UMMA and the U-M History of Art Department have selected Robert Morrissey as the Irving Stenn, Jr. Fellow for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Endowed in 2014 by longtime UMMA supporter Irving Stenn, Jr. (BA ’52, JD ’55), this fellowship is designed to nurture promising young scholars by exposing them to career paths in the museum field. 

Morrissey is a PhD candidate in the U-M History of Art Department, working on the tentatively titled dissertation “Icons of Sacred Youths in Medieval Japan, 1185-1573”. His work examines depictions of Buddhist divinities in the guise of chigo, or sacred male youths who worked in monastic settings, serving senior Buddhist monks. As chigo were the subject of male-male romance narratives and participants in medieval Buddhist sex rituals, most scholarly attention focuses on chigo in relation to issues of gender and sexuality. However, Morrissey’s work examines the diverse meanings that these figures generated in Buddhist painting beyond sexual interpretations, and includes political revisionism, funerary and memorial functions, and hagiographies. 

“My family is proud to know that such a great individual has received the Stenn Fellowship,” Irving Stenn, Jr. said. “He has great promise to the museum and the community. I look forward to working with him."
 
For his time at UMMA, Morrissey said he’s looking forward to working with the museum to forge closer connections with other departments on campus and local communities.
 
“I’m honored to have been chosen as the Irving Stenn, Jr. Fellow for this academic year. I am excited to be part of UMMA’s continued efforts to bring a greater diversity of perspectives and voices to the museum, and making art accessible to those from a variety of backgrounds,” Morrissey said.
 
For the 2019-2020 academic year, Morrissey was the Freer Fellow at the Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery where he worked on doctoral research focusing on their collection. Morrissey holds an MA in East Asian Art History from the University of Kansas and previously interned with Dr. Natsu Oyobe, UMMA Curator of Asian Art, from 2017 to 2019.