Student Spotlight: Mariella Gonzalez Molina '26
2024-2025 Jameson Fellow for American Painting & Decorative Arts
As the recipient of the undergraduate Jameson Fellowship for American Painting and Decorative Arts, rising junior Mariella Gonzalez Molina will spend the next academic year as a researcher at the Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and also receive a $15,000 stipend.
Double majoring in Art History and History, Mariella describes what inspired her to apply for the fellowship:
“The decorative arts are of special interest to me as it is through them that the everyday practices and rituals of the past are preserved and illuminated. Touring the remarkable collection of American decorative arts and paintings at Bayou Bend in January 2023, I became engrossed in the culture and heritage presented by each period room. As I viewed each delicately arranged textile, each precisely placed ceramic, and each elaborately carved piece of furniture, I could not help but wonder about the multiple uses and travels each object potentially endured.
The stimulative nature of decorative arts when it comes to envisioning a past so familiar yet so different from our present-day is what makes them an ideal educational tool to share American heritage and history. It is this fascination with objects’ stories and enthusiasm for the educational power of decorative arts that led me to apply for Jameson Fellowship at Bayou Bend.”