Simon Guggenheim, who established the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (Photo by Oscar ... [+]
The Guggenheim Fellows for 2023 were announced this week. This year’s winners include 171 scholars, artists, scientists and writers selected via a rigorous peer review process from more than 2,500 initial candidates. The full list of winners can be found here.
The new Fellows represented 48 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields and were affiliated with 72 different academic institutions. Almost 50 of the Fellows have no current full-time college or university affiliation. According to the Foundation’s press release, this year many of the projects receiving support addressed issues pertaining to the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, democracy and policing, scientific innovation, climate change, and identity.
“Like Emerson, I believe that fullness in life comes from following our calling,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Guggenheim Foundation, in the press release. “The new class of Fellows has followed their calling to enhance all of our lives, to provide greater human knowledge and deeper understanding. We’re lucky to look to them to bring us into the future.”
The fellowships were created in 1925 by Colorado Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife Olga in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim. Each year about 175 fellowships are awarded to “exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.”
Recipients are mid-career professionals who have demonstrated “exceptional capacity” in their scholarly or artistic careers. Fellows may spend their grant funds in any manner they deem necessary to their work. Fellowships amounts vary, but they’ve usually been in the $30,000 - $45,000 range. Awards are granted for no less than six months and no more than twelve.
New York University and UCLA led the pack with five winners each this year. The NYU Fellows were chosen for their contributions in fields that included anthropology, dance, music, medicine, and media and culture. At UCLA, the Fellows represented the fields of Chinese literature, legal studies, science, classics, and Holocaust studies.
NYU and UCLA were followed by Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania, each of which claimed four Fellows.
Rounding out the rest of the top ten, with three Fellows each, were Bard College, Columbia University, the University of Minnesota, The Ohio State University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and the University of Wisconsin.
Since its inception almost a hundred years ago, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals. Included in that group are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and several other widely celebrated honors.
