The Institute unlocks the potential of Still’s extraordinary gift, enabling artists and thought leaders the freedom to innovate and transform our present and future. The Institute Residential Fellowship Program at the Clyfford Still Museum focuses on three pillars of study: art; education; and social enterprise. The Early Childhood Education Fellow will develop projects that would benefit from and contribute to the practices in early childhood education pursued by the Learning and Engagement team at the Clyfford Still Museum. Proposed projects would advance the development of new possibilities at the intersections of art museums, education, and early learning.
2026 Early Childhood Institute Fellow
Dr. Jon M. Wargo is a literacy researcher, teacher educator, and learning scientist. An associate professor at the University of Michigan, he reconceptualizes the role of media and technology as they intersect with children’s critical literacy learning. Leveraging young people’s ingenuity as signs and sights for learning, his teaching and scholarship focus on understanding and sustaining the heterogeneity of human sensemaking in the contexts of creative inquiry, participatory design, and the arts. An award-winning researcher and nationally recognized scholar, Wargo won career achievement awards from the Literacy Research Association and the National Council for Teachers of English. He is a former NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow and, most recently, received the 2025 AERA Division K Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award. A former early childhood educator, Wargo earned a PhD in curriculum, instruction, and teacher education from Michigan State University and a B.A. in English and Gender Studies from Indiana University-Bloomington.
About the Early Childhood Education Fellowship
Past Early Childhood Education Fellows
Learn more about the past Early Childhood Fellows and their projects.
- Kyong-Ah Kwon, PhD, 2025
- Dr. Michael A. Barla, 2024
- Dr. Heather Kaplan, 2024
Early Childhood Advisory Board Members
- Cristina Gillanders, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education, School of Education and Human Development, University of Colorado, Denver
- Sharon Shaffer, Founding Director, Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center, Routledge series editor, Global Perspectives on Children in Museums
About Early Childhood Education at the Still
Learn more about Early Childhood Education at the Clyfford Still Museum by downloading this .pdf.