retrospective of work by artist Younès Rahmoun—his first solo show in North America—and an exhibition that pairs contemporary art with engaged Buddhism. 

Commenting on the award, Crosby said: “The fellowship is nothing less than a transformative boost in the early stages of my exhibition research at Carnegie Museum of Art. It will also provide the necessary resources to engage a new network of artists, curators, writers, and thinkers from around the country right here in Pittsburgh.” Crosby will use the funds to conduct research for a group show on economic inequality in America that will feature work by more than thirty artists. The exhibition, “Working Thought,” is being planned for 2020.