Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Fellowships 

Helen Frankenthaler was committed to supporting higher education in the arts through her teaching, lectures, and charitable giving. In 2018, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation honored this legacy by launching a multiyear initiative that established one-time endowments of $500,000 at nine universities with outstanding MFA and Art History PhD programs (listed below). From these endowments, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Fellowships are awarded annually to high-achieving students identified by faculty members. Recipients—54 to date—rank among the leading voices of the next generation of artists and art historians.  

MFA Programs 

• Columbia University  

• School of the Art Institute of Chicago 

• University of California Los Angeles

• Yale University

PhD Programs 

• City University of New York 

• Harvard University 

• New York University 

• Stanford University 

• University of Chicago 

Smithsonian American Art Museum 

Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship 

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship was established in 2023 through a $2 million endowment gift to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Research and Scholars Center. As the leading program in American Art Scholarship, SAAM’s fellowships seek to advance the field by fostering emerging and established scholars appointed by the Smithsonian’s Office of Academic Appointments.  

Michelle Donnelly was selected as the inaugural recipient of SAAM’s Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. Donnelly previously held fellowships at the Menil Drawing Institute and the Whitney Museum of American Art and is a PhD candidate in Art History at Yale University. Her dissertation, “Spatialized Impressions: American Printmaking Outside the Workshop, 1935–1975,” examines “American women artists and artists of color [who] expanded the parameters of printmaking outside the traditional site of the workshop from 1935 to 1975,” including Ruth Asawa, David Hammons, Sari Dienes, Matsusaburo “George” Hibi, and Caroline Durieux.