Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry
Mellon Residential Fellowships for Arts Practice and Scholarship
““"The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the University of Chicago share a fundamental commitment to the advancement of the arts on campus as fundamental modes of inquiry, experience, and communication, and we are delighted to support the University in the creation of an innovative fellowship program that is based on this premise. We congratulate the inaugural class of fellows on their selection to the program, and thank them for their participation. We are all eager to see what unexpected and inspired work these new collaborations will generate, and the impact they will have on campus and well beyond."
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—Mariët Westermann, Vice President, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
With the Mellon Residential Fellowships for Arts Practice and Scholarship at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, the University will create new ways for scholars to integrate arts practice into their research and teaching, and for practicing artists to engage fully with the intellectual life of the University. These residencies will set a new standard for deep artistic collaborations that cross disciplinary boundaries, and offer new outlets for creativity and intellectual curiosity. The Mellon Residential Fellowships provide a model that will do far more than bring visiting artists and scholars to the University of Chicago. They will help to nurture a culture of experimentation, leading to new forms of scholarly inquiry and new means of creative expression.
Alison Bechdel & Hillary Chute
Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel is the author of the best-selling Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which won an Eisner Award and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. Time Magazine named Fun Home the number one Best Book of 2006, calling the memoir about her father, “a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.” Both Fun Home as well as her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For—a generational chronicle that Ms. Magazine called “one of the preeminent oeuvres in the comics genre, period”—have been translated into many languages. She has drawn comics for Slate, McSweeney’s, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times Book Review, and Granta, and her work is widely anthologized.
Hillary Chute
Hillary Chute is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Chicago and the author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics (Columbia University Press, 2010). Before arriving at Chicago, Chute was a fellow in literature in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.
James Carpenter & Sidney Nagel
James Carpenter
Since establishing James Carpenter Design Associates in 1978, Mr. Carpenter has been integrating a synthesis of light into building structures. Mr. Carpenter is the recipient of numerous awards including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, the American Institute of Architects Honor Award and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Following JCDA’s natural progression toward designing the built environment itself, recently JCDA completed the planning, design, renovation and expansion of the Israel Museum Jerusalem’s renewed campus, and since then continues to both lead and collaborate on the design of museum, university and infrastructure projects.
Sidney Nagel
Sidney Nagel is the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Physics, James Franck Institute, Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College. His work has drawn attention to phenomena that scientists have regarded as outside the realm of physics, such as the science of drops, granular materials and jamming. Nagel's honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003 and receipt of the American Physical Society's Oliver Buckley Prize in 1999.
Claudia Lavista & the Music Department
Claudia Lavista
Dancer, choreographer and teacher Claudia Lavista co-founded Delfos Danza Contemporánea in 1992. The company, a three-time recipient of The Mexican National Dance Award, has since grown into one of Mexico’s foremost internationally touring modern dance troupes. Claudia has been a featured performer in over seventy works of dance, video and opera and has created more than 35 choreographic works in collaboration with composers, theater and opera directors, photographers, video artists, and poets for nearly two decades.
Claudia Lavista’s fellowship is being developed in collaboration with faculty in the Music Department including:
Martha Feldman
Martha Feldman is the Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Music and the Humanities in the College and Chair of the Department of Music. She is a cultural historian of European vernacular musics, ca. 1500-1900, with a concentration on Italy. She is the recipient of various book prizes and was awarded the Dent Medal from the Royal Musical Association for outstanding work in musicology in 2001. Feldman’s work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Shulamit Ran
Shulamit Ran, a native of Israel, is the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Music. In addition to receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1991, Ran has been awarded most major honors given to composers in the U.S., including two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, grants and commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts, and many more. Since 2002 she is Artistic Director of Contempo (Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago).
Tony Kushner & Court Theatre
As part of an exploratory fellowship, Court Theatre will welcome renowned playwright Tony Kushner back to the University to explore a set of potential projects that may emerge from his ongoing engagement with scholars at the University of Chicago. His residency coincides with Court Theatre’s production of Angels in America, the first major Chicago-based production of Kushner’s magnum opus.
Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner is the recipient of the first Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, two Tony Awards, and an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many others. His plays include the two-part epic, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, A Bright Room Called Day, Homebody/Kabul, Caroline, or Change and The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures.
Court Theatre
Established in 1955, Court Theatre is the professional theatre on campus at the University of Chicago. Named “the most consistently excellent theater company in America” by The Wall Street Journal, Court Theatre has a national reputation for excellence and innovation. Through main stage productions and a wealth of free symposia, post-performance discussions and education programs, it endeavors to make a lasting contribution to American theatre by thoroughly examining and imaginatively re-envisioning classic works to illuminate timeless themes and uncover immediately relevant messages.
