Two members of the Bard College faculty were among the 26 individuals to receive the 2019 MacArthur Fellowships awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence in Bard College”™s studio arts program, was cited by the foundation for his distinctive combination of Native American and Western contemporary artistic expressions. Gibson is an artist of Choctaw-Cherokee heritage whose works are included in the permanent collections of major institutions including Boston”™s Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and the National Gallery of Canada.
Valeria Luiselli, writer in residence in the written arts program, was also awarded a fellowship. She is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction whose books include “Faces in the Crowd” (2014), The Story of My Teeth” (2015) and “Lost Children Archive” (2019).
Commonly known as the “genius grant,” the MacArthur Fellowship bestows a no-strings-attached $625,000 award distributed over five years. Fellowship recipients cover a wide variety of careers, and the foundation”™s website stated the fellows were selected based on their “originality, insight and potential.”
Eleven Bard faculty members have previously been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship.
