CT artists and scholars win prestigious Guggenheim awards

Of the 188 people chosen to be Guggenheim Fellows in 2024, quite a few have ties to Connecticut. The awards have been given annually since 1925 and are considered among the most prestigious honors given to leading figures in arts, sciences and humanities.

Most of the Connecticut-related names on this year’s list are affiliated with Yale University. Yale is second only to Harvard in the number of faculty members that have received Guggenheim fellowships over the years.

The Yale-based 2024 fellows are: Elizabeth Hinton, a professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at both Yale University and Yale Law School; Douglas Rogers, professor and chair of the Yale Department of Anthropology; Marta Figlerowicz, associate professor of Comparative Literature and of English; Ned Blackhawk, professor of History and American Studies; Tavia Nyong’o, chair and professor of Theater & Performance Studies, as well as professor of American Studies and professor of African-American Studies; Travis Zadeh, professor of Religious Studies and the program in Medieval Studies who is also on the Council of Middle East Studies and the director of the Yale Program in Iranian Studies; and Ben Hagari, a lecturer at the Yale School of Art.

Other Connecticut Guggenheim fellows include:

• Playwright Martyna Majok, a 2012 graduate of the Yale School of Drama (now the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale). Majok’s play “Sanctuary City” is currently playing at TheaterWorks Hartford on Pearl Street through April 25.
• legendary jazz guitarist and composer Rodney Jones, a New Haven native and longtime Connecticut resident.
• Julia Wolfe, who co-founded the eminent neoclassical music ensemble Bang on a Can with two Yale School of Music graduates and who has been in Connecticut many times as a member of the group (including for performances at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas).
• Multi-faceted dancer and scholar Hari Krishnan, a Wesleyan University professor who has taught in the dance department as well as in Global South Asian Studies and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies programs. Krishnan is currently developing a new dance piece that will premiere at Wesleyan in December.

Among the many other 2024 Guggenheim awardees are Pulitzer-winning poet (and former U.S. poet laureate) Tracy K. Smith, political journalist Jonathan Alter, photographer Sara Bennett (known for her studies of incarcerated women), social activist Jessica Blinkhorn, indigenous artist Nicholas Galanin and octogenarian multi-disciplinary Boston artist Lorraine O’Grady.

The prestigious awards awards include monetary stipends. The exact amounts given to the awardees these year have not been disclosed, but are said to average between $40,000 and $50,000. Over the 99 years it has existed the Guggenheim Foundation has bestowed over $400,000,000 on thousands of artists, scholars, historians, writers and scientists. Major 20th century figures who received Guggenheim fellowships include environmentalist Rachel Carson, Black literary icon James Baldwin, modern dance innovator Martha Graham, poet e.e. cummings and chemist/activist Linus Pauling.