Supporting the Mission
Rice Foundation Curatorial Fellows
Rice Foundation Fellow Katharine Raff stands beside a pair of ancient Roman stucco reliefs in the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art.
Rice Foundation Fellow Jonathan Tavares examines a 16th-century helmet at Warwick Castle in England.
This fall the Art Institute of Chicago announced Katharine Raff and Jonathan Tavares as the museum’s first Rice Foundation Curatorial Fellows. The Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Foundation Curatorial Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program was established in 2010 with a generous grant of $1.25 million from the Rice Foundation that, in combination with a gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, provides a permanent endowment for this acclaimed program. At the time of the gift, Rice Foundation director Peter Nolan noted, “The Rice Foundation Fellowship Program is exceptional in that it allows the Art Institute to recruit gifted, young scholars to the museum and helps provide a training ground for them to pursue curatorial careers.” Rice Fellows join the museum staff for three-year terms during which they work closely with senior curators, undertake substantive research projects, and collaborate with colleagues in the departments of Museum Education, Conservation, Registration, and the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries. Mr. Nolan added, “This commitment to young curators complements the Rice Foundation’s past support of the Art Institute’s collection, exhibitions, and facilities.” Katharine Raff, a former Fulbright Scholar, holds a PhD from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art, Raff was the Bothmer Fellow in the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I am thrilled to be part of the Art Institute’s team as the Mary and Michael Jaharis
Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art open to the public,” noted Katharine at the time of the announcement. “As a specialist in the field of ancient Roman art and architecture, I am particularly excited to examine this area of the museum’s collection.” Katharine has already been overseeing the development of content for an interactive multimedia program for the new galleries, which will provide visitors with a greater depth and breadth of information about artworks on view. Jonathan Tavares will join the Department of Medieval through Modern European Painting and Sculpture in January 2013, where he will work closely with the museum’s storied collection of arms and armor. “Since I was a boy, I have been drawn to arms and armor. At Roger Williams University, I chose art history as my path and found myself most fascinated with the decorative arts and design—furniture, textiles, glass, and ceramics—but armor remained my first love. Studying at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan helped me find my way into the Arms and Armor Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has been a great guiding force for the last seven years. At the Met I was able to immerse myself in the study of objects and new research, as well as share my passion with the public, and I look forward to doing the same with the Harding Collection at the Art Institute.” Over the next three years Raff and Tavares will conduct scholarly research, write essays and articles about the collection and their fields of interest, and hone skills they can employ as they pursue museum-based careers.
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