THREE BARD PROFESSORS AWARDED 2002 GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIPS Fellowships awarded to composer Richard Teitelbaum and photographers Mitch Epstein and Tanya Marcuse

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-Three Bard College faculty members-photographers Mitch Epstein and Tanya Marcuse, and composer Richard Teitelbaum-have been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. They will join a number of other Bard faculty members who are past fellows of the Foundation, including Peggy Ahwesh, JoAnne Akalaitis, James Chace, Alan Cote, Richard H. Davis, 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, Amy Sillman, Mona Simpson, Ed Smith, Joan Tower, and William Tucker.

This is the 78th year of the annual U. S. and Canadian competition for fellowships, whose winners this year include 184 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from 2,845 applicants for awards totaling $6,750,000. Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisers and are approved by the Foundation's Board of Trustees.

Tanya Marcuse, a member of the faculty at Simon's Rock College of Bard and Bard College, received her fellowship to photograph historical underclothes and armor in the United States, England, and France; she plans to make the project into a book. Mitch Epstein, an associate professor of photography at Bard, received his fellowship for work on Family Business, a film and photographic project about his father and the demise of the family furniture store. Richard Teitelbaum, professor of music at Bard, received his fellowship for an opera based on a historical story dealing with issues of Jewish-Muslim identity, apropos (he says) of the "current and apparently eternal crisis." He plans to travel to Turkey, Greece, and Jerusalem to research the subject.

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.

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.

Bard College is a selective, private, coeducational liberal arts college with undergraduate programs enriched by research institutes and graduate programs. Founded in 1860, the College draws 1,200 students from all regions of the United States. Twelve percent of the students are from abroad, creating a diverse and internationally informed environment. The College's curricular strength is bolstered by innovative scholarship programs in the literature, arts, and science, including a collaboration with The Rockefeller University. For further information about Bard, visit the website, www.bard.edu.

About the Fellows:

Mitch Epstein's photographs are in numerous major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In addition to the fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, he is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, the Pinewood Foundation and Camera Works. He has had 11 solo exhibitions in New York, and has published four books, most recently The City, a monograph about public and private life in New York. His other books are In Pursuit of India, Fire Water Wind, and Vietnam: A Book of Changes. Epstein has also worked as a cinematographer and production designer on several award-winning films, among them Salaam Bombay! and Mississippi Masala.

Tanya Marcuse received an A.A. degree from Simon's Rock of Bard, where she began taking photographs; a B.A. degree from Oberlin, where she studied art history and studio art; and an M.F.A. in photography from Yale University School of Art, where she was awarded the George Sakier Memorial Prize for Excellence in Photography. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, Marcuse received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to live with and photograph the Bari Indians in the Venezuelan rain forest for one year. She has also received fellowships from the Dutchess County Arts Council and the Center for Photography in Woodstock, and an award from National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally, and in New York City at theYoshii Gallery, the New Museum for Contemporary Art, the Alternative Museum, and Threadwaxing Space. Her new work, the "Material" series, is currently on view through May 4, in a two-person show at the Daniel Silverstein Gallery in Manhattan. Marcuse lives and works in the Hudson Valley. Her husband, James Romm, is a professor of classics at Bard and was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 1999-2000.

Richard Teitelbaum is a pioneer in electronic and computer music acknowledged for innovations in interactive computer systems and his ability to humanize the synthesizer. A founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Alvin Curran, of Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome in 1966, Teitelbaum has composed works in a variety of genres, including for the Japanese shakuhachi master Katsuya Yokoyama, and pianists Aki Takahashi and Ursula Oppens. He has written a choral piece for 20 Japanese Buddhist monks, and collaborated on multimedia works with Nam June Paik, Joan Jonas, and others. His most recent recording, Blends, includes two works written for Yokoyama, with Teitelbaum performing on electronics; other recordings include Golem: An Interactive Opera; Live at Merkin Hall: Duets with Anthony Braxton; Concerto Grosso; Rune Some By You; and Cyberband. Teitelbaum's compositions have been performed in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Havana, Lisbon, London, Paris, Tokyo, and, in the United States, in Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco, and elsewhere. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix Arts Electronica from Austrian Radio and Television; commissions from the Venice Biennale, German Radio, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Meet the Composer /NEA Commissioning Program, and Rockefeller Foundation; and two Fulbright research grants to Italy and Japan.

(4.16.02) # # #

This event was last updated on 11-04-2021

Back to Top