Summer Institute is what Fellows often refer to as “decorative arts boot-camp.” It is held in August of Fellows’ first year and is meant to be an introductory course to Decorative Arts and Material Culture Study. The main goal of the course is to expose Fellows to the resources at both Winterthur and the University [...]
Yes. Because Winterthur began as a country estate several miles outside Wilmington, Delaware, students and faculty find it necessary to have a car. Public transportation is not convenient and timely enough for students to use regularly. Most students move to Delaware or the surrounding area shortly before Summer Institute—the introductory core course held in August. [...]
Yes! It is our hope that students from far and wide apply to the Program—as students and faculty learn from each other. Whatever your background, it is our belief that you will find something that fascinates you inside and outside the Winterthur collections. Additionally, the University of Delaware has an outstanding Office for Center for [...]
Yes! We encourage you to. Because Material Culture is a hybrid discipline, with intellectual roots in archaeology, art history, architecture, anthropology, history and literature, the Program welcomes everyone who has an interest in the social significance of objects. Winterthur is dedicated to facilitating innovative research, and an integral part of that is welcoming new voices [...]
The Program encourages close analysis of all objects to uncover multiple and diverse meanings. Although Winterthur’s collections are famous for their extraordinary decorative arts objects, a large portion of the museum’s object collections relate to BIPOC experience and history. Additionally, the collection has many objects related to women’s, children’s, and elders’ histories. The University of [...]
Winterthur Fellows treat fine art as material culture. As such, one of the connoisseurship topics students study is prints and paintings. During this class, students are taught to analyze the materials that went into creating a piece of fine art, as well as the objects depicted in a given piece. Other connoisseurship topics examine different [...]
Fellows receive guidance on selecting their thesis advisors during the first year of study. Students select their thesis advisor from Winterthur Museum or University of Delaware faculty who meet the University’s qualifications for guiding an MA thesis. With experts in all different sub-fields of material culture and the decorative arts, we are confident that every [...]
Students are not required to use objects, documents or art from the Winterthur collection for their thesis. Although we know that there are an endless number of possibilities for thesis topics in the Winterthur collections, we encourage students to examine as many objects as possible, both inside and outside of the Winterthur collection. As long [...]
“American” refers to the continents of the Americas, rather than simply the United States. Winterthur’s library and object collections contain items from North, Central, and South America. People, ideas, and objects move, entangling them in habitats and global communities. As such, in classes where students are utilizing Winterthur’s collection, professors require that students examine the [...]
No. The goal of the program is to teach analytical skills, provide content knowledge, and develop conceptual thinking. After training in object analysis, Winterthur students can apply these skills to any objects, no matter the time period and Fellows’ thesis topics can relate to any time period of the student’s choosing. While the connoisseurship classes primarily utilize Winterthur’s object collections [...]