Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Donates $2 M. To Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has donated $2 million to the Smithsonian American Art Museum to support its fellowship program, marking the largest donation the program has received in its 53-year history and completing a $10 million capital campaign for it.

The gift will be used to create an endowment for a fellowship focused on modern and contemporary American art, to be called the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Fellowship. The first Frankenthaler Foundation Fellowship will be awarded for the 2024–25 academic year, with applications due on November 1, 2023.

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Housed within SAAM’s Research and Scholars Center, the fellowship is available for scholars at all levels, from doctoral students to established scholars, as part of the research necessary to complete a dissertation or a book. In addition to endowing the new fellowship, the $2 million gift will also be used for professional development resources for all fellows active in the Research and Scholars Center.

“Writing a dissertation or book can be a lonely and tedious process,” SAAM director Stephanie Stebich said.“ It takes a very long time, and much of it is spent alone traveling between various libraries and archives. There is also a history of scholars carefully guarding their work. SAAM’s fellowship program is a sort of antidote to this isolation—it is a nurturing space where scholars learn from each other, deepening and expanding their thinking.”

Stebich was appointed the museum’s director in spring 2017 and launched the $10 million capital campaign the following year, in the run up to the fellowship program’s 50th anniversary in 2020. She realized that its “outsized impact as an educational and research institution” meant that it required greater funds to continue its scholarly work.