The Library Company’s Innovation Fellowship program invites artists, musicians, scholars, students, and writers to engage with collection items that merit fresh scrutiny. Fellows spend time with collections, with staff, and with each other, and develop creative responses—in whatever form they choose—to the designated collection material.

Dr. Uchenna Ngwe and Brent White, the Library Company’s 2022 Francis Johnson Innovation Fellows, are both musicians, performers, scholars, and educators—one British, one American, one working in the classical tradition, the other in the jazz tradition. They bring new and complementary perspectives to a major music manuscript by Francis Johnson (1792–1844)—one of the leading American musicians of the pre-Civil War era. Detailed information about their projects is available here.

The Innovation Fellowship Program is made possible by the generosity of our Founding Sponsor Dr. Randall M. Miller and Sustaining Sponsors Louise M. and Peter J. Kelly and Dr. John C. and Christine K. Van Horne.