2010 MacArthur Fellows Announced -- Recipients of Genius Awards

The 2010 MacArthur Fellows were announced today. They are a distinguished and varied group.

This year there are 23 MacArthur Fellows, and each is the recipient of $500,000 to be given in equal annual increments of $100,00 over 5 years. The official announcement from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is here.

These awards are with no strings attached!

On the list is Annette Gordon-Reid, who is well-known to Fellows of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. The list also includes a computer security expert and researcher, a high school physics teacher, a biophysicist, an indigenous language preservationist, an economist, a fiction writer, an anthropologist, a theater director, a fiction writer, an entomologist, among others!

Two new Fellows are from the smallest state in the union -- Rhode Island! Sorry, I may have a bias since I have 4 degrees from Brown University in Providence and worked for several years in Newport, Rhode Island. Four new Fellows are from Massachusetts (3 of these from Cambridge)!

Interesting that over 25% of the 2010 Fellows are from the states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts but, of course, those of us who live and work in New England know the creative atmosphere here (the distinct four seasons add to the stimulation and to our fortitude).

And speaking of Radcliffe Fellows, who were also MacArthur Fellows, see my earlier blogpost on Anna Schuleit and her public art installation, "Just a Rumor," at UMass Amherst (I hope that you recognize that face in the water since he certainly was a bona-fide genius)!

UMass Amherst has a former MacArthur Fellow, Professor Nancy Folbre on its faculty; she writes a weekly column on The New York Times Economix blog.

Just A Rumor by Anna Schuleit at UMass Amherst

I had the distinct pleasure today of attending a reception in honor of the artist, Anna Schuleit, and her "Just A Rumor," a dramatic painting, which was painted upside down on a wall of the Fine Arts Center at UMass Amherst, with a reflection in the campus pond. Anna Schuleit was featured today in the Wall Street Journal, and since she was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University the year after I was one, this was an event that I did not want to miss. Plus, it is so intriguing to try and figure out whose face she painted upside down! Can you guess?

The above photos were taken at the event, and include several of Anna Schuleit, of her painting, the reflections in the pond, and of some of the guests.

What I most appreciated, besides this dramatic public painting, and its changing reflection, was when Schuleit spoke about why paintings are so important and how they help us to stop and to slow down in this era of decreasing attention spans and moving images on computer screens. The late afternoon was cloudy and there was a slight wind, which created waves in the pond, so the reflection of the painting, which was completed by Schuleit only an hour before, moved soothingly with the waves.

Schuleit, whose work has garnered her, besides a Radcliffe Fellowship, a MacArthur genius grant of $500,000, will be in residence at UMass Amherst this term. She joked that she might want to study nursing during this period.

It was special that our Provost, Dr. James Staros, showed up to this event, as well as my Dean at the Isenberg School, Dr. Mark Fuller, and even our wonderful state representative, Ellen Story.