TWO BARD PROFESSORS ARE AWARDED 2001 GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIPS
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-Two Bard College professors, Richard H. Davis and Amy Sillman, have been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. They join a number of other Bard faculty members who are past fellows of the Foundation, including André Aciman, Peggy Ahwesh, JoAnne Akalaitis, James Chace, Alan Cote, Larry Fink, Kenji Fujita, Peter Hutton, Elizabeth Kendall, Joel Kovel, Ann Lauterbach, Hsi-Huey Liang, Norman Manea, Jacob Neusner, Judy Pfaff, Yvonne Ranier, James Romm, Carolee Schneeman, Stephen Shore, Mona Simpson, Ed Smith, Joan Tower, and William Tucker.
This is the 77th year of the annual U. S. and Canadian competition for fellowships, whose winners this year include 183 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from over 2700 applicants. Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisers and are approved by the Foundation's Board of Trustees.
Richard H. Davis, associate professor of religion at Bard, received his fellowship for "Processions in medieval south India." Amy Sillman, visiting assistant professor of painting and a faculty member of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard, received her fellowship for painting.
Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The new fellows include writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists, and scholars in the humanities. Many of the fellows hold appointments in colleges and universities; 89 institutions are represented by one or more fellows.
Since 1925, according to its president Joel Conarroe, the Foundation has granted more than $198 million in fellowships to nearly 15,000 individuals. In this time of decreased funding for individuals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, the Guggenheim Fellowship program has assumed a greatly increased importance, and the Foundation is successfully raising funds to allow the appointment of a larger number of fellows each year. Scores of Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and eminent scientists appear on the roll of fellows, which includes Ansel Adams, Aaron Copland, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Isamu Noguchi, Linus Pauling, Paul Samuelson, Martha Graham, Philip Roth, Derek Walcott, James Watson, and Eudora Welty.
About the Fellows:
Richard H. Davis, who has been a faculty member at Bard since 1997, received a B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. from the University of Toronto. He has also taught at Yale University, University of Chicago, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a research associate at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies and secretary of the American Council for Southern Asian Art. His publications include Lives of Indian Images, winner of 1999 A. K. Coomaraswamy Prize; Ritual in an Oscillating Universe: Worshiping Siva in Medieval India; and "The Iconography of Ram's Chariot" in Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India. Articles by Davis have been included in History and Anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Ritual Studies, Journal of Oriental Research, and History of Religions. He is the editor of Images, Miracles, and Authority in Asian Religious Traditions. Davis is also the recipient of fellowships from Fulbright-Hays, Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Amy Sillman has been on the faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College since 1996 and is also visiting professor of painting at Bard. She received a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts and an M.F.A. from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions have been held in New York City at the Brent Sikkema Gallery, Casey Kaplan, Lipton Owens Company, and in India at Kanoria Centre for Arts. Her paintings have been included in numerous group exhibitions in the U. S. and Europe, including Brooklyn Museum of Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Monica Museum, and Cincinnati Center for Contemporary Art. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Joan Mitchell Foundation; grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts; and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award.
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(4.30.01)