FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

April 8, 2004

Results of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation's eightieth annual United States and Canadian competition have been announced by Foundation president Edward Hirsch. The year 2004 Fellowship winners include 185 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from over 3200 applicants for awards totaling $6,912,000. Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and are approved by the Foundation's Board of Trustees, which includes seven members who are themselves past Fellows of the Foundation–Joel Conarroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles A. Ryskamp, Wendy Wasserstein, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Edward Hirsch.

Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The diversity of the 2004 Fellows is worth noting. They range from the 32-year-old fiction writers Maile Meloy and Thi Diem Thúy Lê to the 92-year-old sculptor Philip Pavia. Our 185 new Fellows range not only in age, but also in their interests as the following samples show: Fred Pelka's history of the disability rights movement in America; Brad Gooch's biography of Flannery O'Connor; H. Perry Chapman's study of the painter's place in the Dutch Republic; Kenneth Bilby's Jamaican musical ethnography; Edwin Cowen's consideration of swash-zone turbulence and sediment transport; Ellen Ketterson's review of sex and gender in animals; William Zame's theoretical and experimental studies of financial markets; Xiao Cheng Zeng's novel nanostructures of silicon; and David Zingg's design of environmentally friendly aircraft. Our new Fellows include the poet Olena Kalytiak Davis in Anchorage, Alaska; Richard Stone, writing on Marco Polo's magicians and sorcerers, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; John G. Gibson, studying Cape Breton Gaelic step-dancing, in Judique, Nova Scotia; Russell Impagliazzo, working on heuristics, proof complexity, and algorithmic techniques, in San Diego, California; the artist SOL'SAX who lectures at Medgar Evers College, CUNY; and Lorna Hutson, professor at Berkeley, writing on forensic realism in English Renaissance drama. What distinguishes the Guggenheim Fellowship program from all others is the wide range in interest, age, geography, and institution of those it selects as it considers applications in 79 different fields from the natural sciences to the creative arts. The new Fellows include writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists, and scholars in the humanities. Many of these individuals hold appointments in colleges and universities with 87 institutions being represented by one or more Fellows. It is also worth noting that almost one quarter of the new Fellows have no academic or university affiliation.

Since 1925, according to Mr. Hirsch, the Foundation has granted more than $230 million in Fellowships to over 15,500 individuals. The Foundation's scores of advisory panels make recommendations to the Committee of Selection, whose members this year are Roger D. Abrahams, Hum Rosen Professor of Folklore and Folklife, University of Pennsylvania; Lynn A. Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, University of California, Los Angeles; Jack Miles, Senior Advisor to the President, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles; Peter H. Raven, Director, Missouri Botanical Garden and Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University; J. Robert Schrieffer, University Eminent Scholar Professor, the State of Florida University System; and committee chair Neil J. Smelser, former Director, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

In a 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 enable the appointment of a larger number of Fellows each year. Scores of Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer and other prize winners 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.

The full list of year 2004 Fellows is on the World Wide Web at http://www.gf.org.