Latin America and Caribbean Guggenheim Fellowship Awards, 2010

For Immediate Release:                         
June 10, 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.

The Foundation grants Fellowships through two annual competitions:  one for citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada; the other for citizens and permanent residents of Latin America and the Caribbean.  Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.  In its selection process, the Foundation consults with distinguished scholars and artists regarding the accomplishments of the applicants and the significance of their proposed projects, and presents these evaluations to a Committee of Selection, all of whose members are past Guggenheim Fellows. 

One of the many characteristics of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is the diversity of its Fellows.  The ages of this year’s Fellows range from thirty-three to sixty-eight, and twenty-six fields of study are represented.  The Fellows will be involved in a variety of different projects.  For example, Chilean Oscar E. Aguilera F. will be writing a monograph on the Kawesqars, the last Fueguian inhabitants of Western Patagonia; Ana Amado of Argentina will be doing research on political insurgency and the popular imagination as seen in the visual arts of Argentina; Liliana Arrachea, also from Argentina, will be studying quantum transport in mesoscopic systems and nanostructures; and the Mexican historian Enrique González González will be studying the emergence of universities in the New World from the 16th to the 18th century.       
           
In addition, anthropologist Myriam Jimeno of Colombia will be researching culture, ethnicity, and violence; mathematician Pablo Irarrazaval of Chile will be conducting research on fast magnetic resonance imaging applied to obesity-related diseases; Peruvian Zoila S. Mendoza will be examining pilgrimage, music, and dance among Quechua-speaking people of Cuzco; and Argentine psychologist Mariano Ben Plotkin will be studying the diffusion of psychoanalysis in his country under authoritarian regimes.

The creative arts will be represented by a number of the new Fellows, including Argentine poet Edgardo Dobry, sculptor Tamara Kostianovsky, film and video artist caraballo-farman, and photographer Sebastian Szyd, all from Argentina; choreographer David Zambrano of Venezuela; novelist Robert Antoni and artist Marlon Griffith, both from Trinidad and Tobago; fiction writer Alberto Fuguet of Chile; and Brazilian composer Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann.   

In a time of decreased funding for individuals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, the Guggenheim Fellowship program is all the more important.  According to President Hirsch, since its establishment in 1925 the Foundation has granted almost $282 million in Fellowships to nearly 17,000 individuals. The continued and ever more generous donations from friends, Trustees, former Fellows, and other foundations have ensured that the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation will be able to continue the mission Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim set for it:  to "add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding.”