2026-27 FELLOWSHIPS AT COLBY MUSEUM'S LUNDER INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN ART

Jerome Reyes and Matthew Villar Miranda, Ossorio Fellows
Jerome Reyes is an artist, researcher, and educator based in San Francisco and Seoul who specializes in long-term, collaborative projects that intersect with architecture, archival history, and social practice.

Matthew Villar Miranda is a PhD student in Art History at Stanford University, where his research focuses on modern and contemporary art of the Philippines and its diaspora. His work examines the intersections of colonialism, migration, and visual culture, often highlighting underrepresented narratives within American and global art history.

Established in 2019 and supported by the Ossorio Foundation, the Alfonso Ossorio Creative Production Grant provides financial support to artists affiliated with the Colby Museum and its Lunder Institute to further their intellectual pursuits, research, and the creation of new artworks that expand the boundaries of American art.

As part of their fellowship, Reyes and Villar Miranda will collaborate on a project titled Congregations in Five Acts, which reexamines the legacy of Alfonso Ossorio through transpacific, queer, and diasporic frameworks. Their work will bridge original scholarly research with artistic production, utilizing Ossorio’s concept of "congregations" to gather artists, thinkers, and the community through five interrelated stages of inquiry.

A CLEARING (Alana Dao and meg willing), Lunder Institute Fellow 
A CLEARING is a poetry-centered arts collaborative co-founded and co-directed by Alana Dao and meg willing. Dao is a Portland-based writer whose practice navigates the relationships between food, race, and contemporary culture, while Farmington-based willing is a poet and book designer whose creative work explores fragmented memory through the integration of text and image.

Their fellowship will center on a year-long creative cycle that invites a diverse group of collaborators to create original art and writing in conversation with a selected poem.

Ruby Sky Stiler, Lunder Institute Fellow 
Ruby Sky Stiler is a Maine-born, Brooklyn-based artist utilizing a multi-dimensional practice to reimagine art historical archetypes and the history of figuration. Drawing from her background in printmaking, she creates intricate relief paintings and sculptures that navigate the tension between flatness and three-dimensionality while subverting traditional gendered tropes.

Stiler’s fellowship will focus on the formal and material legacy of artist Louise Nevelson and its intersection with Stiler's own interdisciplinary practice. Her work involves navigating the tension between flatness and three-dimensionality—utilizing sculptural wall reliefs, collage, and contemporary fresco techniques to deconstruct traditional art historical archetypes—while exploring themes of abstraction, feminism, and the conservation of complex sculptural works

Formerly announced fellows returning in 2027 include Demian DinéYazhi’, Alexandra Grant, and Hannah Haynes.

Gwyneth Shanks, Assistant Professor of Performance, Theater and Dance, was named the inaugural Lunder Institute Faculty Fellow earlier this year. Her work draws on visual and performance studies, queer theory, and critical race studies, and postcolonial theory to demonstrate how performance and performative art can expose the colonialist structures and histories embedded within arts institutions and contemporary art.

Shanks’s forthcoming book, Another Museum is Necessary: Transient Performance in the Wake of Institutional Critique, is currently under contract with Duke University Press. Her research and performance work have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the MAP Fund, and the Maine Arts Commission, among others. Before joining the Colby faculty, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Walker Art Center and earned her PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. As a performer, she has collaborated with renowned artists and companies, including the Trisha Brown Dance Company and Marina Abramović.

Gwyneth Shanks and student fellows Raine Brossard ’27 and April Levy ’27, presenting their work on developing A Handbook for Speculative Curation, an experimental publication exploring how speculative fiction can reimagine art education, preservation, museum display, and curatorial practice. Drawing on the Lunder Institute Audio Archives and the Colby Museum’s efforts to expand art historical narratives, the project questions traditional museum practices and imagines new relationships to material culture and history. The presentation on December 3, 2026, 4–5:30 p.m. will also include a participatory workshop element, inviting attendees to engage with the ideas and questions at the heart of the project.

Lunder Institute offers Faculty Grants and a Faculty Fellowship and is currently accepting applications.

Faculty Grants provide small-scale funding (up to $500) to support Colby faculty research, scholarship, and course-based teaching connected to Lunder Institute programs, fellows, and initiatives. Faculty across all departments and programs are eligible to apply for work undertaken between September 1 and December 31, 2026. Applications are reviewed by Lunder Institute staff and awarded on a rolling basis until semester funds are fully expended. Learn more and apply.

The Lunder Institute Faculty Fellowship supports substantial, faculty-led projects connected to the collections of the Colby Museum and the work of the Lunder Institute. Open to all Colby faculty with tenure-track or continuing non-tenure-track appointments, the fellowship offers affiliation with the Lunder Institute, professional networking opportunities, and a $10,000 stipend. Faculty Fellows may also engage up to two Colby Student Fellows, who receive direct stipends of $1,500 each. While formal arts training is not required, applicants must demonstrate preparedness for critical or creative engagement with the museum and institute. Learn more and apply.

In collaboration with Colby Arts, Lunder Institute invited currently employed K–12 teachers to apply for stipends and shared studio use within our creative community. The opportunity is designed to support educators who maintain an active arts practice and are interested in working alongside fellow artists in a vibrant, collaborative environment.

Selected participants receive access to studio space at Greene Block + Studios and opportunities to engage with the public through open studios. K–12 Artist Educator Fellows continuing this academic year include Adele Drake (Hampden Academy), Jessica Hamilton-Jones (Waterville Alternative High School), and Jeffrey Orth (Richmond Middle and High School).

Applications for the next cycle of K–12 Artist Education Fellowships will open in January 2027. Educators from all artistic disciplines are encouraged to apply. To be eligible, applicants must be current K–12 educators with a non-toxic arts practice, able to participate in at least two First Friday Open Studios annually, and ideally interested in facilitating workshops.