Tara Kaufman (MA anticipated) has been awarded the William H, Truettner Graduate Fellowship to work with Dr. Eleanor Harvey, Senior Curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in the summer of 2019.  Her project, "Antartic Encounters: Perceiving Ecological Change in Frank Wilbert Stokes's Landscapes", an American artist who accompanied several scientific explorations to arctic regions. Stokes's representations of both Arctic and Antarctic landscapes raise critical questions regarding ecological implications of scientific and commercial exploration to regions that are now of urgent concern. Kaufman will consider his landscapes in the context of their being produced on the heels of the Hudson River School of painting, whose artists similarly embedded their landscapes with a sense of national progress. Kaufman hopes to use this time to write an article, and will be able to consult with scholars at the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Arctic Studies Center at the National Museum of Natural History.