Kress Foundation Renews Fellowship in Art Librarianship

The Samuel H. Kress Foundation (New York, NY) awarded Yale University Library the second five-year extension of the Kress Fellowship in Art Librarianship in November 2008.  The Fellowship will now run through 2014.  Administered by the Director of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, the Kress Fellowship in Art Librarianship is one of the most successful such programs at Yale. 

During their eight-month tenure based in the Arts Library, the Kress Fellows have the opportunity to learn the profession of art librarianship and in doing so, to complete projects of their interests ranging from innovations in Library support for teaching art history, architectural archive management, digitization and delivery of art image resources, and the history of illustration and the book arts.  The Fellows may draw upon the resources of the Yale University Library and the University's two great art museums: the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art.  The combination of these resources provides for a multi-faceted professional development program of unparalleled depth and breadth.  Not to be underestimated, either, is the superb mentoring enjoyed by the Kress Fellows and provided by the Arts Library staff and others at Yale.

The Kress Fellowship in Art Librarianship at Yale was the first of its kind in the United States and has been the gold standard among professional development programs for art librarians since its inception in 1997.  It is the most prestigious fellowship of its kind in the field of art and allied librarianship and is widely respected within the library profession at large.  The ten individuals who have held the Fellowship to date have gone on to diverse and important careers in academic art and museum librarianship, visual arts resources administration, special collections and archive curatorship, and art information consultancy.  Three former Kress Fellows are now fully fledged professionals on the staffs of the Yale University Library and the Yale Center for British Art.

We are profoundly grateful to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for its continuing support of the Yale University Library and the Kress Fellowship in Art Librarianship.