Juliet Huang awarded two-year Kress Fellowship to research in Leiden

Juliet to take the study of clothing choices in Dutch society in hand over the next two years

Juliet Huang has been awarded a Kress History of Art Institutional Fellowship affiliated with the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) that will commence September 2024 and allow her to study in the Netherlands until September 2026. This fellowship will support research for her dissertation “Dressing the Speaking Hand: Fashion Accessories around the Hand in the 17th-Century Netherlands.” This dissertation explores the meaningfulness of clothing the hand in Dutch mercantile society using an object-based, process-oriented approach. Rather than treating the fashion accessories around the hand as mere symbols of wealth, status, or marriage, Juliet will conduct first-hand object analyses to see how gloves were actively used in marriage and familial settings to convey emotions and materialize memories. Analyzing surviving historical material may yield important insights of objects’ production technique and tactile qualities including weight and texture. Through the prism of materiality in combination with visual representations, Juliet's dissertation explores how fashion could enact social distinction for the Dutch middle-class elites and allowed for their creativity, experimentation, and transgression. 

Congratulations Juliet!