On Thursday, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced 173 Guggenheim Fellowships (including two joint Fellowships) to a diverse group of scholars, scientists and artists. Not surprisingly, a number of CalArtians were chosen among the 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s 94th competition.

The fellows include: School of Film/Video Faculty member Lee Anne Schmitt, CalArts alums Eliza Hittman (Film/Video MFA 10), Todd Gray (Art BFA 79, MFA 89), Nicole Miller (Art BFA 05) and Alexandra Cuesta (Film/Video MFA 08)

Other awardees have been visiting artists, lecturers or performers at CalArts and/or REDCAT, including dancer, choreographer and Herb Alpert Award Winner Nora Chipaumire; multidisciplinary artist and Herb Alpert Award Winner Dohee Lee; conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas; theater artist Annie Dorsen; and photographer Anthony Hernandez.

Roxane Gay, the newly named 2018 Katie Jacobson Writer in Residence, lectures at CalArts on April 10. Artist Dave Hullfish Bailey’s exhibition Hardscrabble is currently on view at REDCAT through April 29.

Carolina A. Miranda of the Los Angeles Times, notes that the Guggenheim list features a notable contingent of Southern Californians.

From the L.A. Times:
As in many other years, the new list includes a healthy representation from Southern California: 17 thinkers and artists who hail from or are based in the region. This includes poet Amy Gerstler, historian Nile Spencer Green, astronomer Shrinivas R. Kulkarni and bestselling memoirist Roxane Gay — the latter for a project that will take her between Los Angeles and Lafayette, Ind., where she is on the faculty at Purdue University.

“We tend to give 10% of the fellowships to Southern California artists and scholars,” says foundation President Edward Hirsch, a poet who was also a Guggenheim grantee in 1985 (before joining as president). “It’s very striking.”

The California presence is so striking, in fact, that the foundation is hosting a special reception for West Coast fellows at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City later this month.

“We really wanted to do something and be more present to our fellows on the West Coast and to engage in a continuing conversation about the foundation,” Hirsch says. “We feel that our presence in California, both Northern and Southern, has been hiding in plain sight. But we have never focused on it in particular.”

While the grant amounts are not disclosed, the Foundation offers its Fellowships to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.”

View the entire Guggenheim Fellow 2018 list.