WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian American Art Museum announces the appointment of 15 new fellows for the 2011–2012 academic year. The museum’s program grants awards for scholars and students to pursue research at the museum, including senior, predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships. The 2011–2012 museum fellows are: • Anna Arabindan-Kesson—Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow, Yale University; “Threads of Empire: Art and the Cotton Trade in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, 1780–1900” • Sarah Beetham—Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, University of Delaware; “Sculpting the Citizen Soldier: Reproduction and National Memory, 1865–1917” • Susanneh Bieber—Postdoctoral Fellow, Freie Universitaet Berlin; “Construction Sites: American Artists Engage the Built Environment” • Alan C. Braddock—Senior Fellow, Temple University; “Gun Vision: The Ballistic Imagination in American Art from Homer to O’Kee