The Smart has been awarded the Association of Art Museum Directors's first Samuel H. Kress Foundation Provenance Research Fellowship.

The year-long fellowship will allow Max Koss, a graduate student from the University of Chicago's Department of Art History, to delve into the full provenance, ownership, and exhibition histories of key works of art from the Museum's collection, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Dodo in the Studio (pictured) and a number of other works featured in the upcoming exhibition Expressionist Impulses: German and Central European Art, 1890–1990. The fellowship includes a residency at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

In other collection research news, Rainbow Porthé has been named the Smart Museum's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Curatorial Intern for 2015–2016. During the appointment, Porthé, who is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History, will research the Smart's collection of pre-1900 European art with a focus on a major upcoming exhibition that will offer a transhistorical perspective on "classicism."

The Mellon Foundation Curatorial Internship began at the Smart in 2009 and is awarded each year to an advanced graduate student at the University of Chicago.