Louis Armstrong House Museum Curatorial Fellows Program

Curatorial Fellows Program

The Curatorial Fellows Program will provide direct experience in preserving and interpreting photographs, sound recordings, manuscripts, scrapbooks, and other primary source materials, and in giving historic house tours to various populations and evaluating techniques of interpretation.  Fellows will assess material culture and decorative arts, especially as they relate to African-American heritage. They will visit sister African-American sites in New York City and compare their programs and services to LAHM’s programs. Fellows will work directly with senior curatorial staff.  Fellows will also be able to access the rich cultural legacy of New York City and most especially of Queens (the most diverse county in the USA with more than 170 languages spoken daily).  The Curatorial Fellows Program is underwritten by a generous grant from Fund II Foundation.

The Fellows Program runs from Sept. 1, 2017 to July 31, 2018.  Fellows shall serve at the museum for 35 hours per week.  Fellows are responsible for their own housing and living expenses.  The program provides a $30,000 stipend, paid bi-weekly.

Eligibility & Selection

The Curatorial Fellows Program is open to African-American History Studies Majors, History Majors, Art Majors, Music Majors, Library Science Majors, and Humanity Majors currently enrolled in historically black colleges and universities and other institutions that have an evident interest in the curatorship of African-American heritage. The program is also open to recent graduates of such programs.  We especially welcome applications from communities that are historically under-represented in the museum field.  Fellows will be selected through a competitive application process.

To Apply

To be considered for the Program, an applicant should send, as PDF files,  (1) a cover letter explaining why the applicant wishes to be a Fellow, (2) a current curriculum vitae, and (3) names, telephone numbers, and emails of three references to Fellows@LouisArmstrongHouse.org. Applications must be received by – Saturday, December 31,  2017.  All applicants will be notified of the Search Committee’s decision.

Louis Armstrong House Museum

The great musician Louis Armstrong and his wife Lucille (a Cotton Clubdancer) purchased a modest frame house in Corona, Queens, New York City in 1943 and lived there for the rest of their lives. Today their home, perfectly preserved, is a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark open to the public six days per week and visited by people from all over the world.  LAHM also holds the world’s largest research archives for any jazz musician.  Many of the materials are rare or unique.  The archives comprises 17,000 photographs, 700 home-recorded reel-to-reel tapes, 500 hand-decorated tape boxes, 155 scrapbooks, 240 leaves of autobiographical manuscript, 4 linear feet of correspondence, 30 linear feet of personal papers, 85 linear feet of LP and 78 phonodiscs, 55 canisters of 16 mm film, 120 paintings, posters, and works on paper, 250 artifacts, 860 musical scores and sheet music, 5 gold-plated trumpets and 14 trumpet mouthpieces.  The historic house contains its own remarkable collection of paintings, prints, exquisite home furnishings, and objets d’art.

The Louis Armstrong House Museum is a cultural center of Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY).  CUNY is the nation’s largest public urban university.