Hasta La Ideas

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced its 2009 list of Guggenheim fellows in the United States and Canada, a diverse bunch of 180 scholars, artists, writers, and scientists in fields ranging from American literature to video and audio. Chosen from approximately 3,000 applicants, the fellows will receive grants (which in 2008 averaged $43,200 each) that are intended to provide them with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible.

Among those who made the cut are artists Walid Raad, Tom Burckhardt, and Paul Laffoley. Urbanist and historian Thomas Campanella will use his grant period to work on two books: The Last Utopia, which will chronicle the rise and fall of the planned “new town” of Soul City, North Carolina, and Designing the American Century, an examination of the careers of landscape architects Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano. Among our other 2009 Guggenheim fellow favorites that can be expecting congratulatory UnBeige cupcakes: writers Ken Kalfus and John Haskell, photographer Anna Shteynshleyger, historian Peter Galison, and architect/sociologist Alfonso Valenzuela-Aguilera, who will be researching and writing about spaces of trust in Latino communities during his fellowship term.

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