A bestselling Cambridge author, a filmmaker at MassArt, and an illustrious public artist are among the local scholars and artists included in the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation’s 2020 class of fellows.
Steve Locke, Celeste Ng, Chico Colvard, Marti Epstein, Dilip da Cunha, Larry Rosenwald, Sabine Iatridou, Rebecca Saxe, Muhammad Hamid Zaman, Sarah Parcak, and Jonathan Gruber are among 175 nominees chosen by the foundation this year. The local recipients were awarded in the creative arts, humanities, natural and social sciences categories. Around 3,000 applicants competed for the coveted spots.
Since 1925, the fellowship has bestowed more than $375 million to enable honorees “engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed," according to the foundation’s website.
Locke is best known in the city for spearheading the bronze slave monument that had been intended for the front of Faneuil Hall. A graduate of Boston University and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, he also created “Three Deliberate Grays for Freddie” displayed at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2018, and the “School of Love” installation at Gallery Kayafas, among other exhibitions.
From the New York City apartment where he recently relocated, Locke expressed his excitement in an Instagram photo, captioned “2020 Guggenheim fellow.”
