Getty Scholar Grants

Getty Scholar Grants are for established scholars, or writers who have attained distinction in their fields. Recipients are in residence at the Getty Research Institute or Getty Villa, where they pursue their own projects free from academic obligations, make use of Getty collections, join their colleagues in a weekly meeting devoted to an annual research theme, and participate in the intellectual life of the Getty.

2020/2021 Themes

The Fragment (Research Institute)

The 2020/2021 academic year at the Getty Research Institute will be devoted to the fragment. Issues regarding the fragment have been present since the beginning of art history and archaeology. Many objects of study survive in physically fragmented forms, and any object, artwork, or structure may be conceived of as a fragment of a broader cultural context. As such, fragments catalyze the investigative process of scholarship and the fundamental acts of the historian: conservation, reconstruction, and interpretation. The evolution of an object—its material and semiotic changes across time, space, and cultures—can offer insights into the ethics and technologies of restoration, tastes for incompleteness or completeness, politics of collection and display, and production of art historical knowledge.While the fragment has been described as the central metaphor of modernity and the paradigmatic sign of a contemporary worldview, its history as a trope runs much deeper. Cultures of the fragment have flourished throughout history under such guises as the reuse of architectural parts and the cult of relics, the physical and conceptual image-breakings of iconoclasm, and the aesthetics of repair. Fragmentation can occur through artistic processes, acts of destruction, or forces of nature. It can be willful, accidental, or inevitable, but it is necessarily transformative. 

Applicants are invited to address both the creation and reception of fragments, their mutability and mobility, and their valuation and consequence throughout history. 

Phoenicians, Philistines, and Canaanites: The Levant and the Classical World (Villa) 

The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa for the 2020/2021 term will focus on the ancient cultures of the Levant and their relations with the classical world. Lying on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean, the Levant was a crucial crossroads between the classical world of Greece and Rome and the kingdoms of the Near East. Home to the ancient peoples of Phoenicia, Ugarit, Canaan, Philistia, Jordan, Israel, and Judah, this region participated in a vibrant Bronze-Age network of trade that flourished for many centuries until a combination of warfare, migration and famine around 1200 BCE destroyed these palace societies. In the first millennium BCE, a Greek-Phoenician rivalry for control of colonies and seaborne trade routes as far west as Spain caused considerable conflict but also bore fruit in the diffusion of alphabetic scripts and cross-influences in literature, mythology, and the arts. The conquest of the Levant by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and its absorption into Rome in the first century BCE resulted in Greco-Roman style becoming the public face of institutional culture and Greek vying with Aramaic as the vernacular language. Rome, too, was transformed by the encounter, especially through its conflicts with Judaism and the early followers of Christ, which had tumultuous consequences for the Holy Land and the Western world. 

Eligibility

Applications are welcome from researchers of all nationalities who are working in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

Applicants who received their degree less than five years ago should apply for a postdoctoral fellowship.

Current Getty staff and members of their immediate family are not eligible for Scholar Grants. Recent recipients who have received a Getty Scholar award within the past three years may be removed from consideration.Terms

Getty Scholars may be in residence from three to nine months:

• Three-month residency: September to December, January to March, April to June: $17,200
• Six-month residency: September to March, January to June: $42,000
• Nine-month residency: September to June: $65,000

The grant also includes an office at the Getty Research Institute or the Getty Villa, an apartment in the Getty scholar housing complex, airfare to and from Los Angeles, and available healthcare option. These terms apply as of July 2018 and are subject to future changes.

Application Availability and Deadline

Complete application materials are accepted online only. The next deadline for submission of application materials is 5:00 p.m. (PT) October 1, 2019. 

Notification

Applicants are notified of the Getty Research Institute's decision approximately six months following the deadline.

Review Process

Getty Scholar Grants are awarded on a competitive basis. Applications are evaluated based on the following: (1) the overall quality of the application; (2) how the proposed project bears upon the annual research theme; (3) the applicant's past achievements; and (4) how the project would benefit from the resources at the Getty, including its library and collections.

How to Apply

Applicants are required to complete and submit the online Getty Scholar grant application form, along with the attachments described below, by the deadline.

• Project Proposal: Each application must include a description of the applicant's proposed plan for study and research (not to exceed five pages, typed and double-spaced). The description should indicate (1) how the project bears upon the scholar year theme and (2) how the project would be advanced by the resources at the Getty, including its library and collections.Curriculum Vitae
• Optional Writing Sample

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Inquiries

Please address inquiries to the following:

Attn: Getty Scholar Grants
Phone: (310) 440-7374
Email: researchgrants@getty.edu