United States Artists
Encyclopedia
United States Artists is an independent nonprofit and nongovernmental philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

 and dedicated to supporting the work of living American artists by the granting of cash awards, called USA Fellowships. It was founded in 2005 with initial funding from The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Prudential
Prudential Financial
The Prudential Insurance Company of America , also known as Prudential Financial, Inc., is a Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 company whose subsidiaries provide insurance, investment management, and other financial products and services to both retail and institutional customers throughout the...

 Foundation, and The Rasmuson Foundation. The organization is governed by a Board of Directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...

 and receives additional funding from several major American foundations, corporate partners, and private citizens.

Mission

The organization's stated mission is "to invest in America’s finest artists and illuminate the value of artists to society." In addition, the organization asserts that "USA Fellowship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...

s honor and award an artist’s unique vision as a whole rather than funding a particular project. Artists at different career levels, from emerging to established, are eligible."

Selection Process

Prerequisites for consideration include that the artist be 21 or older, a US citizen or legal resident. In addition, nominees must be accomplished artists, must have acquired art training, formal or informal, must have tried to derive income from those skills, and must have been "actively engaged in creating artwork and presenting it to the public." To be considered for a grant, an artist must first be nominated by at least one of a group of "nominators" chosen by the organization. This is an anonymous group of arts scholars, critics, and artists from various disciplines; they operate independently of one another. The nominators submit names of artists they believe should be considered for an award.

Once nominated artists have been notified of their nomination, they are then directed to apply for the grant in order to be considered. The awards are announced once a year. The 2009 Fellows announcement was made in December 2009.

The Grants

Grants are awarded yearly to artists working in any one of eight categories:
  • Architecture
    Architecture
    Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

     and Design
    Design
    Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...

  • Crafts and Traditional Arts
  • Dance
    Dance
    Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

  • Literature
    Literature
    Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

     (fiction
    Fiction
    Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

    , nonfiction, and poetry
    Poetry
    Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

    )
  • Media
    Electronic media
    Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical energy for the end-user to access the content. This is in contrast to static media , which today are most often created electronically, but don't require electronics to be accessed by the end-user in the printed form...

     (film
    Film
    A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

    , media, and radio
    Radio
    Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

    )
  • Music
    Music
    Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

  • Theatre Arts
  • Visual Arts
    Visual arts
    The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...


2010 

Architecture and Design: Architect Teddy Cruz, architect Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn is owner of the Greg Lynn FORM office, an o. Univ. Professor of architecture at University of Applied Arts Vienna, a studio professor at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and the Davenport Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. He was the winner of the Golden...

, and graphic designer David Reinfurt.

Crafts and Traditional Arts: Passamaquoddy basketmaker Jeremy Frey, furniture designer Matthias Pliessnig
Matthias Pliessnig
Matthias Pliessnig is an acclaimed furniture designer based in Philadelphia whose work uses steam bended wood. His style is "kinetically contemporary" and he uses "computer-aided curves with laborious craftsmanship" to handcraft chairs and benches....

, weaver, writer, and performance artist Joyce Scott, ceramic artist Michael Sherrill, ceramist W.A. Ehren Tool, and basketmaker Jennifer Heller Zurick.

Dance: Choreographer and dancer Miguel Gutierrez
Miguel Gutiérrez
Miguel Gutiérrez is a Mexican football forward who played for Mexico in the 1958 FIFA World Cup. He also played for Club Atlas.-External links:*...

, choreographer, musician, and dance filmmaker Dayna Harrison, choreographer Deborah Hay, choreographer Trey McIntyre
Trey McIntyre
Trey McIntyre is an American dancer and choreographer. McIntyre was born in Wichita, Kansas. He trained at North Carolina School of the Arts and Houston Ballet Academy...

, dancer and choreographer Bebe Miller
Bebe Miller
Bebe Miller is an American choreographer, dancer and director.-Biography:Daughter of an elementary school teacher and a ship steward, Bebe Miller was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950. She was raised in a public housing project in the Red Hook Nieghborhood...

, and teacher, dancer and choreographer Awilda Sterling-Duprey.

Film: Director and screenwriter Ramin Bahrani
Ramin Bahrani
Ramin Bahrani is an American director and screenwriter. Film critic Roger Ebert listed Bahrani's film Chop Shop as the 6th best film of the decade and hailed Bahrani as "the director of the decade." Bahrani was the recipient of the prestigious 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, and was the subject of...

.

Literature: Non-fiction author, journalist, and essayist Charles Bowden
Charles Bowden
Charles Bowden is an American non-fiction author, journalist, and essayist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is a former writer for the Tucson Citizen and often writes about the American Southwest...

, educator and poet Martin Espada
Martín Espada
Martín Espada is a Latino poet, and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches poetry. Puerto Rico has frequently been featured as a theme in his poems.- Life and career :Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York...

, poet and translator Khaled Mattawa
Khaled Mattawa
Khaled Mattawa is a Libyan poet, and a renowned Arab-American writer, he is also a leading literary translator, focusing on translating Arabic poetry into English...

, poet and playwright Brighde Mullins
Brighde Mullins
-Life:She graduated from the Yale School of Drama and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, with MFA's.She taught at San Francisco State University, Brown University, Harvard University, CalArts, and currently teaches at University of Southern California where she is also the director of USC's Master of...

, fiction writer and educator Susan Steinberg, cultural critic and journalist Greg Tate
Greg Tate
Greg Tate is an American author, focusing on African-American cultural theory and writing. He was acknowl­edged by The Source magazine as one of the 'God­fa­thers of Hip-hop Jour­nal­ism'....

, and playwright, screenwriter, and librettist Doug Wright
Doug Wright
Doug Wright is an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2004 for his play, I Am My Own Wife.-Early years:Wright was born in Dallas, Texas...

.

Media: Documentary filmmaker Natalia Almada, director and screenwriter Ramin Bahrani
Ramin Bahrani
Ramin Bahrani is an American director and screenwriter. Film critic Roger Ebert listed Bahrani's film Chop Shop as the 6th best film of the decade and hailed Bahrani as "the director of the decade." Bahrani was the recipient of the prestigious 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, and was the subject of...

, documentary filmmaker Anne Lewis, documentary filmmaker Almudena Carracedo, director, producer, and screenwriter Cherian Dabis, audio producer Barrett Golding, and film director and screenwriter Tina Mabry.

Music: Jazz and classical composer Uri Caine
Uri Caine
Uri Caine is an American classical and jazz pianist and composer.-Early years:The son of Burton Caine, a professor at Temple Law School, Caine began playing piano at seven and studied with French jazz pianist Bernard Peiffer at 12. He later studied at the University of Pennsylvania where he came...

, pianist and composer Gabriela Lena Frank
Gabriela Lena Frank
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American composer of contemporary classical music and pianist.- Biography :...

, Dobro
Dobro
Dobro is a registered trademark, now owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation and used for a particular design of resonator guitar.The name has a long and involved history, interwoven with that of the resonator guitar...

 player Rob Ickes
Rob Ickes
Rob Ickes is a dobro player. A Northern California native , Rob Ickes [rhymes with "bikes"] moved to Nashville in 1992 and joinedthe contemporary bluegrass band Blue Highway as a founding member in 1994...

, and avante-garde accordionist and composer Guy Klucevsek
Guy Klucevsek
Guy Klucevsek is an American-born accordionist and composer.Klucevsek is one of relatively few accordion players active in jazz and free improvisation....

.

Theater Arts: Theatrical designer Julia Archer, artistic directors of “Pig Iron Theatre Company
Pig Iron Theatre Company
Pig Iron Theatre Company is a multidisciplinary ensemble based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company has created over 23 original works over the past 14 years, performed both locally and internationally.- About :...

” Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel, Dan Rothenberg, and Dito van Reigersberg, playwright, actor, and artistic director of “Carlyle Brown & Company” Carlyle Brown, playwright, director, and performer Danny Hoch
Danny Hoch
Danny Hoch is an American writer, director and performance artist. He has acted in larger roles in independent and art house movies and had a few small roles in mainstream Hollywood films, with increasing exposure as in 2007's We Own the Night...

, writer of screenplays, musicals, and plays Quiara Alegria Hudes
Quiara Alegría Hudes
Quiara Alegría Hudes is an American playwright and author best known for writing the book for the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights.-Personal life:...

, playwright Rajiv Joseph
Rajiv Joseph
Rajiv Joseph is an American playwright and a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist who occasionally has been confused with a substandard dentist of similar name....

, and ensemble director Gerard Stropnicky.

Visual Arts: Sculptor Siah Armajani
Siah Armajani
Siah Armajani is an Iranian-born American sculptor.Siah Armajani designed the Olympic Torch presiding over the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, United States...

, sculptor Dara Birnbaum
Dara Birnbaum
Dara Birnbaum, born in 1946 in New York ,USA, where she continues to live and work, uses video to reconstruct television imagery using as material such archetypal formats as quizzes, soap operas, and sports programmes. Her techniques involve the repetition of images and interruption of flow with...

, conceptual artist Mel Chin
Mel Chin
Mel Chin is a conceptual visual artist. Motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Chin works in a variety of art media to calculate meaning in modern life. Chin places art in landscapes, in public spaces, and in gallery and museum exhibitions, but his work is not limited...

, conceptual artist Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon is an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity. He engages in intertextuality with other works from the visual arts, literature, and history, as well as his own life.-Early life and career:...

, artist, filmmaker, and writer Renee Green
Renee Green
Renée Green is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. Her pluralistic practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, architecture, photography, prints, video, film, websites, and sound, which normally converge in highly layered and complex installations...

, sculptor, performance artist, video artist and photographer Mary Lucier
Mary Lucier
Mary Lucier is an American artist who has worked in many mediums including sculpture, photography, and performance. Concentrating primarily on video and installation since 1973, she has produced numerous multiple- and single-channel pieces...

, Allison Smith (artist)
Allison Smith (artist)
Allison Smith is an artist based in New York.Smith was born in Manassas. Her art consists of interactive public events and more traditional object-based gallery shows...

, quilt artist Anna Von Mertens, and painter Doug Wheeler.

2009 

Architecture and Design: Architect and professor Neil Denari
Neil Denari
Neil Denari is an American architect, professor, and author. Based since 1988 in Los Angeles, Denari emerged in New York during the 1980s with a series of theoretical projects and texts based on the collapse of the machine aesthetic of Modernism. His office, Neil M...

, architect, designer, and educator Laura Kurgan, architect, urban designer, developer, and activist Rick Lowe, and fashion designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy.

Crafts and Traditional Arts: Alaskan Alutiiq
Alutiiq
The Alutiiq , also called Pacific Yupik or Sugpiaq, are a southern coastal people of the Native peoples of Alaska. Their language is called Sugstun, and it is one of Eskimo languages, belonging to the Yup’ik branch of these languages. They are not to be confused with the Aleuts, who live further...

 mask carver Perry Eaton, potters Delores Lewis Garcia/Emma Lewis Mitchell, educator and artist Beth Lo, birch bark
Birch bark
Birch bark or birchbark is the bark of several Eurasian and North American birch trees of the genus Betula.The strong and water-resistant cardboard-like bark can be easily cut, bent, and sewn, which made it a valuable building, crafting, and writing material, since pre-historic times...

 basket maker Dona Look, glass artist Mary Shaffer, and ceramic artist Kukuli Velarde.

Dance: Choreographer, dancer, vocalist, and educator Sophiline Cheam Shapiro
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro is a Cambodian dancer and choreographer.-Early life:At the age of eight she was forced to live in the countryside of Cambodia after her family was evacuated from the city by the Khmer Rouge...

, performance artists and educators Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish, hula
Hula
Hula is a dance form accompanied by chant or song . It was developed in the Hawaiian Islands by the Polynesians who originally settled there. The hula dramatizes or portrays the words of the oli or mele in a visual dance form....

 master and educator Hokulani Holt-Padilla, choreographer and educator Tere O'Connor, and choreographer Reggie Wilson.

Literature: Poet, dramatic monologist, and educator Ai, playwright Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz is an Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Anna in the Tropics, he became the first Latino so honored.-Early years:...

, comic book artist and graphic novelist Gilbert Hernandez
Gilbert Hernandez
Gilberto Hernández, born February 1, 1957, in Oxnard, California, usually credited as Gilbert Hernandez and also known by the nickname Beto , is an American comics writer/artist...

, novelist and short story writer Antonya Nelson
Antonya Nelson
Antonya Nelson is an American author and teacher of creative writing who writes primarily short stories.-Life and education:Antonya Nelson was born January 6, 1961 in Wichita, Kansas....

, poet and novelist Sapphire
Sapphire
Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide , when it is a color other than red or dark pink; in which case the gem would instead be called a ruby, considered to be a different gemstone. Trace amounts of other elements such as iron, titanium, or chromium can give...

, novelist and short story writer Justin Torres, poet and essayist Brian Turner
Brian Turner (American poet)
Brian Turner is an American poet, essayist, and professor. He won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut collection, Here, Bullet, the first of many awards and honors received for this collection of poems about his experience as a soldier in the Iraq War...

, and poet and educator Kevin Young
Kevin Young (poet)
Kevin Young is an American poet and teacher of poetry. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University , and received his MFA from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective...

.

Media: Screenwriter and director Cruz Angeles, film director Charles Burnett
Charles Burnett (director)
Charles Burnett is an African-American film director, film producer, writer, editor, actor, photographer, and cinematographer...

, radio producer Scott Carrier
Scott Carrier
Scott Carrier is an American author, radio producer, and educator. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is currently finishing his second book and is a professor in the Department of Communication at Utah Valley University.- Written work :...

, documentary filmmaker Heather Courtney, radio artists and producers Elizabeth Meister and Dan Collison, and film director and producer Renee Tajima-Pena
Renee Tajima-Peña
Renee Tajima-Peña is an award-winning film director and producer, notable for "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" , for which she received an Academy Award nomination, and "MY AMERICA...or Honk if You Love Buddha."-Education:...

.

Music: Oud
Oud
The oud is a pear-shaped stringed instrument commonly used in North African and Middle Eastern music. The modern oud and the European lute both descend from a common ancestor via diverging paths...

 musician and composer Rahim AlHaj
Rahim AlHaj
Rahim AlHaj is an Iraqi American oud musician and composer.-Early life:AlHaj was born in Baghdad, Iraq and began playing the oud at age nine...

, percussionist and teacher Cyro Baptista
Cyro Baptista
Cyro Baptista is a Brazilian musician, teacher, and recording artist specializing in percussion in the genres of jazz and world music....

, folk singer for children and educator Ella Jenkins
Ella Jenkins
Ella Jenkins is an American folk singer. Dubbed “The First Lady of the Children’s Folk Song” by the Wisconsin State Journal, Jenkins has been a leading performer of children’s music for fifty years.-Family and personal life:...

, kulintang
Kulintang
Kulintang is a modern term for an ancient instrumental form of music composed on a row of small, horizontally-laid gongs that function melodically, accompanied by larger, suspended gongs and drums...

 musician and musicologist Danongan Kalanduyan, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 trumpeter and composer Hannibal Lokumbe, guitarist Lionel Loueke
Lionel Loueke
Lionel Loueke is a guitarist born in the west African country of Benin. He moved to Ivory Coast in 1990 to study at the National Institute of Art. He attended the American School of Modern Music in Paris, France from 1994-1998...

, and composer Daniel Plonsey.

Theater Arts: Dan Hurlin, actress Ruth Maleczech
Ruth Maleczech
Ruth Maleczech is an American avant-garde stage actress, whose most notable role may have been as King Lear, portrayed as an imperious Southern matriarch...

, John O'Neal, and actress, playwright, and professor Anna Deveare Smith.

Visual Arts: Sculptor Diana Al-Hadid
Diana Al-Hadid
Diana Al-Hadid is a contemporary artist. She was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1981 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in Art History and a BFA in sculpture from Kent State University in Ohio , an MFA sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond , and attended...

, Terry Allen, painter, graphic artist, and printmaker Vija Celmins
Vija Celmins
Vija Celmins is an American artist.-Early life:Vija Celmins immigrated to the United States with her family from Latvia when she was ten years old. She and her family settled in Indiana...

, Anthony Hernandez, sculptor, video, and performance artist Joan Jonas, performance artist Kim Jones
Kim Jones (artist)
Kim Jones is a contemporary artist who lives and works in New York City.Kim Jones began his career in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s as a performance artist, and became primarily known for his alter ego, Mudman—a shaman-like itinerant caked in mud and other organic substances who appeared on city...

, publishers, master printers, and collagists Martin Mazorra and Michael Houston, and printmaker Dave McKenzie.

2008 

Architecture and Design: Julie Bargman, Stephen Burks, Douglas Garafolo, J. Meejin Yoon, and Andrew Zago.

Crafts and Traditional Arts: Alvin Aningayou, Mary Jackson, ceramic artist Richard Notkin
Richard Notkin
Richard T. Notkin is an American ceramic artist who was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1948. He earned a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute in 1970, studying under Ken Ferguson...

, and Judith Schaechter
Judith Schaechter
Judith Schaechter is a Philadelphia-based artist known for her work in the medium of stained glass. Her pieces often exhibit elements of parable, and her distorted faces and figures, along with her own self-professed atheism ironically clash with her medium's religious tradition.-Life:Schaechter...

.

Dance: Dancer, choreographer, and performance artist Ann Carlson
Ann Carlson
Ann Carlson is an American dancer, choreographer and performance artist whose work explores contemporary social issues. She has performed through the United States an internationally and has won a number of awards....

, Joe Goode, Pat Graney, tap dancer Dianne Walker
Dianne Walker
Dianne Walker is a tap dancer, also known as Lady Di. Her thirty-year career spans Broadway, television, film, and international dance concerts. Walker is the Artistic Director of TapDancin, Inc. in Boston, Massachusetts.-Career:...

, and teacher, dancer, and choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is an American dancer, teacher and choreographer of modern dance. She is the founder of the Urban Bush Women dance company.-Biography:...

.

Literature: Journalist, anthologist, and music critic Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is a Taiwanese male singer, who performs sentimental Mandarin pop ballads.Chang was born in Yunlin, Taiwan. He started off his showbiz career by winning a singing competition while in college...

, poet, essayist, translator and novelist Forrest Gander
Forrest Gander
Forrest Gander is an American poet, essayist, novelist, critic, and translator.Born in the Mojave Desert, he was raised in Virginia where he attended The College of William and Mary, majoring in geology, a subject referenced frequently in both his poems and essays. He received an M.A...

, novelist and short story writer Barry Hannah
Barry Hannah
Howard Barry Hannah was an American novelist and short story writer from Mississippi.The author of eight novels and five short story collections , Hannah worked with notable American editors and publishers such as Gordon Lish, Seymour Lawrence, and Morgan Entrekin...

, poet Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo is a Native American poet, musician, and author of ancestry. Known primarily as a poet, Harjo has also taught at the college level, played alto saxophone with a band called Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays. She is a member of the Muscogee Nation and...

, novelist Tayari Jones
Tayari Jones
Tayari Jones is an African American author and winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction...

, A. Van Jordan, novelist and poet Laura Kasischke
Laura Kasischke
Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and American poet with poetry awards and multiple well reviewed works of fiction. Her work has received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for...

, poet and novelist le thi diem thuy
Lê thi diem thúy
Lê Thị Diễm Thúy is an award-winning poet, novelist, and performer. Her pen name is lê thi diem thúy. She was born in the South Vietnamese village of Phan Thiết on January 12, 1972 during the heart of the Vietnam War.-Life:...

, and poet, short story writer, and essayist Harryette Mullen
Harryette Mullen
Harryette Mullen is an American poet, short story writer, and literary scholar. She was born in Florence, Alabama, grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and attended graduate school at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As of 2008, she lives in Los...

.

Media: Realist filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Cary Joji Fukunaga is an American film director, writer and cinematographer.-Early life:Fukunaga was born in Oakland, California, has lived in various places such as France and Japan, and now he resides in New York City. His father is Japanese and his mother is Swedish...

, documentary filmmaker William Greaves
William Greaves
William Greaves is a documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of African-American filmmaking. He has produced over two hundred documentary films writing and directing more than half of them...

, filmmaker Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, screenwriter, video artist, and filmmaker Lourdes Portillo
Lourdes Portillo
Lourdes Portillo is an American screenwriter and filmmaker. While the majority of her work is in the documentary film genre, she has also created video installations and written for the stage...

, experimental documentary filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt, and video artist, filmmaker, and theater director Ela Troyano.

Music: Composer, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist Muhal Richard Abrams
Muhal Richard Abrams
Muhal Richard Abrams is an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the Free jazz medium. Abrams compresses both contemporary and traditional ideas into lean, elegant pieces.- Biography :Abrams attended DuSable High School in Chicago...

, Robert Cazimero, Chris Jonas/Molly Sturges, composer Stephen Scott
Stephen Scott
Stephen Scott is an American composer best known for his development of the bowed piano , which involves a grand piano being played by an ensemble of ten musicians who utilize lengths of horsehair, nylon filament, and other utensils to bow the strings of the piano, creating an orchestra-like...

, composer, saxophonist, and flautist Henry Threadgill
Henry Threadgill
Henry Threadgill is an American composer, saxophonist and flautist. Threadgill came to prominence in the 1970s leading ensembles with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating a range of non-jazz genres....

, and Wu Man
Wu Man
Wu Man is a Chinese pipa virtuoso and composer. Described as "the artist most responsible for bring the pipa to the Western World" by the Los Angeles Times, US-based, Chinese-born musician Wu Man has carved out a career creating and fostering projects that give this ancient Chinese instrument a...

, composer and player of the Chinese pipa
Pipa
The pipa is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments . Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12–26...

 and ruan
Ruan
The ruan is a Chinese plucked string instrument. It is a lute with a fretted neck, a circular body, and four strings. Its strings were formerly made of silk but since the 20th century they have been made of steel...

.

Theater Arts: Actor Karen Kandel, writer, director, and performer Will Power
Will Power
William Steven Power is an Australian motorsport driver, who currently competes in the Indy Racing League IndyCar Series, driving for Team Penske.-Australian Racing:...

, director and artistic director Bill Rauch
Bill Rauch
Bill Rauch is an American artistic director. Rauch succeeded Libby Appel as the fifth artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in June 2007...

, actor, director, writer, and dramaturge Rosalba Rolon, and conceptual artist lighting designer Jennifer Tipton
Jennifer Tipton
Jennifer Tipton is a lighting designer. She has designed for dance, theater and opera.In 1958, she graduated from Cornell University...

.

Visual Arts: Installation artist Terry Adkins
Terry Adkins
Terry Adkins is an American artist. He is Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania....

, conceptual artist Michael Asher, mixed-media artist Andrea Bowers, photographer Deanna Dikeman, painter Barkley L. Hendricks, performance artist Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh is a noted New York City-based performance artist; he has been called a “master” by fellow performance artist, Marina Abramović.-Early life:...

, conceptual artist Rodney McMillian, Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler is an American artist. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she now lives. She graduated from Brooklyn College and the University of California, San Diego . Rosler works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture...

, video and performance artist Catherine Sullivan
Catherine Sullivan
Catherine Sullivan is a Los Angeles based artist whose work combines video and performance.She was educated at the California Institute of Arts and the Art Center College of Design...

, and mixed-media artist Kara Walker
Kara Walker
Kara Walker is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, such as The Means to an End--A Shadow Drama in Five Acts.-Biography:Walker was born in...

.

2007

Architecture and Design: Benjamin Aranda and Christopher Lasch; Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues; and Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani.

Crafts and Traditional Arts: Alaskan Tlingit totem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...

 carver Tommy Joseph, textile
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

 artist Gwendolyn Magee, electronic textile artist Maggie Orth, ceramic artist Virgil Ortiz, and carver and sculptor Susie Silook.

Dance: Joanna Haigood, Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin helped pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as the breaker of modern dance. Halprin, along with her contemporaries such as Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, and Robert Morris, collaborated and built a community based...

, Rennie Harris
Rennie Harris
Rennie Harris is a dancer, choreographer, artistic director and professor of Hip-hop dance. Harris formed the first and longest running hip-hop dance touring company, Rennie Harris Puremovement in 1992...

, Bill T. Jones, Benjamin Millepied, and Shen Wei
Shen Wei
Shen Wei is a Chinese choreographer and dancer. He lives and works in New York City and is director of the modern dance company Shen Wei Dance Arts...

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Literature: Poet Marilyn Chin, poet Henri Cole
Henri Cole
Henri Cole is an award-winning American poet.-Biography:Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, to an American father and French mother, and raised in Virginia, United States. His father, a North Carolinian, enlisted in the service after graduating from high school and, while stationed in...

, short story writer and essayist Charles D’Ambrosio, novelist and short story writer William Gay, poet, essayist, and memoirist John Haines, novelist and nonfiction writer Mat Johnson
Mat Johnson
Mat Johnson is an American writer of literary fiction.-Biography:Born and raised in the Germantown and Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Johnson writes primarily about the lives of African-Americans, using fiction, nonfiction and graphic novels as mediums...

, poet, playwright, and essayist Cherie Moraga; playwright, writer, and film director Luis Valdez
Luis Valdez
Luis Valdez is an American playwright, writer and film director.He is regarded as the father of Chicano theater in the United States.-Education:...

, and short story writer, poet, and editor Helena Maria Viramontes
Helena Maria Viramontes
Helena Maria Viramontes is an American fiction writer and professor of English.-Childhood and education:Viramontes was born into a Mexican-American family....

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Media: Julie Dash
Julie Dash
Julie Dash is a United States filmmaker. She directed Daughters of the Dust, which in 1991 became the first full-length film with general theatrical release in the United States by an African American woman...

, Chris Eyre
Chris Eyre
Chris Eyre , an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, is a film director and producer.His films focus on all aspects of contemporary Native American life, while dispelling the usual stereotypes. Eyre's debut film, Smoke Signals , won the coveted Sundance Film Festival Filmmakers...

, Judith Helfand, Alex Rivera, and Susan Stone.

Music: Don Byron
Don Byron
Don Byron is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. He primarily plays clarinet, but has also used bass clarinet and saxophones....

, Michael Doucet
Michael Doucet
Michael Doucet is a Cajun fiddler, singer and songwriter who founded the Cajun band BeauSoleil from Lafayette, Louisiana.In 2005 Doucet was one of 12 recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA award, which recognizes artistic excellence, cultural...

, Leila Josefowicz
Leila Josefowicz
Leila Bronia Josefowicz , is an American/Canadian classical violinist.-Biography:Josefowicz was born in Missisauga, Ontario, Canada. When she was a young child her family moved to Los Angeles, California where she started studying violin at the age of three and a half using the Suzuki method...

, Jason Moran, John Santos, Evan Ziporyn.

Theater: Tina Landau, Elizabeth LeCompte
Elizabeth LeCompte
Elizabeth LeCompte is a founding member and the theater director of experimental theater collective The Wooster Group .-Biography:...

, Michael Sommers, Robert Woodruff.

Visual Arts: Edgar Arceneaux, Uta Barth
Uta Barth
Uta Barth is a contemporary photographer who lives and works in Los Angeles. Barth was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004-05....

, Paul Chan, Charles Gaines, Ann Hamilton, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Marcos Ramirez, Allan Sekula
Allan Sekula
Allan Sekula is an American artist of Polish descent, writer, and critic based at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.-Work:...

, Gary Simmons, and Zoe Strauss
Zoe Strauss
-Biography:Born in Philadelphia, Strauss was given a camera for her 30th birthday and started taking pictures of life in the city’s marginal neighborhoods. She is a photo-based installation artist who uses Philadelphia as a primary setting and subject for her work...

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2006

Architecture and Design: Sigi Moeslinger and Masamichi Udagawa.

Crafts and Traditional Arts: Furniture
Furniture
Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...

 designer Tanya Aguiniga, textile
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

 and clothing designer Liz Collins, master Chilkat blanket weaver Anna Brown Ehlers, jeweler Arline Fisch
Arline Fisch
-Life:Arline Fisch was born in New York, New York. She learned to sew and weave from her mother and picked up a passion for the color red from her father while growing up in New York. She studied at Skidmore College, receiving her B.S. in Art in 1952. She received her M.A. in Art in 1954 from the...

, ceramist Sarah Jaeger and Tlingit weaver Teri Rofkar.

Dance: Ronald K. Brown, Eiko and Koma, Alonzo King, and Ralph Lemon.

Literature: Novelist Sandra Benitez, poet and novelist Beth Ann Fennelly, short story writer, journalist, and editor Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel is an American short story writer, journalist, and university professor at Brooklyn College.-Life:Hempel was born in Chicago, Illinois...

, short story and fiction writer and essayist Victor La Valle, poet Heather McHugh
Heather McHugh
-Life:Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, and educator, was born in San Diego, California, to Canadian parents, John Laurence, a marine biologist, and Eileen Francesca . They raised McHugh in Gloucester Point, Virginia. There, her father directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River...

, poet Wesley McNair, novelist and poet Susan Power, comics artist and novelist Joe Sacco
Joe Sacco
Joe Sacco is a Maltese-American comics artist and journalist. He achieved international fame through the 1996 American Book Award-winning Palestine, and his graphic novel on the Bosnian War, Safe Area Goražde.- Biography :...

, and novelist Matthew Stadler
Matthew Stadler
Matthew Stadler is a writer and editor who lives in Portland, Oregon. He has written four novels and received several awards and fellowships in recognition of his work. More recently, he has compiled four anthologies about literature, city life and public life...

.

Electronic media and Media: Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris, radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 documentary producer David Isay, low-budget, high-camp filmmakers George Kuchar and Mike Kuchar, radio producer and dramatist Dmae Roberts, and Philip Rodriguez.

Music: John Luther Adams
John Luther Adams
John Luther Adams is a composer whose music is inspired by nature, especially the landscapes of Alaska where he has lived since 1978.-Biography:...

, Natividad Cano, Bill Frisell
Bill Frisell
William Richard "Bill" Frisell is an American guitarist and composer.One of the leading guitarists in jazz since the late 1980s, Frisell's eclectic music touches on progressive folk, classical music, country music, noise and more...

, Jim Woodring, Ali Akbar Khan
Ali Akbar Khan
Ali Akbar Khan , often referred to as Khansahib or by the title Ustad , was a Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod...

, Lourdes Perez
Lourdes Pérez
Lourdes Pérez is a prolific Puerto Rican contemporary recording artist, songwriter, composer, arranger, poet, contralto vocalist and guitarist. She is also one of few female décimistas...

.

Theater Arts: Anne Bogart
Anne Bogart
-Biography:She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Bard College in 1974, followed by a Master of Arts degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1977. She served as Artistic Director of the Trinity Repertory Company for its 1989-90 season...

, Ping Chong
Ping Chong
Ping Chong is an American contemporary theater director, choreographer, video and installation artist. He was born in Toronto and raised in the Chinatown section of New York City...

, Anthony Garcia, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Meredith Monk
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...

, Dominique Serrand, Basil Twist
Basil Twist
Basil Twist is a New York City-based puppeteer who is best known for his underwater puppet show, "Symphonie Fantastique".-Life and work:Originally from San Francisco, Basil Twist is a third generation puppeteer. He graduated from the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in...

.

Visual arts: Layalh Ali, Mark Bradford, Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...

, Sam Durant, Mark Handforth, Michael Joo, Michael Lesy
Michael Lesy
Michael Lesy is a writer and professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His books, which combine historical photographs with his own writing, include Wisconsin Death Trip , Time Frames: The Meaning of Family Pictures , Bearing Witness: A Photographic Chronicle...

, Catherine Opie, William Pope:L, Michael Queenland, Anna Sew Hoy, Chris Ware
Chris Ware
Franklin Christenson Ware , is an American comic book artist and cartoonist, widely known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he resides in the Chicago area, Illinois...

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External links

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