FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 12, 2008
LATIN
AMERICAN
AND CARIBBEAN
GUGGENHEIM
FELLOWSHIP
AWARDS, 2008
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 35
Fellowships to artists, scholars, and scientists from Latin America and
the Caribbean with a total grant allocation of $1,200,000, according to
Edward Hirsch, Foundation president. The successful Fellows
were chosen from 516 applicants. This year’s new
Fellows are from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Peru, 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. The Fellowships
are awarded to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity
for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.
The 2008 Fellows are a diverse group in their fields of endeavor,
geographic location, and age. The new Fellows range in age
from the 30-year-old Colombian artist Carlos Motta to the 65-year-old
Nicaraguan author Sergio Ramírez. Author
Darío Jaramillo Agudelo will work from his residence in
Bogotá, and the Argentinian composer Esteban Benzecry will
be working in Paris. Other new Fellows from Argentina include
economist Leonardo Gasparini, who will be studying poverty and
inequality in Latin America, Ana María Parma, who will be
researching the management of artisanal fisheries through territorial
rights, and Fernando Juan Pitossi, who will conduct research on novel
therapies against Parkinson’s disease. Peruvians
Marisol de la Cadena, an anthropologist, will continue writing her book
on “Shamanic Wisdom,” which will study local
indigenous political and ritualistic practices that integrate nature
and culture, and historian Alfonso W. Quiroz will continue his research
of constitutional debates in the Hispanic world. Irene
Rizzini of Rio de Janeiro will be completing a comprehensive study of
the phenomenon of street children and strategies for helping them, and
Chilean Marcelo Boeri will be working on the first complete collection
of Stoic sources, both Greek and Latin, along with a Spanish
translation of these texts.
The creative arts will be represented by a number of the new Fellows,
including Mexican visual artist Pablo Helguera, the Brazilian filmmaker
Cao Guimarães, and Bolivian composer Cergio
Prudencio. Choreography will be well represented by
Brazilians Augusto Soledade, Rosane Chamecki, and Andrea
Lerner. The 2008 Fellows also include poets Igor Barreto of
Venezuela and Alberto Blanco of Mexico.
In its selection process, the Foundation consults with distinguished
scholars and artists regarding the accomplishments and promise of the
applicants and presents this evidence to a Committee of Selection, all
of whose members are past Guggenheim Fellows. Persons
interested in further information should visit the
Foundation’s website, www.gf.org.
The full list of 2008 Fellows may be viewed at http://www.gf.org.
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