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Supporters of the Foundation

Thanks to the continued generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation, some Fellows with no academic or institutional affiliation receive supplemental funding as part of their Guggenheim Fellowship to help cover the costs of their research or artistic endeavors, and their living expenses.

Mr. Levy, a pioneer in the creation of both mutual funds and hedge funds, was a humanist with a passion for expanding knowledge. He was an active and generous trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation from 1990 to 2003. For more information please visit the Leon Levy Foundation.

In 2008 the Guggenheim Foundation added Constitutional Studies to its list of competition fields, thanks to a generous gift from the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation. The inaugural Fellows in this new field are Randy E. Barnett, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at Georgetown University Law Center, and Richard Primus, a professor of law at the University of Michigan.

Howard Kaminsky, who received a Fellowship in History in 1976, has been a long-standing and openhanded supporter of the Foundation’s mission.

After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1952, Mr. Kaminsky taught history at Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and the University of Washington, before his appointment as a Professor of History at Florida International University in 1973. He is currently Professor Emeritus at FIU.

A specialist in medieval and religious history, Mr. Kaminsky is the author of A History of the Hussite Revolution (University of California Press, 1967) and Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism (Rutgers UP, 1983), among many other monographs and scholarly articles.

Guggenheim Fellowship Awards in the United States and Canada, 2010

Edward Hirsch, the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, announced today that in its eighty-sixth annual competition for the United States and Canada the Foundation has awarded 180 Fellowships to artists, scientists, and scholars. The successful candidates were chosen from a group of some 3,000 applicants.

Read the Press Release

View the list of 2010 Fellows in the United States and Canada

Latin American and Caribbean Guggenheim Fellowship Awards, 2010

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded thirty-seven Fellowships to artists, scholars, and scientists from Latin America and the Caribbean, according to Edward Hirsch, Foundation president. The successful Fellows were chosen from almost 500 applicants. This year’s new Fellows are from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Read the Press Release

View the list of 2010 Latin American and Caribbean Fellows

Guggenheim Fellows elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010

The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced its newly elected members on Tuesday, April 13. Forty Guggenheim Fellows were among the 2010 winners.

View a complete list of these Guggenheim Fellows

Follow this link to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences website to read the Press Release

2010 Pulitzer Prize announcements

The 94th annual Pulitzer Prizes were announced April 12. Three Guggenheim Fellows were among the winners.

The Pulitzer Prize jury in poetry honored Rae Armantrout for Versed (Wesleyan UP, 2009), a volume that includes many poems written during her 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship term and that also won the poetry award from the National Book Critics’ Circle this year.

Paul Harding, a member of the newest class of Guggenheim Fellows, garnered the fiction award for his first novel, Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press, 2009). He’ll be returning to Enon, the fictional town he created in Tinkers, and to the Crosby family in the new novel he is finishing during his Guggenheim Fellowship term.

Jennifer Higdon, a Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition, 1997, received the Pulitzer Prize in music for Violin Concerto (Lawdon Press), which was premiered on February 6, 2009, by violinist Hilary Hahn and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Mario Venzaga conducting.

Follow the link below to visit the Pulitzer Prize website.

Nobel Prizes Awarded to Two Guggenheim Fellows

The roll of Nobel Prize-winning Guggenheim Fellows increased to 102 with the announcements on October 7 and October 12 of this year’s awards in chemistry and economics.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a 1991 Fellow in molecular and cellular biology, was one of three winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Mr. Ramakrishnan, who is a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Research at Cambridge, Yale professor Thomas A. Steitz, and Ada E. Yonath, who holds an appointment at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, were cited “for their studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.” In a video interview with Simon Frantz, Senior Editor of Nobelprize.org, Professor Gunnar von Heijne, chairman of the committee which selected the winners, applauded their findings and their potential impact on, among other fields, antibiotic-resistance research and the development of new antibiotics.

Follow this link to view Mr. Ramakrishnan's Guggenheim profile

Read more about Mr. Ramakrishnan's award on the Nobel Prize website

The 2009 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to Oliver E. Williamson, Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics, and Law in the Haas Business and Public Policy Group at the University of California, Berkeley, and Elinor Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. Mr. Williamson, who was a Guggenheim Fellow in Economics in 1977, was cited “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.”

In a telephone interview with Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org., immediately following the prize announcement, Mr. Williamson acknowledged that his work does “have a lot of ramifications for public policy” and “speaks to real-world phenomena.”

Follow this link to view Mr. Williamson's Guggenheim profile

Read more about Mr. Williamson's award on the Nobel Prize website

Follow the link below to view a complete of list of Nobel Prize-winning Guggenheim Fellows.

María Moreno, Fellow in General Nonfiction, 2002, and Helen Zout, Fellow in Photography, 2002

Colección Fotógrafos Argentinos has announced the publication of two books of photographs involving Guggenheim Fellows: Desapariciones, with photographs by Helen Zout and text by Osvaldo Bayer, and La Mirada, with photographs by Sara Facio, for which María Moreno wrote the text.

Charles Ryskamp, Fellow in Eighteenth-Century English Literature, 1966

A highly valued member of the Guggenheim Foundation’s Board of Trustees for twenty-seven years (1983-2010), Charles Ryskamp died on March 26, 2010.

Mr. Ryskamp was the Director Emeritus of The Pierpoint Morgan Library from 1969 to 1987, Director of The Frick Collection from 1987 to 1997, and Honorary Fellow of both institutions. A member of the Princeton Faculty since 1955, he authored William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1959) and co-edited Boswell: The Ominous Years, 1744-1766 (1963). He edited or wrote many works on English art and literature, especially eighteenth-century poets (he edited ten volumes for Oxford University Press), and served on more than twenty boards, including those of the Metropolitan Opera, The Library of America, the Board of Managers of The Lewis Walpole Library of Yale, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he served for twenty-seven years.

The New Yorker Features Guggenheim Fellows

Beginning in its June 14 and 21 double issue, The New Yorker is publishing short stories by up-and-coming as well as more established writers it considers particularly noteworthy. Among the “20 Under 40” writers included in this series are seven Guggenheim Fellows in Fiction: Chris Adrian (2009), Daniel Alarcón (2007), David Bezmozgis (2005), Nell Freudenberger (2010), Philipp Meyer (2010), ZZ Packer (2005), and Salvatore Scibona (2010).

2010 National Book Critics' Circle Awards

When the National Book Critics’ Circle Awards were announced on March 11, two Guggenheim Fellows were among the winners. The biography award went to Blake Bailey, for Cheever: A Life (Knopf, 2009); Mr. Bailey’s 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship helped support his work on this book. The award citation applauded Cheever as “a powerful example of reportage, a close reading of the life and the circumstances that delivers a superlative understanding of who the writer was.”

Rae Armantrout, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, received the poetry award for Versed (Wesleyan UP, 2009), which was praised for its “demonstration of superb intellect and technique, its melding of experimental poetics but down-to-earth subject matter to create poems you are compelled to return to, that get richer with each reading.”

Joyce Carol Oates, a 1967 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction and one of the Foundation’s Trustees, was also honored at the ceremony, receiving the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. Ms. Oates first made her mark as a writer in 1959, winning Mademoiselle magazine’s fiction contest with her short story “In the Old World,” and has been steadily amassing honors ever since. These accolades range from the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award for A Garden of Earthly Delights (1968), to the Boston Book Review’s Fisk Fiction Prize for Zombie (1996), to the 2009 National Arts Club Medal of Honor in Literature. In addition, her publications are regularly among the New York Times’ picks for Notable Books of the Year. Her most recent work is Little Bird of Heaven (HarperCollins, 2009).

American Academy in Berlin Prizewinners, 2009

When the American Academy in Berlin announced the winners of its Berlin prizes on September 14, four Guggenheim Fellows were among the recipients:

Leonard Barkan, Fellow in Literary Criticism (2005); Nathan Englander, Fellow in Fiction (2003); George Packer, Fellow in General Nonfiction (2001); and Susan Howe, Fellow in Poetry (1996). The winners will be resident Fellows at the Academy’s Hans Arnhold Center in Berlin.

Mac Wellman, Fellow in Drama & Performance Art, 1990

Mac Wellman, the M.F.A. program coordinator in playwriting and the Donald I. Fine Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College has been named a CUNY Distinguished Professor, the university’s highest faculty rank. Wellman has been teaching at Brooklyn College since 1998.

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Fellow in Film, 2009

American artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman has been awarded the 2010 biannual d.velop digital art award (ddaa) from the Digital Art Museum in Berlin, Germany. The award is given to artists who have demonstrated a lifetime of exceptional achievement in the field of new media. As part of the award, Hershman will have a retrospective exhibition accompanied by a catalogue at the Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany.

Jake Heggie, Fellow in Music Composition, 2005

Composer Jake Heggie has been selected as one of seven new members of the Board of Directors of OPERA America, the national service organization for opera. Members of the Board of Directors meet three times a year to oversee and discuss the organization’s range of programs.

William Craft Brumfield, Fellow in Russian History, 2000

Russia Behind the Headlines, an international publication project of the Russian daily newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, has published a series of articles with text and photo illustrations by William Brumfield on some of the architectural treasures of Russia. A Professor of Slavic Studies at Tulane University and author of A History of Russian Architecture, Mr. Brumfield has devoted many years to researching, writing about, and preserving through photographs the beautiful and idiosyncratic architecture of Russia, and was awarded his Guggenheim Fellowship for a study of the architecture of the Russian North.

Ferapontovo: medieval treasure in the Russian North
Veliky Ustiug: Northern Jewel
Kargopol: Star of the Russian North
Miracle of Light: the Solovetsky Transfiguration Monastery
(Miracle of Light: the Solovetsky Transfiguration Monastery also appears in the Washington Post supplement.
Follow this link to read the article)

Follow the link below to read Mr. Brumfield's discussion of Neoclassical architecture in the Russian provinces

Rolando Peña, Fellow in Installation Art, 2009

In his latest exploration of the symbolic meaning of oil, now on exhibit at the library of the Universidad Simón Bolívar, Rolando Peña uses sixteen oil barrels, arranged in three color groups—black, gold, and silver—to represent the basic building blocks of the universe: bosons, quarks, and leptons. The accompanying ten-minute video discusses the scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe. Together, the elements of the installation offer Mr. Peña’s newest commentary on the relationship of oil to Venezuelan and world culture, aesthetics, politics, and ecology.

Follow this link for more information about Rolando Peña's Petróleo Verde

Follow the link below for more information about this exhibition and related events

Anne Aghion, Fellow in Film, 2005

Documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion has been screening her latest work, My Neighbor My Killer, on three different continents. The film, which deals with the subject of Rwandan genocide, has earned uniformly rave reviews. After showing it in Los Angeles in mid May, she screened it in Dieulefit the south of France, and then in Rwanda, including at the Unity Club retreat in Kigali under the auspices of Rwanda’s First Lady, Jeannette Kagame.

Follow the link to learn more about this important film and about Ms. Aghion

Frederick Wiseman, Fellow in Film, 1980

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman will receive a lifetime achievement award at the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' 31st News and Documentary Emmys in New York on September 27th. Described as “a true pioneer whose body of work comprises a chronicle of American life unmatched by perhaps any other filmmaker," Wiseman has created more than forty documentaries and has won two Emmys.

Scott Russell Sanders, Fellow in Nonfiction, 1992

Scott Russell Sanders was named the National recipient of the 2010 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award. The award is meant to honor and recognize the work of Indiana writers who have made significant contributions to the literary world.

Moses Chao, Fellow in Molecular & Cellular Biology, 1994

NYU School of Medicine professor Moses Chao, PhD was named president-elect of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN), one of the largest organizations dedicated to the advancement of neuroscience research. Chao will concentrate on public awareness of brain and nervous system research, the push for further research on neurodegenerative diseases, among other issues. Chao will serve a three year term: as president-elect, president and past president.

Tony Bentley, Fellow in General Nonfiction, 2008

A noted writer and frequent contributor to many major newspapers and periodicals, Toni Bentley offers her review of the Royal Mansour hotel in Marrakech, Morocco, in the Wall Street Journal online.

Lisa Kron, Fellow in Drama & Performance Art, 2005

Arena Stage has announced Lisa Kron as one of five resident playwrights of the American Voices New Play Institute. Best known for her works 2.5 Minute Ride and Well, Kron has received two Tony nominations and an Obie award, among others.

Jeffrey S. Vitter, Fellow in Computer Science, 1986

Professor of Computer Science and former Provost at Texas A&M University, Jeffrey Vitter has just been appointed Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor and Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Kansas.

Edith Grossman, Fellow in Translation, 2008

Why Translation Matters, Edith Grossman’s latest work, has just been published by Yale University Press. Perhaps best known for her widely celebrated translation of Don Quixote (Ecco Press, 2003), Edith Grossman has won plaudits for her translations of the works of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, among many others.

Roya Hakakian, Fellow in General Nonfiction, 2008

An expert on Middle Eastern culture and politics, Roya Hakakian offers her insights into the volatile situation in Iran and several other current issues in a number of recently published articles.

Israel's Security: Survival or Continuity?
The Persistence of Memory
Majid Mohammadi on the Green Movement
IWPR on Vanishing Morality Police...What will follow?
An Iranian American Perspective on NPR's Fresh Air

Mary Anne Weaver, Fellow in General Nonfiction, 2004

In January 2010 Farrar, Straus & Giroux will be issuing Pakistan: Deep Inside the World's Most Frightening State, a revised edition of Mary Anne Weaver’s highly praised 2003 study of that troubled country and its relations with the United States. As a foreign correspondent for such publications as The New Yorker, Washington Post, and The Times of London, Ms. Weaver has been observing firsthand and reporting on the cultures and politics of the Middle East for years.

Follow the link for more information.

Jeannie Suk, Fellow in Law, 2009

Yale University Press has just released Jeannie Suk’s latest treatise: At Home in the Law. In it Ms. Suk gives a highly readable analysis of the unpredicted inroads the law has made into our domestic life as feminists sought to ensure the safety and equality of women in the home, becoming so paternalistic that even over the objections of the victim arrests for suspected domestic violence are mandatory and orders of protection can be put in place.

Follow this link to view an image of the book

To read more about Ms. Suk and At Home in the Law, follow the link.

Robert Edelman, Fellow in Russian History, 2006

In Spartak Moscow (Cornell UP), Robert Edelman brings to bear his expertise in both Russian history and sports history to draw an intriguing picture of the political significance of soccer in the USSR. Subtitled A History of the People’s Team in the Workers’ State, the book details how the dissent quashed in daily life found expression on the pitch and in the stands, as people vociferously and ardently supported the Spartak Moscow team in its quest to best the KGB-sponsored Dinamo club. Mr. Edelman’s Guggenheim Fellowship supported his work on this book.

To learn more about Spartak Moscow, follow the link.

John Irving, Fellow in Fiction, 1976

Last Night in Twisted River, Mr. Irving’s latest novel, has just been published by Random House. Mr. Irving won the National Book Award in 1980 for The World According to Garp, and an Oscar in 2000 for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. He discusses his latest work at length on his website.

Tracy Daugherty, Biography, 2006

When the 23rd Annual Oregon Book Awards were announced on October 26, Tracy Daugherty was once again among the winners. Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), the project for which Mr. Daugherty received his Guggenheim Fellowship, garnered the Oregon Book Awards program’s Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction. This is the fourth time he has won an Oregon Book Award, but the first time in the nonfiction category. Follow the link for more information.

Susan Middleton, Fellow in Science Writing, 2009

A champion of biodiversity preservation, Susan Middleton celebrates the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in her photographs for Evidence of Evolution, to be issued by Abrams Books in October. Her photographs of exquisite specimens from the collection of the California Academy of Sciences, where she is a research associate, complement and enrich the text by Mary Ellen Hannibal. Ms. Middleton's work was supported in part by her Guggenheim Fellowship. To learn more about this book and Ms. Middleton, follow these links:

View an image of Evidence of Evolution
Follow this link to view Ms. Middleton's Guggenheim profile
Follow this link to the Abrams Books website

Judith H. Dobrzynski: "A Gallery of Guggenheims"

Judith Dobrzynski, a consultant to the Leon Levy Foundation, generously featured a number of 2009 Guggenheim Fellows in fine arts in two of her recent realcleararts blogs on artsjournal.com. Her blogs provide tantalizing images of their works and in many cases links to their individual websites. To read Ms. Dobrzynski's blogs and view her interesting sampling of Fellows' artworks, follow these links:

Judith H. Dobrzynski: "A Gallery of Guggenheims" Part I

Judith H. Dobrzynski: "A Gallery of Guggenheims" Part II

David M. Lee, Fellow in Physics, 1966, 1974

Texas A & M has announced that Nobel Prize winner David M. Lee has joined its department of physics, and will be spending six months each year in the department’s condensed matter program. Follow the link to read the notice on the Texas A & M website.

Max Bañados, Fellow in Physical Sciences, 2009

Even the Large Hadron Collider is limited in the amount of energy it can generate for scientists' researches into the most fundamental particles in the universe, but if Max Bañados and his collaborators, Stephen West of Royal Holloway, University of London, and Joseph Silk of the University of Oxford, are right, black holes may succeed where man fails. Jessica Griggs discusses their findings, which were just published in Physical Review Letters, in an article in the September 9 issue of New Scientist, entitled "Black Holes are the Ultimate Particle Smashers."

Follow this link to view the Guggenheim profile for Max Bañados.

Follow this link to read the article in New Scientist

Brian Ulrich, Fellow in Photography, 2008

Janet Babin interviewed Brian Ulrich on the NPR program The Story. Follow this link to hear the interview which includes a discussion of Brian's work, including his 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship.

American Chemical Society's Inaugural Class of Elected Fellows

In the American Chemical Society’s Chemical and Engineering News (vol. 87, no. 30), the Society announced its inaugural class of elected Fellows. The new Fellows were recognized with a lapel pin and certificate at the annual meeting of the ACS on August 17 in Washington, D.C. Of the 162 chemists chosen by the Society, twenty-six are Guggenheim Fellows. The ACS is also including all the winners of its Priestley Medal in this inaugural class. In the eighty-six years since that medal, the society’s highest honor, was first awarded, twenty-two of the seventy-three winners have been Guggenheim Fellows.

Follow this link for more information on these ACS Fellows.

Follow this link for more information on the Priestley medalists.

Follow this link to view the list of Guggenheim Fellows selected by the ACS

Vartan Gregorian, Fellow in Russian History, 1971

Vartan Gregorian, former head of the New York Public Library and currently President of the Carnegie Corporation in New York, has been appointed to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships.

C. D. Wright, 1987 Fellow in Poetry, and A. F. Moritz, 1990 Fellow in Poetry

Each year since 2000, the Griffin Poetry Prize, Canada's most sought-after poetry award, has been given to one Canadian poet and one poet from another country. This year, the international winner is C. D. Wright, who was recognized for her work Rising, Falling, Hovering. Canadian A. F. Moritz, who teaches at the University of Toronto, was honored for his collection The Sentinel. Saskia Hamilton, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, was among this year's judges. For more information on Ms. Wright, Mr. Moritz, and the Griffin Poetry Prize, follow this link.

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Fellow in Photography, 2000

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has awarded photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti its Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography for 2009. This Fellowship will help support Ms. Sanguinetti's project entitled "The Life That Came." For more information, follow this link.

Elizabeth Spencer, Fellow in Fiction, 1953

Supported by the Southern Documentary Fund, filmmaker Kevin McCarthy is currently working on a documentary about the life of Elizabeth Spencer, the award-winning author and short story writer whose work exploring race relations in the South, a taboo topic in the 1930s, not only earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship but disinheritance by her father. To learn more about Ms. Spencer and Mr. McCarthy's profile of her, entitled "Elizabeth Spencer: Landscapes of the Heart," follow the link.

Donal Fox, Fellow in Music Composition, 1997

Donal Fox, who received his Fellowship in music composition, has been named a Martin Luther King Visiting Professor at MIT for the 2009-10 academic year.

Learn more about Mr. Fox and this most recent honor

James Edward Wright, Fellow in United States History, 1973

On March 5, the New England Board of Higher Education honored James Edward Wright with its Eleanor M. McMahon Award for Lifetime Achievement. Mr. Wright, who has been a faculty member at Dartmouth College for forty years and served as its president from 1998 to 2009, is currently President Emeritus and Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History there. In addition to his many accomplishments as an academic and administrator, he has for decades been dedicated to helping disabled U.S. veterans, especially in obtaining college educations. In recognition of these efforts, the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation presented Mr. Wright, himself a former Marine, with its Semper Fidelis Award in 2008.

Guggenheim Fellows - MacArthur Foundation 2009 Fellowship recipients

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced its 2009 Fellowship recipients on September 22. Among the twenty-four people awarded the so-called “genius” grants were five Guggenheim Fellows: Rackstraw Downes, Fellow in Fine Arts, 1998, Deborah Eisenberg, Fellow in Fiction, 1987, L. Mahadevan, Fellow in Applied Mathematics, 2006, Heather McHugh, Fellow in Poetry, 1989, and Richard Prum, Fellow in Organismic Biology and Ecology, 2007.

More information about these extraordinarily talented individuals is available in their Guggenheim profiles.

Visit the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation website to learn about the 2009 Fellowship recipients.

We note the passing of the following Fellows. The Foundation always appreciates receiving information about Guggenheim Fellows.

Ai, Fellow in Poetry, 1975 More
Robert V. Daniels, Fellow in Russian History, 1980 More
Joe Deal, Fellow in Photography, 1983 More
Loni Ding, Fellow in Film, 1982 More
Arnold Kramish, Fellow in Political Science, 1966 More
Hans W. Niemeyer Fernández, Anthropology and Cultural Studies, 2001 More
Carl Gans, Fellow in Biology and Ecology, 1953, 1977 More
Luis Monguió, Fellow in Spanish and Portuguese Literature, 1951 More
Charles Muscatine, Fellow in Medieval Literature, 1962 More
Kasuhiko Nishijima, Fellow in Physics, 1965 More
Robert M. Palmer, Fellow in Music Composition, 1952 More
Charles Ryskamp, Fellow in English Literature, 1966, and Guggenheim Foundation Trustee (1983-2010) More
Joanne Malkus Simpson, Fellow in Earth Science, 1954 More
Stanley Twardowicz, Fellow in Fine Arts, 1956 More

Guggenheim Foundation "Firsts"

On May 28, 1925, the first class of Guggenheim Fellows was appointed. Culled from a field of only seventy-four applicants, the fifteen 1925 Fellows included composer Aaron Copland. Somewhat ahead of its time in recognizing the accomplishments of women, the Foundation also appointed Violet Barbour, a professor of history at Vassar College. The next year the field of applicants grew to nearly 900; of these thirty-nine received Fellowships, and five Fellows from the inaugural class received second Fellowships.