We would like to congratulate Félix Zamora-Gómez who was selected as UMMA's Irving Stenn Jr. Fellow in Public and Digital Humanities and Museum Pedagogy for the 2022-23 academic year. This fellowship combines work in academic art museum pedagogy and digital humanities. 

Zamora-Gómez will work with UMMA University Learning and Programs (ULP) to create and facilitate learning experiences across a range of academic disciplines through creative engagement with UMMA’s collection and exhibitions. He will collaborate with university faculty to design and lead experiences that advance core conversations and projects in their classes and to promote new and creative engagements with UMMA across campus. 

“I am beyond excited for this opportunity,” Zamora-Gómez said. “This is the first time this fellowship is awarded to a graduate student from outside the History of Art department and I am very proud to have been selected for it.”

As a Fellow, Zamora-Gómez will be an intellectual and creative partner to UMMA staff in developing teaching and learning resources that support U-M courses. He will fill these roles through editorial and content creation projects for UMMA’s online spaces. 

The Fellow will also be assigned as a curatorial assistant to an UMMA exhibition project that is already in development and work closely with an UMMA curator on that project. Through these opportunities, Zamora-Gómez will gain museum experience and be introduced to the creative and business cultural aspects of museums. 

“My background is in Art History and before moving to the US I worked at the Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, a contemporary art museum in the Madrid area,” Zamora-Gómez said. “Soon after becoming a graduate student, I enrolled and completed the Museum Studies Program, thanks to which I was able to go back to Spain to do on-site research in Madrid for my dissertation project. Due to all of these aspects, I have always been very interested in the idea of pursuing a professional career in museums. I sincerely hope this will be the first step in that professional path!”

There are many core fellowship activities that Zamora-Gómez must undertake as a part of his new position. Some of these include: supporting university learning with UMMA collection and exhibitions, designing and implementing a capstone teaching/learning/research project, and attending weekly Public Experience and Learning team meetings and Curatorial Workshops.

As a doctoral candidate in the RLL department, Zamora-Gómez’s work focuses on visual culture and the production of historical discourse. He is currently working on his dissertation which studies architecture, museum exhibitions, contemporary art, and film. Zamora-Gómez has also taught courses at U-M, such as Spanish 296, 295, and 103. 

“As I embark on the last year of my PhD, this fellowship represents an exciting opportunity to connect my current work with my academic and professional background,” Zamora-Gómez said.

The Fellowship was endowed by U-M law school alumnus and longtime UMMA supporter Irving Stenn, Jr. in 2014 – allowing him to link his passion for art with his desire to help talented students at Michigan.