Students who are admitted to any of Princeton's humanities doctoral programs are always offered financial assistance in the form of a fellowship and/or assistantship. The University Graduate School will offer Department of Art and Archaeology students a five-year program of full tuition, including health insurance, and an annual twelve-month stipend (including the summer months, as long as academic work is performed).

In addition to regular university support, the department has several endowment funds of its own that can provide limited support for research away from Princeton if external fellowships do not come through.

Travel funding from the department’s Spears Fund is available to every graduate student in our department. Each enrolled student is entitled to one travel grant after successful completion of two years of coursework to be used during their period of enrollment (including DCE status). Students often begin to use this fund during the summer or breaks to visit museums or archives to test out a dissertation topic. This Spears travel grant is used for any type of transportation: air, rail, car rental, bus, metro, etc. Graduate students are also entitled to funding for photographs and/or a digital camera; this may be used at any time after the general exams but before enrollment ends. Applications must be endorsed by the dissertation adviser and approved by a faculty committee. Spears funding is not awarded on the basis of need or relative merit.

For incoming students, the department will provide funding for a Princeton summer language course. For enrolled students, the department will fund the costs to attend professional meetings (including travel, hotel, and registration fees); travel to special collections and archives for research; and seminar trips with a faculty member to New York, Philadelphia, and/or Washington, DC, museums and galleries. All first-year enrolled graduate students receive a fund to purchase books. Funding for books is to be used exclusively for course textbooks or books related to the dissertation research. For students who have won outside grants (CASVA, Kress, Dedalus, DAAD) the department will top up the stipend for research in the Euro-zone.  Finally, the department will offer students who are post-enrolled, on a competitive basis, a one-semester finishing grant.

Students may also augment their stipends with teaching and research assistantships. Although we do not require students to T.A., most do it at least once during their time here; it is an important part of a student’s formation as a future professor. Teaching assistantships are awarded on the basis of student preparation and departmental need. Financial need does not have to be demonstrated.