The Met Launches Paid Fellowship Program for Underrepresented Scholars

In a bold and essential move to reshape the future of the museum profession, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the creation of a groundbreaking, $5 million fully endowed fellowship program. This initiative is designed explicitly to recruit, support, and mentor scholars from historically underrepresented communities, aiming to drastically diversify the pipeline of future curators, conservators, and museum educators.

The new initiative, named the Catalyst Fellowship Program, will provide ten fully funded, two-year positions annually. Crucially, unlike many traditional, unpaid museum internships that pose insurmountable financial barriers for many candidates, the Catalyst Fellowship offers a highly competitive salary, comprehensive health benefits, and a generous dedicated research travel stipend.

Fellows will not be siloed into a single department. Instead, the program features a rigorous rotational structure, allowing participants to gain hands-on, high-level experience across multiple museum divisions, including curatorial research, exhibition design, provenance investigation, and institutional advancement. This holistic approach ensures fellows emerge with a comprehensive understanding of complex museum operations.

To support the professional growth of the cohort, The Met is partnering with leading universities and cultural institutions across the country to provide an intensive mentorship network. Each Catalyst Fellow will be paired with both an internal senior curator and an external academic advisor, ensuring they receive robust, multi-faceted guidance as they navigate the critical early stages of their careers.

The launch of the Catalyst Fellowship Program represents a fundamental shift in The Met's institutional priorities. Museum leadership has openly acknowledged that in order for The Met to truly reflect and serve a global audience, the staff making the critical decisions regarding what is collected, exhibited, and preserved must itself be incredibly diverse, equitable, and inclusive.