PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Two Brown University faculty members have won fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the organization announced Thursday, April 9, 2015.

Steven Lubar, professor of American studies, history of art and architecture, and history, and Dr. Christine Montross, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior in the Alpert Medical School, were two of the 175 awardees for 2015, selected from among more than 3,100 applicants.

Montross, a writer as well as a psychiatrist at Butler Hospital, said the fellowship will support her next book.

“I’m thrilled to have been given an award that has such a rich history and deep commitment to scholarship and artmaking,” she said. “It’s simultaneously humbling and inspiring to be in this cohort of big thinkers. The fellowship will allow me to dive deeply into my current nonfiction book project, which explores the intersections of mental illness and the criminal justice system.”

Lubar, who teaches in Brown's Public Humanities Program, studies museums, material culture, and digital humanities. The Guggenheim fellowship will support his work on a book about the history and future of museums.

“It means a lot,” he said. “[The book] builds off the exhibit that I worked on with a group of students last year, “The Lost Museum” project in Rhode Island Hall. It starts from that museum and explores some of the big philosophical issues around museums — how you tell stories, how you use artifacts, what you save and how long you save things.”

Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation, praised the new class of fellows.

“These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best,” he said in a news release. “It’s an honor to be able to support these individuals to do the work they were meant to do.”