Frequently Asked Questions
Fellowships
Who can apply for a fellowship?
The Kress Foundation supports a range of fellowships in art history, art conservation, art librarianship, art museum education and curation. For more information about the fellowship eligibility, review the Eligibility sections on our Fellowship pages.
How long after submitting my application will I hear the Foundation’s decision?
For History of Art Institutional Fellowships, notification is typically sent by the end of March.
For Conservation Fellowships and Interpretive Fellowships at Art Museums notification is usually sent four-to-six weeks after the all materials have been received.
Do I need to be ABD at the time of submission for the History of Art Institutional Fellowships?
You must be a Ph.D. candidate to apply for the History of Art Institutional Fellowship, but do not have to be ABD by the application deadline date (November 30), although we require that you have ABD status by the time the fellowship begins. If you are not ABD at the time of application, and are accepted for the fellowship, you are expected to notify the Foundation once your ABD status is confirmed.
Which transcript should I submit with my History of Art Institutional Fellowship application?
Submit an official transcript only from the university whose Ph.D. program you are currently attending. You do not need to include a transcript from any previous schools you attended, even if you received your M.A. from a different program.
Is it possible to obtain feedback on unsuccessful applications for Fellowships?
The Kress Foundation does not provide specific commentary or feedback beyond what is communicated in our notification emails. All Kress fellowship programs are highly competitive. Award decisions are based upon an array of considerations, including the merits of the individual application as we assess it vis-à-vis our mission, goals and current programs and the relative merits of applications within a given application pool, which may extend to scores of applications. In no way should our inability to support a given application be considered a comment on the worthiness of the work presented or the applying institution and project participants. It is not at all unusual for the Foundation to decline a fellowship application one year and to subsequently award a fellowship to the same applicant. For this reason, fellowship applicants are always encouraged to apply to Kress for support whenever they deem their efforts to be in alignment with our mission, goals and current programs.
Can individuals apply for a fellowship?
There are different application requirements for each fellowship.
History of Art Institutional Fellowships candidates must be nominated by their academic department and may then apply for the fellowship as individuals.
Conservation Fellowship applications must be submitted by the museum or conservation research facility that will host the fellowship.
Interpretive Fellowships at Art Museums applications must be submitted by the museum that will host the fellowship.
How many fellows may be nominated per University/Institution per year?
For the Conservation Fellowships and Interpretive Fellowships at Art Museums, each institution may have only one nominee for each fellowship except in instances in which a fellowship is expressly conceived as a paired fellowship.
For History of Art Institutional Fellowships, each university is limited to two (2) nominees per academic department. The nominees must be applying to different research centers.
For History of Art Institutional Fellowships, each university is limited to two (2) nominees per academic department. The nominees must be applying to different research centers.
I received a Kress fellowship last year. Will I receive a W-2 or similar statement for tax purposes?
No. The Kress Foundation is not required to report individual recipients of fellowships to the Internal Revenue Service. But fellowship recipients are required to claim the Kress fellowship on their tax returns in accordance with the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which places more accountability on award recipients. More information can be found on the IRS website: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/students.
Can an institution applying to host a Kress fellow enhance the fellowship stipend?
Yes. We assume that institutions applying for a Kress Conservation or Interpretive Fellowship know best how to ensure a competitive pool of individual applicants for a given fellowship opportunity while also ensuring an appropriate degree of parity with other professional opportunities at the same institution. An institution’s ability to enhance a fellowship stipend has no bearing however on the assessment of its application.
Does Kress award grants or fellowships to visual artists for study/travel/projects?
No. Individual visual artists may learn about grant opportunities at the New York Foundation for the Arts. Resources are also available at Candid and Creative Capital.
Grants
Does Kress support art history publications?
The Kress Foundation views its support of art history publishing as a key component of our grant programs and the Foundation seeks to ensure that the support we provide for publishing in art history has the greatest possible impact on the field; that we are supporting the most worthy publication projects in European art history; that we are serving, as equitably as possible, the entire range of fields (from antiquity to the early modern era) about which we care; that our support is being offered with transparency and across a level playing field with respect to the relevant publishers and prospective authors; and that the proposals we receive are being assessed as judiciously and in as well-informed a way as possible. With these goals in mind, the Foundation has established ongoing partnerships with key scholarly and professional organizations through which these organizations, themselves recipients of Kress funding, will administer our support for art history publishing in their key areas of interest, soliciting and assessing applications, and making appropriate awards.
Currently, the Foundation has partnerships in place with the Archaeological Institute of America, the International Center of Medieval Art and the Renaissance Society of America. The Foundation continues to accept applications for publications the scope of which fall outside the areas being supported in this way.
Does the Kress Foundation fund conservation analysis and treatment of art works?
The Foundation only supports conservation analysis and treatment of works from the distributed Kress Collection. Most such support is centralized at the Kress Program in Paintings Conservation at the Conservation Center of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.
See also Conservation Fellowships.
Does the Kress Foundation fund the documentation of museum object collections?
The Foundation is as a rule unable to support research, publication and scholarship focused on the object collections of individual art museums.
To whom can the Kress Foundation award its grants?
The Foundation can only award grants to organizations that are registered as non-profits with the United States’ Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
International applicants that are not registered with the IRS must identify a U.S. non-profit as the fiscal sponsor for their proposal prior to beginning the application process. Applicants must provide a copy of the fiscal sponsor organization’s IRS Determination Letter, to confirm its 501(c)3 status, as well as a letter from the fiscal sponsor confirming they have independently vetted the project, approved it as appropriate to their mission and are willing to accept and administer full or partial funding, if awarded, without taking overhead or indirect expenses.
The Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals.
International applicants that are not registered with the IRS must identify a U.S. non-profit as the fiscal sponsor for their proposal prior to beginning the application process. Applicants must provide a copy of the fiscal sponsor organization’s IRS Determination Letter, to confirm its 501(c)3 status, as well as a letter from the fiscal sponsor confirming they have independently vetted the project, approved it as appropriate to their mission and are willing to accept and administer full or partial funding, if awarded, without taking overhead or indirect expenses.
The Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals.
What are your deadlines for submission of an application?
The first step in the application process for all grant programs is the submission of a Letter of Inquiry (LOI). The Kress grantmaking portal will accept LOIs for 15 days at the beginning of the Foundation's three grant cycles.
If an applicant has been invited to submit a full proposal to the Foundation, they will receive an email directing them back to the grantmaking portal. Institutions must submit their complete grant applications by the deadlines below in order to be eligible for an award from the Kress Foundation.
| Grant Cycle | Grant Program | Portal Opens | LOI Submission Deadline |
| Spring | History of Art Conservation Digital Art History |
February 15 | March 1, 5:00PM EST |
| Fall |
History of Art |
August 15 | September 1, 5:00PM EST |
| Winter | History of Art Conservation |
December 1 | December 15, 5:00PM EST |
If an applicant has been invited to submit a full proposal to the Foundation, they will receive an email directing them back to the grantmaking portal. Institutions must submit their complete grant applications by the deadlines below in order to be eligible for an award from the Kress Foundation.
| Grant Cycle | Grant Program | Grant Application Deadline |
| Spring | History of Art Conservation Digital Art History |
April 1, 5:00PM EST |
| Fall | History of Art Conservation Digital Art History |
October 1, 5:00PM EST |
| Winter | History of Art Conservation |
January 15, 5:00PM EST |
Can my university/organization submit multiple applications for different projects simultaneously?
Yes. The Kress Foundation does not limit the number of applications that organizations may submit at any given time. Neither does the Foundation place a limit upon the number of grants that may be awarded to a single institution simultaneously.
Does the Kress Foundation allow for overhead/indirect costs to be taken out of grant funds?
The Foundation requires its funding be allocated toward direct costs only.
Is it possible to receive copies of past successful applications?
No, but we do make the Foundation’s Annual Reports available on this site. Each Annual Report includes a list of all the grants awarded in that year.
The guidelines request a detailed budget. How specific should we be?
The Kress Foundation requests detailed budgets because in some instances we may wish to identify specific components of a project that are particularly appropriate for Foundation support.
When will I hear of the Foundation’s decision regarding my grant request?
After the submission of an LOI, organizations invited to apply for a grant from the Kress Foundation will be notified via email within 7 business days of the LOI deadline (December 15, March 1, or September 1).
After the submission of a grant application, proposals are reviewed and applicants are typically informed of the Foundation's decision within four to six weeks of the grant deadline (January 15, April 1, or October 1).
After the submission of a grant application, proposals are reviewed and applicants are typically informed of the Foundation's decision within four to six weeks of the grant deadline (January 15, April 1, or October 1).
Is it possible to obtain feedback or reviewers’ comments on unsuccessful applications for Grants?
The Kress Foundation does not provide specific commentary or feedback beyond what is communicated in our notification letters. All Kress grant programs are highly competitive. Award decisions are based upon an array of considerations, including the merits of the individual application as we assess it vis-à-vis our mission, goals and current programs and the relative merits of applications within a given application pool, which may extend to scores of applications. In no way should our inability to support a given application be considered a comment on the worthiness of the work presented or the applying institution and project participants.
Can I resubmit my application in the next grant cycle?
Due to the number of projects that are submitted to the Kress Foundation each quarter, all decisions are final and grant applications cannot be resubmitted.
Where can I find organizations to apply to if my project is not appropriate for Kress support?
Candid is an excellent online resource with a database of grant makers and other helpful information for those seeking funding.
Does Kress award grants or fellowships to visual artists for study/travel/projects?
No. Individual visual artists can learn about grant and funding opportunities at the New York Foundation for the Arts. Resources are also available at Candid and Creative Capital.
The Kress Collection
How do I obtain a reproduction of, or the rights to reproduce, a work in the Kress Collection?
The Kress Foundation has implemented an open access policy for the digital images of works in the Kress Collection it believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are available for download on our site, free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial. While in accordance with our understanding of US copyright law users do not need to contact the Foundation, or the institutional repository where the public domain art object in question is held, for permission to use these images, both the Foundation and the museums that collectively steward the Kress Collection welcome inquiries about the individual works of art in the Kress Collection.
What inspired Kress to make his art collection a “Gift to the Nation”?
In December 1961, the National Geographic magazine devoted its cover article to “The Kress Collection: A Gift to the Nation.” This inspired title reflects Samuel H. Kress’s goal of bringing his vast art collection – and by means of it, European art – to the American people nationwide. Today, nearly 90 museums and other collections collectively steward the more than 3,000 works that together constitute the distributed Kress Collection. To learn more about the distribution of the Collection, please see the History of the Kress Collection and the Kress Legacy Timeline.
How is the Kress Collection's provenance text formatted?
The provenance for a work of art in the Kress Collection is listed in chronological order, beginning with the earliest known owner. Life dates, if known, are enclosed in brackets. The names of dealers, auction houses, or agents are enclosed in parentheses to distinguish them from private owners. Relationships between owners and methods of transactions are indicated by punctuation: a semicolon is used to indicate that the work passed directly between two owners, and a period is used to separate two owners if a direct transfer did not occur or is not known to have occurred. Footnotes are used to document or clarify information.
Whom should I contact about conserving a work of art in my institution's Kress Collection?
Please contact Shan Kuang, Associate Conservator for the Kress Program in Paintings Conservation, Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University at shan.kuang@nyu.edu.
Are Kress Collection works available for loan by other academic or municipal museums?
Every museum with works from the Kress Collection has their own loan policies. Please contact the museum directly about borrowing an artwork(s) for an exhibition or educational program.
The Kress Foundation is interested in having the Kress Collection serve the educational needs of academic and municipal museums around the country. In a recent development, the Foundation launched an effort to ascertain how many works in the Kress Collection might be made available for short- or long-term loan to other museums, especially campus museums that seek to support the study and teaching of early modern European art history and especially the global Renaissance. Many museums, of course, lack representative works of that era, and others that do have relevant collections often welcome the opportunity to enrich them with loans, especially in response to curricular needs. Our colleagues at the Georgia Museum of Art (University of Georgia) have been surveying the entire Kress Collection in order to learn what percentage of the distributed Kress collection is not on permanent display; which works might lend themselves, from a conservation perspective, to being shared with other museums; and above all, in what ways the potential creation of what we have tentatively called a “Kress Loan Network” might advance the Foundation’s mission to responsively support the study and appreciation of European art, especially in our colleges and universities. We are most grateful to William U. Eiland, Director of the Georgia Museum of Art, and his colleagues for carrying out this study on our behalf. And we look forward to sharing more information as it is available.
The Kress Foundation is interested in having the Kress Collection serve the educational needs of academic and municipal museums around the country. In a recent development, the Foundation launched an effort to ascertain how many works in the Kress Collection might be made available for short- or long-term loan to other museums, especially campus museums that seek to support the study and teaching of early modern European art history and especially the global Renaissance. Many museums, of course, lack representative works of that era, and others that do have relevant collections often welcome the opportunity to enrich them with loans, especially in response to curricular needs. Our colleagues at the Georgia Museum of Art (University of Georgia) have been surveying the entire Kress Collection in order to learn what percentage of the distributed Kress collection is not on permanent display; which works might lend themselves, from a conservation perspective, to being shared with other museums; and above all, in what ways the potential creation of what we have tentatively called a “Kress Loan Network” might advance the Foundation’s mission to responsively support the study and appreciation of European art, especially in our colleges and universities. We are most grateful to William U. Eiland, Director of the Georgia Museum of Art, and his colleagues for carrying out this study on our behalf. And we look forward to sharing more information as it is available.
S.H. Kress & Co. Stores
Does the Kress Foundation have information about the Kress Stores on file?
No. The architectural archives related to the Kress stores are housed at the National Building Museum; 401 F Street NW; Washington, DC 20001; 202-272-2448.
General
Where can I go for information on the Kress Family and/or Kress Family properties?
The Kress Foundation has no formal relationship with the Kress family.
May I get a digital copy of the Kress Foundation logo to acknowledge the Foundation's support?
Please send your request in an email to info@kressfoundation.org including where the logo will appear and the ideal format that you’d like to receive the logo in.
How can I find other foundations that support projects similar to mine?
Candid is an excellent online resource with a database of grant makers and other helpful information for those seeking funding.