Guggenheim awards Skidmore scholars
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded to those who have "demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Awarded through two annual competitions, applicants are pooled by field and examined by experts in that field. After a rigorous selection process, approximately 175 Fellowships are awarded each year. This year, professor Heather Hurst '97 and Laura Somer Harrison '91 were awarded this honor.
Recreating Maya artistry
Her reconstructions of ancient Maya murals, from analyzing pigment chemistry to matching
artists’ lines and brush strokes, have earned faculty member Heather Hurst a Guggenheim
Fellowship. A 1997 Skidmore graduate with a self-determined major in architectural archaeology
and a second major in art, she holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale.
As a Guggenheim Fellow, she will expand on her project to illustrate ancient Maya
murals from a site in San Bartolo, Guatemala. The San Bartolo murals, many of them
reassembled from worn and broken fragments, provide new insights into Maya art, religion
and culture. Hurst's illustrations replicate the ancient art precisely but may also
include clarifications of damaged and worn areas.
Having worked with murals, sculptures and architecture at several Maya sites, Hurst
says the intimate knowledge and precision required to articulate a line in a manner
that's true to the original inspired her to explore the creators, to make visible
the human lives and social roles of these ancient painters, scribes and sculptors.
Hurst's work has appeared in National Geographic, Science, the New York Times, the National Gallery of Art, the Met, and other major venues. In 2004 she won a
MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant.
"The Guggenheim is a prestigious academic award," says her colleague Michael Ennis-McMillan,
adding, "Skidmore faculty and students have been fortunate that Heather has shared
her talents with us."
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Laura Somer Harrison '91
For Laura Somer Harrison '91, a Guggenheim Fellowship is just the latest honor in her career. An English and French
major at Skidmore, she became a busy and successful painter. Then she earned an MFA
at Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts-along with a fellowship to the venerable
MacDowell artists colony-in 2012. Next she received a New Artist's Society Scholarship
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned a second MFA in 2016.
Recently her Lingerie Show garnered prizes at top film festivals from Florida to Los Angeles to Madrid. Little Red Giant, the Monster That I Was is her latest creation.
Harrison's films focus on marginalized social outcasts and subcultures, exploring
issues from diaspora, to gender expression, to losing the sense of touch. They have
been screened at festivals in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Croatia, and elsewhere.
Based in Chicago, she has served as a visiting artist at Boston's Museum School and
at California Institute of the Arts.