Louis Armstrong House Museum

Museum Fellows Program

The Museum Fellows Program provides an opportunity to gain experience in all areas of the operation of the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Fellows will lead historic house tours, preserve and interpret primary source materials from the extensive Research Collections, participate in membership campaigns, and network with professionals from NYC arts, museum, and archival organizations. Fellows will complete projects with quantifiable results and be exposed to all areas of operation. Throughout the program, Fellows will actively develop their knowledge about Louis Armstrong, jazz, and 20th-century history and culture. The Museum Fellows Program is underwritten by a generous grant from Fund II Foundation. The Fellows Program runs from Sept. 2, 2020 to June 30, 2021. Fellows shall serve at the museum for 35 hours per week. Fellows are responsible for their own housing and living expenses. The program provides a $30,000 stipend, paid bi-weekly.

Eligibility & Selection

The Museum Fellows Program is open to African-American Studies Majors, History Majors, Art Majors, Music Majors, Library Science Majors, and Humanities Majors about to graduate or recently graduated from historically black colleges and universities and other institutions that have an evident interest in the dissemination of African-American heritage. We especially welcome applications from communities that are historically underrepresented in the museum field. Fellows will be selected through a competitive application process.

To Apply

To be considered for the Program, an applicant should send, as PDF files,  (1) a cover letter explaining why the applicant wishes to be a Fellow, (2) a current curriculum vitae, and (3) names, telephone numbers, and emails of three references to Fellows@LouisArmstrongHouse.org. Applications must be received by February 29, 2020.  All applicants will be notified of the Search Committee’s decision.

Louis Armstrong House Museum

The great musician Louis Armstrong and his wife Lucille (a Cotton Club dancer) purchased a modest frame house in Corona, Queens, New York City in 1943 and lived there for the rest of their lives. Today their home, perfectly preserved, is a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark open to the public six days per week and visited by people from all over the world. LAHM also holds the world’s largest research archives for any jazz musician. Many of the materials are rare or unique. The archives comprises 17,000 photographs, 700 home-recorded reel-to-reel tapes, 500 hand-decorated tape boxes, 155 scrapbooks, 240 leaves of autobiographical manuscript, 4 linear feet of correspondence, 30 linear feet of personal papers, 85 linear feet of LP and 78 phonodiscs, 55 canisters of 16 mm film, 120 paintings, posters, and works on paper, 250 artifacts, 860 musical scores and sheet music, 5 gold-plated trumpets and 14 trumpet mouthpieces. The historic house contains its own remarkable collection of paintings, prints, exquisite home furnishings, and objets d’art.

The Louis Armstrong House Museum is a cultural center of Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY). CUNY is the nation’s largest public urban university.