FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

September 3, 2002

Edward Hirsch appointed President of the Guggenheim Foundation

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has named a prize-winning poet and scholar to succeed Joel Conarroe, who will step down as president in January after seventeen years in office. Edward Hirsch, the president-elect, is the author of five books of poetry (with another forthcoming), three books of non-fiction, and numerous essays in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985, he is currently completing a five-year term as a MacArthur Fellow. The John and Rebecca Moores Professor at the University of Houston, he holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as honorary degrees from several institutions.

Mr. Hirsch won the poetry prize of the National Book Critics Circle in 1987 for Wild Gratitude, and was awarded the William Riley Parker Prize from the Modern Language Association for the best scholarly essay in PMLA for the year 1991. The author of a weekly column on poetry for the Washington Post Book World, he has given readings and lectures throughout the world, most recently in Poland, and has for the past several years served on the Guggenheim Foundation's Committee of Selection.

"There is nobody," Joel Conarroe has said, "better suited by intelligence, imagination, and temperament to lead the Foundation at this particular time. I am delighted to be leaving an institution I cherish in such capable hands." (Mr. Conarroe, in addition to presiding over the Foundation, is president of PEN American Center.) Joseph A. Rice, the Foundation's Chairman, led the search committee during several months of considering nominations and interviewing candidates. "All of us on the Board," he said, "are extremely pleased to welcome so gifted, productive, and impressive an individual to this important position. We are confident that Edward Hirsch will maintain the high standards that have always characterized the selection of Guggenheim Fellows."

Established in 1925 by Senator Simon Guggenheim and Mrs. Guggenheim as a memorial to a son who died at age seventeen, the Foundation offers year-long fellowships to artists, scholars, and scientists through a yearly competition. Edward Hirsch will be only the fourth presiding officer in the Foundation's seventy-eight year history.