Notes from the field.

Ann Fessler of Rhode Island School of Design, has been named a fellow by the Radcliffe Institute for 2003. A visual artist, she is one of 56 scientists, scholars, artists and writers to be selected for the 2003 honor. The Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies was established in 1999 with the merger of Radcliffe College and Harvard University. According to Dean Faust. "The purpose of a residential fellowship like ours is to bring artists and scholars together to interact in ways that will change both them and their work. We strive to offer enough similarity--clusters of common intellectual concern--and enough difference to generate intersections that are predictable as well as ones that are unanticipated and even surprising."

Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative announces the recipients of it's 2003 exhibition grants. The following awards were made. The Fabric Workshop and Museum: $200,000 for Experiments with Truth, a thematic film/video exhibition; Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania: $180,000 for Accumulated Vision: Barry LeVa, a retrospective exhibition: Main Line Art Center: $150,000 for Past Presence: Contemporary Reflections on the Main Line, a site specific installation; and Goldie Paley Gallery, Moore College of Art and Design: $181,500 for Jorg Immendorff, a retrospective exhibition. Additionally, a planning grant of $15,000 was awarded to Taller Puertorriqueno for Tainos: Pre- Columbian Art and Culture.

Independent Curators International (ICI) appoints Susan Hapgood as Director of Exhibitions. With an M.A. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, Ms. Hapgood was most recently Curator of Exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts, New York.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to increase the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) budget by $10 Million. The Senate was expected to take up its version shortly. The funding hike is earmarked for the agency's Challenge America initiative, which is designed to make the arts more widely available in under-served communities across the country. The bipartisan Slaughter-Shays-Dicks amendment was sponsored by Representatives Louise Slaughter (D-NY). Chris Shays (R-CT), co-chairs of the Congressional Arts Caucus, and Norm Dicks (D-WA), Ranking Minority Member on the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. The amendment provides an increase of $10 million for the Arts Endowment, in addition to President George W. Bush's fiscal year 2004 budget request of $117.480 million. The agency's fiscal year 2003 funding is $115.731 million. NEA Chairman Dana Gioia welcomes this vote of confidence "just as state, local and organizational budgets across the country are being slashed." A recent (2002) NEA survey shows that attendance at art related activities is up 5 million since 1992, despite the impact of September 11, with about one-fourth of adults saying that they visited an art gallery and 40% reporting personally performing or creating art. Additionally, the NEA has issued a report calling for greater involvement of the arts in health care as the arts have been proven to provide benefits to patients, their families, and care providers as well.

The 2003 Arles Awards were recently announced, with prizes of $10,000 awarded to photographers in many different categories. Among the winners were Anders Peterson (Sweden) who received the Photography Award, Zijah Gafic (Bosnia) who received the Discovery Award. Thomas Demand (Germany) who received the No Limit Award, Fazal Sheikh (USA/Switzerland) who received the Humanity Award, and Jitka Hanzlova (Czech Republic/Germany) who was awarded a Project Grant.

World-renowned French photographer Lucien Clergue received the Legion of Honor Award at Arles on July 4th. The award was presented by the French Minister of Culture and Communications, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, as part of the opening festivities of the 34th annual Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, founded by Clerque in 1969, and now the largest of its kind in Europe. The Legion of Honor, created by Napoleon in 1802, is France's most highly regarded order of merit conferred on eminent people in all walks of life who have performed extraordinary services to humankind. Previous recipients in the field of photography include Henri Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz. Clerque received the award in recognition of his lifetime achievements in photography. Clerque is represented by the John Stevenson Gallery in New York and will be present there for a book signing in October. [phone] / www.john-stevenson-gallery.com.

Larry Towell is the first winner of the international Henri Cartier-Bresson Award for his project The Walls of No Man's Land: Palestine. The $30.000 prize is awarded by the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris whose goal is to assist a photographer in the completion of a special project. The members of the 2003 jury were Martine Franck. Robert Delpive, Peter Gallasi, Marta Gili, Roberto Kochj, Anne Samson, and Paul Virilio.

The Experimental Television Center announces that Finishing Funds 2003 will support 20 electronic media, sonic art and film projects, encompassing web projects, performances, site-specific installations, and interactive works. For 14 years the program has provided New York State artists with over $185.000 to assist with the completion of diverse and innovative projects, and works for the Internet and new media. Five different counties throughout the state are represented, 20% from upstate NY. Among this year's projects are eight film productions. The 2003 award recipients are: Peter Bianco, Roddy Bogawa, Abigail Child, Carrie Dashow, Tirtza Even, Jennifer Fieber, David Gatten, Gretchen Hogue, Shelly Jackson, Amy Jenkins, Megan Michalak, Bernard Roddy, Kathy Rose, Kelly Spivey, and Roxanne Wolanczyk. Five special awards for new media and intermedia performance went to: G.H. Hovagimyan, Diane Ludin, Prema Murthy, Marina Rosenfeld, and the collaborative team of Brooke Singer and Beatriz da Costa. Panelists were Torsten Z. Burns, New York and Stephanie Gray, Buffalo. Program director is Sherry Miller Hocking. The deadline for the program is March 15 each year. Applications can be obtained after January. [phone] / www.experimentaltvcenter.org.

Vance Gellert, Founder and Artistic Director of the Minnesota Center for Photography (MCP), recently stepped down from his position at the organization. George Slade, longtime member of the Minnesota photographic arts community and a curator and historian of photography, will assume the helm of the MCP

The Everson Museum of Art recently received two grants in support of the exhibition Adirondack Vernacular: The Photography of Henry M. Beach to be displayed Sept. 19 through Jan. 25, 2004. A Legislative Initiative Grant of $25,000 was made possible through the auspices of Senator John DeFrancisco. In addition, a $7560 grant from the New York Council for the Humanities was awarded to support publications and interpretive materials associated with the exhibition.

In November, the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Fotostiftung Schweiz will open a new center of photography in Winterthur, Switzerland. The new project, located on a site immediately opposite the existing Fotomuseum Winterthur, will house an exhibition hall, an exhibition room for changing exhibitions, and two different depots for color and black-and-white photography. In addition there will be a restoration studio, offices, a reference library, seminar rooms, a bistro, a lounge, and a shop. Both the Fotostiftung Schweiz and the Fotomuseum Winterthur will remain independent and maintain their different orientations, which are Swiss photographic history and international contemporary and historical photography respectively.

MOCA Cleveland selects Carmen Ruiz-Davila for the Wendy L. Moore Emerging Artist Series in 2004. The series awards solo museum exhibitions and accompanying catalogues to a woman from Northeast Ohio under the age of 30. Ruiz-Davila, whose intriguing blend of installation and sculpture explores issues of identity, was selected from a record twenty-three submissions. She is the first Hispanic recipient of the award.

The Leeway Foundation recently announced the selection of twenty women artists to receive June Window of Opportunity (WOO) grants. The grants, which provide short-term, immediate assistance to individual women artists living in the Philadelphia area, total $33,012 and are awarded to artists in a variety of disciplines. Among the winners for photography were Susan Fenton, whose hand-painted photographs investigate the relationship between the human form and the fetishism of fashion, and Amanda Tinker, whose pastoral landscapes are layered with images taken from TV nature programs and natural disasters. The remaining 2003 WOO grant applications are due Nov. 3, 2003 and are available at www.leeway.org.

In June, Cincinnati, OH was home to NCAC-sponsored activities highlighting the Importance of free expression. Activities included A Forum on Freedom of Artistic Expression at the Contemporary Arts Center, the Theater Tribe's production of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, a screening of the documentary The NEA Tapes, and a series of open-ended discussions on constitutional principles at local bars, cafes, and libraries.

ArtsLink recently announced its awards for U.S. artists' projects in Central Europe, Russia and Eurasia. The 11th cycle of awards provided twenty-one visual and media arts projects with a combined total funding of $100,000. The recipients included filmmakers Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Gueorguiev of Los Angeles, who will pursue a documentary about avant-guard art in Uzbekistan; Ruth Bradley, Director of the Athens International Film Festival, who will attend the 5th Motovun Film Festival in Croatia; and Dara Greenwald of the Video Data Bank in Chicago, who will collaborate with the Interspace Media Art Center in Sofia, Bulgaria. The entire list of recipients is available at www.cecip.org.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC recently acquired two gelatin silver prints by renowned photographer Robert Frank. The acquisitions, made by FRIENDS, include Covered Car, Long Beach, California ($35,000). In addition, $65,000 was pledged for the Museum's 47th Biennial exhibition, Fantasy Underfoot. Those and other gifts from FRIENDS totalled $180,000.

A new photo syndication agency, Vistalux, has been launched in Los Angeles. Founded by Hollywood veterans Alan Berliner and Syndication Director Jeff Sowards, Vistalux will specialize in providing photographers and photo agents an opportunity to effectively syndicate their work to publishing clients around the world. Vistalux, which counts Jim McHugh and Dana Fineman-Appel among its roster of photographers, will use digital technology, web portals, and direct-to-client sales to license images.

BOA Editions in Rochester, NY was the recipient of a recent $4000 Community Arts Fund grant from the Rochester Area Community Foundation. The grant will be used to create the BOA Visual Art Library, a subsection of www.boaeditions.org, designed to serve as an electronic image library. Initially, ten Rochester-area visual artists will submit images of their work to be catalogued and included in the library site. The project is designed to enable BOA staff and poets to make more timely choices of art for inclusion in cover design for poetry books, as well as bringing efficiency to the process of securing permission to reproduce art on BOA books.

CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY is the recipient of a $10,000 award from the Baird Foundation to update and standardize its darkroom facility with new enlargers, lenses, and digital timers. The improvements will make CEPA a better-equipped and more accessible darkroom facility for many of Western New York's professional, amateur, and student photographers. See www.cepa-gallery.com.

In Spring 2005 the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN will open its expanded campus--a model 21st-century art center with an additional 120,000 square feet of space. The new campus will include a technologically sophisticated performance/new media studio, rooftop terraces, a cafe, a restaurant, and a 670-vehicle underground parking ramp. The project is designed by Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron in partnership with Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, Inc.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art will open its redesigned and renovated front entrance in mid-April 2004. The entrance will feature a sheer-glass pavilion and 85,000 square feet of newly designed plaza space. The project is intended to create a significantly more exciting and rewarding visitor experience to the museum--housing the second largest art collection in the United States--by transforming the front of the original McKim, Mead & White-designed Beaux-Arts building and reclaiming the area in front of the building for public use. The design concept was developed by Polshek Partnership Architects after early collaboration with Arata Isozaki and Associates.

The City of Chicago has awarded 210 Community Arts Assistance Program Grants (CAAP) totaling $171,424 for the year 2003 to individual artists and non-profit arts organizations. Among the recipients are media artist Rebecca Meyers for development of her short film What We Want to See ($1000), the Silent Film Society of Chicago ($1000), and the Striding Lion InterArts Workshop ($950). According to Mary E. Young, Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Grants for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. "CAAP grants are awarded based on the recommendations of a panel composed of artists, art administrators, arts advocates, and educators representing a broad range of the community."

At a recent Christle's photography sale in London, world auction records were set for work by Alvin Langdon Coburn, Benjamin Brecknell Turner, and Louis Rousselet. The first lot of Alvin Langdon Coburn vortographs was sold for [pounds sterling]139,650, the second highest priced lot in the sale, and an album of large Roger Fenton and James Robertson images of the Crimea was sold for [pounds sterling]156,450, making it the highest priced lot in the sale. Coupled with a sale earlier in the week, it was Christie's best ever one-week take for photography in London. Nearly [pounds sterling]5 million was sold in the combined sales.

At a recent photography sale in London, Sotheby's sold over [pounds sterling]1 million and over 77% by lot. Some of the highlights in the sale included Maxime du Camp's Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, and Syria, 1852 ([pounds sterling]48,000), three lots of Linnaeus Tripe albums ([pounds sterling]19,200, [pounds sterling]13,200, and [pounds sterling]134,400), a Julia Jackson print ([pounds sterling]68,000), an assortment of Man Ray prints, including Fireworks, Le Bouquet ([pounds sterling]19,200), and a Garry Winogrand 15 photograph portfolio ([pounds sterling]31,200). Sotheby's representative Juliet Hacking remarked that she was delighted that Sotheby's was only [pounds sterling]10,000 shy of their total high estimate.

The Nevada Arts Council awarded 100 grants for 2004. Of the $1,197,661 that was requested by applicants, $739,096 was awarded in support of statewide arts and cultural activities.

The American Association of Museums recently announced the results of its 23rd Annual Museum Publications Design Competition. The contest drew nearly a thousand entries, of which 26 received a first prize, 29 received a second prize, and 114 received an honorable mention. A selection of the winners was displayed at AAM's annual meeting in May, and the full results are featured in the July/August issue of AAM's national magazine, Museum News. Through the award, the AAM annually recognizes excellence in museum publishing and graphic design.

The San Diego City Council recently approved plans for a downtown expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD). The expansion will take place adjacent to the Santa Fe Depot railway station, where the "baggage building" will be restored and an annex built to house art handling, a lecture room, a studio/classroom, and offices. The historic spaces of the building will be used for the exhibition of contemporary art. The project is expected to be completed in mid-2005.

The St. Louis Art Museum recently acquired three mid-19th-century photographs by artists new to their collection. Count Aguado's Hunting Dogs, a salt print made from a paper negative, is an example of an early, "instantaneous" photograph made with a rapid exposure. Constant Famin's Two Country Children is an albumen print, a premier example of a work by one of the leading practitioners of the Barbizon school. Adolphe Terris's Decorative Elements for the Great Building Program in Marseille was made using the cyanotype process, and was part of an ongoing project by Terris to document structures slated for demolition in Marseille's new building program. The three acquisitions can be viewed alongside the museum's entire photographic collection in their Print Study room.

The Chicago Art Institute is the recipient of a $2.75 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The award will endow the new Conservation Scientist position within the museum's Department of Conservation and provide funds for use over a five-year period to purchase analytical instruments, establish and operate a scientific laboratory for analysis, and conduct research on the museum's collection. Francesca Casadio was appointed to the newly endowed position.

The Museum of Modern Art is currently more than halfway through its reconstruction in midtown Manhattan. The project, which is the largest in the museum's history, is scheduled to be completed as planned in late 2004/early 2005 to coincide with MoMA's 75th anniversary. When completed, the capacity of the former museum will be doubled, offering expanded facilities for special exhibitions, public programming, educational outreach, and scholarly research.

The University of Minnesota/McKnight Photography Fellowship Program has selected four recipients for 2003. Chosen from a pool of 108 applicants, the recipients of the $25,000 awards are: Terry Gydesen (Minneapolis), Celeste Nelms (St. Paul), Xavier Tavera (St. Paul), and Katherine Turczan (Minneapolis). The fellowships are available to mid-career Minnesota-based artists. Work from the 2003 Fellows will appear in a travelling exhibition that will open at the University's Katherine E. Nash Gallery in Fall 2004.

COMPILED BY BETSY PHILLIPS AND NATHAN HOGAN