FORT WORTH, TX. The Amon Carter Museum is pleased to announce its 2009 Davidson Family Fellow and the 2009 Innovative Teaching Fellow. Aaron Carico, a doctoral candidate at Yale University, is conducting research at the Carter this summer as the museum’s Davidson Family Fellow. Carico will collaborate with the museum to continue his dissertation research on the plantation from 1865 through the 1930s; he will utilize a wide spectrum of museum collections, including William Harnett’s Attention, Company!, several photography collections and library holdings.

The Amon Carter Museum’s Davidson Family Fellowship provides support for scholars who are working toward their Ph.D. or conducting postdoctoral level research. The topic of inquiry must pertain to the history of American art and relate to objects in the museum’s permanent collection. The program was established in 2000 by a generous grant from the Davidson Family Charitable Foundation.

Michael Acuff, an eighth-grade American history teacher at Brewer Middle School in the White Settlement ISD, is the Carter’s Innovative Teaching Fellow. Her 16 years of experience include teaching secondary world history, world geography, and U.S. and Texas history. Acuff has a long history of incorporating art into her lessons, including works from the Carter’s collection.

“The Innovative Teaching Fellowship offers the luxury of working with images, sculpture and graphic resources without parallel in the North Texas region,” Acuff wrote in her application essay. “Exploring the collection is an exhilarating prospect that no other venue can offer me.”

The Innovative Teaching Fellowship, underwritten by Fidelity Investments since its inception in 2004, recognizes an educator who has demonstrated exceptional creativity in using the visual arts in classroom teaching.