Named in honor of philanthropist, civic leader, arts patron, and business executive Allen W. Clowes, the Clowes fellowship has been awarded annually to a fine arts scholar since 1998. Clowes was the son of the eminent chemist and research director of Eli Lilly, Dr. George H.A. Clowes, and Mrs. Edith Clowes, a leading figure in Indianapolis education and the arts. Clowes studied at Harvard University and became a Naval officer during World War II. His business career included specialization in oil investments and executive leadership of philanthropic, community, and arts organizations.
The fellowship was endowed by the Clowes Fund Inc., the family’s charitable trust where Clowes served as the President and Treasurer. The Fund’s primary goal is to perpetuate the care and public display of the Clowes Collection of art and a broad mandate to support education and the literary, fine, and performing arts.
| 1998–1999 | Jaroslav T. Folda | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land: 1187–1291 |
| 1999–2000 | Susan Langdon | University of Missouri, Columbia | Gender and Society in Early Iron Age Greece |
| 2000–2001 | Dominic M. Lopes | Indiana University, Kokomo | Life Drawing: Pictures, Perception and Value |
| 2001–2002 | Nicholas Frankel | Virginia Commonwealth University | The Discourse of Decoration: Ornament and Design in Victorian Britain |
| 2002–2003 | Annabel J. Wharton | Duke University | Selling Jerusalem: Towards an Historical Economy of Images |
| 2003–2004 | Carolina Bruzelius | Duke University | The Mendicant Challenge and the Cathedral Response: Lay Burial and its Impact on the Medieval City |
| 2004–2005 | Bruce Redford | Boston University | Dilettani: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England |
| 2005–2006 | Brenda Schildgen | University of California, Davis | Heritage or Heresy: Preservation and Destruction of the Cultural and Natural Environment |
| 2006–2007 | Zsusanna Gulásci | Northern Arizona University | Formation of Mediaeval Book Art in West and Central Asia |
| 2007–2008 | Isabel Wünsche | International University, Bremen, Germany | Organic Visions in Modernism: The Organic School of the Russian Avant-Garde |
| 2008–2009 | Nicholas Bock | University of Lausanne | About Titles |
| 2009–2010 | Irena Dżurkowa-Kossowska | Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw | Reinventing Historic Styles: Central European Art in the 1920s and 1930s |
| 2010–2011 | Lawrence Nees | University of Delaware | Essays in the Margins of Early Islamic Art |
| 2011–2012 | Susan Webster | College of William & Mary | The Conquest of European Architecture: Andean Masters and the Construction of Colonial Quito |
| 2012–2013 | Marcia Kupfer | Independent Scholar | From Panoramic Survey to Mirror Reflection: Art and Optics in the Hereford Mappa Mundi |
| 2013–2014 | Louise Rice | New York University | Conclusions: Art for the Academic Defense in Seventeenth-Century Rome |
| 2014–2015 | Bonna Wescoat | Emory University | The Sanctuary of the Great Gods |
| 2015–2016 | Kate Flint | University of Southern California | Flash! Photography, Writing, and Surprising Illumination |
| 2016–2017 | Nancy Wicker | University of Mississippi | Viking Arts in Scaninavia and across the Viking Diaspora: Patrons, Producers, and Consumers from the Fifth Through the Eleventh Centuries |
| 2017–2018 | Ann Reynolds | University of Texas at Austin | In Our Time |
| 2018–2019 | Weihong Bao | University of California, Berkeley | Background Matters: Set Design and the Art of Environment in Modern China |
| 2019–2020 | James van Dyke | University of Missouri, Columbia | The Social Production of Otto Dix |
| 2020–2021 | Mrinalini Rajagopalan | University of Pittsburgh | Marks She Made: The Art and Architecture of Begum Samru, 1803–1836 |
| 2021–2022 | Maggie M. Cao | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Painting and the Making of American Empire‚ 1830–1898 |
| 2022–2023 | Catherine Roach | Virginia Commonwealth University | The Shadow Museum: A History of the British Institution, 1805–1867 |
| 2023–2024 | Abigail Susik | Willamette University | Afrosurrealism and Anti-racism |
| 2024–2025 | Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis | Indiana University Bloomington | “To Rival the Temple of Solomon”: Splendid Churches and Bishops in Early Christianity |