Support for the Extension of Graduate Student Funding

The faculty in History of Art unanimously support the call for graduate student funding put forward in the History department’s letter of June 1, 2020. https://history.jhu.edu/2020/06/05/call-for-extension-of-graduate-student-funding/

We affirm, for the reasons outlined in History’s letter, that support must be universally applied across the graduate student community. 

Like History, our students rely on physical access to libraries and archives, as well as access to seeing works of art and architecture in person, at locations that have had severely or entirely restricted access due to the pandemic, including museums, galleries, private collections, artists’ studios, and archaeological sites. The loss of archival, library, collections, and site-specific research has, alongside other challenges facing many of our students, significantly extended the time that History of Art graduate students will need to complete their degrees. The steps outlined in the History department’s letter would provide a measure of support for these students as they continue to pursue the kind of research our institution is rightly proud of. We appreciate that this is a difficult time, and that conversations related to this support are underway; we are thankful for these efforts, and urge the university to extend this support to our graduate students in History of Art and in departments across the university.