FACULTY + STAFF NEWS

The American Academy in Rome has awarded faculty and MFA Art & Design alum Jeanine Oleson the Rome Prize. Recipients receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the Academy’s campus in Italy.

Filmmaking’s Kevin Allen designed and mixed Nomotopowell, a documentary on the history of lost settlements and human skulls around a Florida village.

Theater’s Jessica Kahkoska is a recipient of the National Archives Foundation’s Cokie Roberts Women’s History Fellowship. Kahkoska plans to research stories of women during the Nuremberg Trials with the goal of creating a TV series.

Dance’s Jeff Friedman received a $25,000 grant from the New Jersey Health Foundation (NJHF) in support of the school’s Integrated Dance Collaboratory. According to the NJHF, this funding is devoted to “projects addressing important health-related community, social, and education issues impacting society.”

The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation awarded Art & Design’s Didier William a $20,000 grant. The biennial competition is meant to provide artists the opportunity to produce new work. Didier William: Nou Kite Tout Sa Dèyè, the largest retrospective of William’s career, was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (MOCA NOMI) from November 2 through April 16. In a write-up on the retrospective, The New York Times calls William’s landscapes “dreamy and disorienting.”

In October, Todd Nichols, director of university bands and athletic bands, and Julia Baumanis, assistant director of bands, were named Scarlet Knight Transfer Champions for their support during National Transfer Student Week. Both were nominated by student Jordan Lees, who felt the impact they have made on the Rutgers student experience. “They are some of the loveliest people I have ever met, they are the marching band directors, and they are awesome,” Lees said. “They make me feel like I am very welcomed as a transfer student and they put trust in me as a leader to help then make the band as good as it is.”

Mark McKnight of Art & Design has been named a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. He’s one of 171 fellows in 48 fields, and only one of two fellows this year from Rutgers. “My artistic process is dictated by the belief that if I trust my intuition and remain curious and attentive to the work and the world, the point of my pictures (which are often made intuitively!) will always, eventually, become clear,” McKnight says. The photography project for which McKnight is receiving support, “Psalm,” is influenced by the artist’s dreams, the writing of Carl Jung, and the Paul Celan poem his series is titled after.

In February, Everyone Keeps Me and New Pam Tanowitz by Pam Tanowitz of the Dance Department had a two-week run at the Royal Opera House in London. Everyone Keeps Me was created by Tanowitz for The Royal Ballet in 2019. The performance received high praise from The Spectator, which called it a “dazzling duet.” Meanwhile, The New York Times calls Tanowitz’s “Mosaic,” set on New York City Ballet dancers, “the finest new offering to come from City Ballet in ages.” The piece is listed among the Times’ s Best Dance Performances of 2022.

John Yau of Art & Design is the 2022 recipient of the International Award from the Hunan Academy of Poetry.

Frederick Curry is the recipient of the National Dance Education Organization 2022 Outstanding Leadership Award in the Area of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The award honors an individual who has created DEI-centered ideas for programs, projects, or curricula; has demonstrated impact on a local, state, national, or international level; and has inspired this leadership in others.

Melissa Dunphy’s opera Alice Tierney ran at Oberlin Conservatory from January 27 to 29. The opera focuses on four archaeologists engaged in excavating the site of Tierney’s death. Along the way, they all develop their own theory of who she was; each version is played by a different soprano. This production is the Oberlin Opera Commissioning Program’s first world premiere.

Donald Holder, head of lighting design, is the seventh recipient of the Paky Award, presented in November at the Lighting Dimensions International Conference in Las Vegas. The award honors people who have made major contributions to the lighting industry, and Holder certainly fits the bill: He has designed 59 Broadway productions and has been nominated for 14 Tony awards, winning the Tony for Best Lighting Design for The Lion King in 1998, and for the 2008 revival of South Pacific. Holder also created the lighting design for last November’s film Spirited, a musical comedy adaptation of A Christmas Carol starring Ryan Reynolds, Will Ferrell, and Octavia Spencer. In the spring, Holder designed the lighting for The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Champion, by the late William Fielder’s former jazz student Terence Blanchard

Gerry Beegan of Art & Design is featured in an episode of the PBS YouTube series The Bigger Picture with Vincent Brown, which reexamines iconic American images. Beegan discusses scholar-activist Angela Davis’s “Wanted” poster.

In November, Head of Acting Cameron Knight served as a panelist at the Shakespeare and Race 2022: Spoken Word(s) conference organized by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Knight spoke to The Guardian about issues surrounding color-blind casting: “What it does is erases the identity of a person that you’ve hired,” he said. “To have true diversity you have to make room for the experience of the person that’s doing it.”

Tepper Chair Park McArthur is a recipient of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Past recipients include Art & Design faculty Steffani Jemison and Music alum Courtney Bryan.

In May, Garden State, an experimental documentary short by Art & Design’s Julie Langsam, was an official selection of the International Filmmaker Festival of New York.

Scott Ordway is a recipient of a 2023 Chancellor-Provost Award for Excellence in Cross-Disciplinary Scholarship. Ordway took the lead in coordinating “Interplay,” an interdisciplinary course for first-year students that made its debut in the fall. Read more about “Interplay” on page 15.

Concerts From Your Couch

Catch live-streamed music performances from Nicholas Music Center! Stream performances during the fall and spring semesters at go.rutgers.edu/nmcstream, or browse the event page on our website and click on the “View the Live Stream” button.