Four faculty members have been named Syracuse University Art Museum Faculty Fellows for the 2026-27 academic year. Now in its fifth year, the program pairs faculty with museum curators and staff to build object-based teaching into courses across the University. The fellows integrate the museum’s collection into their courses and ask students to consider how a photograph or a hand-thrown sake bottle offers its own kind of insight, much like a passage in a textbook.
The fellows this year come from four very different corners of the University including law, economics, music composition and geography, and each is putting the collection to a different use. Together, their projects show just how many doors the museum’s collection can open.
“This year’s cohort shows just how interdisciplinary the uses of the museum’s collection can be and the possibilities it holds for object-based teaching across wildly different, yet interconnected, fields,” says Emily Dittman, director of the Syracuse University Art Museum. “The same collection, in the hands of these faculty, provides opportunities for four completely different conversations. That is at the heart of this program: showing that the museum belongs to every discipline.”