Marc Handelman and Miranda Lichtenstein of the Department of Art & Design faculty have been named to the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows. Handelman was recognized in the Fine Arts category, Lichtenstein in the Photography category. They are among 198 fellows selected this year from a pool of nearly 3,500 across 53 disciplines, according to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which recently announced the winners. The Foundation counts more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award and other internationally recognized honors among its fellows.
Handelman says he plans to make a series of paintings over several years delving into botanical specimens gathered during the Lewis and Clark expedition in the early 19th century, an two-year exploration of lands and territories west of the Mississippi River.
“I’m attempting to blur the disciplinary boundaries and genres between scientific archives, botanical illustration, landscape, history painting and abstraction,” Handelman says.
Lichtenstein’s Guggenheim project will focus on photographing recently discovered frescos in the ruined Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, using special cameras that see wavelengths humans cannot.
“I’m interested in frescoes, in part because I’m interested in how they’re made,” Lichtenstein says. “They’re done very quickly on the limestone. I’m curious about how I can look at them and rethink substrates for my own work.”
Handelman and Lichtenstein both joined the Art & Design faculty in 2011.
Read more about Handelman and Lichtenstein’s plans on Rutgers Today.