Inaugural Day Scholarship for Art History recipient named
BA (Hons) and LLB graduate Millie Singh is the inaugural recipient of the Oroya and Melvin Day Postgraduate Scholarship for Art History (the Day Scholarship). The Day Scholarship, worth $25,000, will allow Millie to take a break from her successful law career to follow her passion by studying a Master of Arts in Art History at the Courtauld Institute in London.
Melvin Day was the first New Zealander to study at the Courtauld Institute in 1963—56 years later Millie will follow in his footsteps. The Day Scholarship has been established to enable Victoria University of Wellington Art History graduates to undertake postgraduate studies overseas.
“We are well aware of the financial challenges that many students face,” says Professor Sarah Leggott, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. “Scholarships like this one are an incredibly important means of enabling talented New Zealanders access to the opportunities that postgraduate education offers, which can be truly transformational.”
For Millie, it is an exciting new step. “I feel very honoured to have won this award, especially being the first recipient, and extremely grateful for the generosity of the Trust,” says Millie. “I’m excited to spend a year studying what I’m interested in and hopefully on my return I will be able to grow my career in a way that combines both my law and art history backgrounds.”
Professor Geoffrey Batchen of the University’s Art History programme is confident that Millie will do equally as well at the Courtauld Institute as she did in Wellington. "Millie was an exceptional undergraduate student at Wellington, not only scoring very high grades in all her classes but also gaining valuable experience as a volunteer at the Adam Art Gallery, and as a participant in an Honours class during which she co-curated an exhibition for the Gallery,” he says.
For the Trustees of the Oroya and Melvin Day Charitable Trust, Millie was an exceptional candidate. “We are delighted to support a student of her calibre. Oroya and Melvin would have been delighted in Millie’s application and her choice in studying at the Courtauld Institute,” says Trustee Mark Hutchins-Pond.
The poetic alignment of Millie and Melvin’s study at the Courtauld Institute is almost fateful. Millie applied for multiple universities in England and the United States, gaining acceptance into five others including University of Oxford, Stony Brook University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “I chose the Courtauld Institute because of its specialist Art History focus and small class sizes. It offers a more immersive programme than the other courses I looked at.”
Millie will take up the Day Scholarship in October.