This article has been updated to include photographer Ed Panar.
On Thursday evening, the Board of Trustees of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the list of this year’s Guggenheim Fellows from a pool of 180 scientists, writers and artists across 51 fields.
Three Pittsburgh artists and one historian have been announced as 2022 Guggenheim Fellows. They are: Keisha N. Blain, an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh; poet Yona Harvey, an associate professor of English/writing at Pitt; interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer Alisha B. Wormsley; and photographer Ed Panar.
“I am absolutely thrilled and honored to be the recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim fellowship,” Blain, the author of the groundbreaking “Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America,” wrote on Twitter in reaction to the news. “Thank you to everyone for your kind support. It means the world to me.”
All four recipients are prominent thinkers and practitioners of their disciplines in Pittsburgh. In 2020, Harvey published a renowned poetry collection “You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love” that is both sly and sublime. She said that winning a Guggenheim “makes me feel validated as an artist. It’s very emotional and makes me feel inspired.”
Wormsley’s solo exhibit “Remnants of An Advanced Technology” concluded a monthlong run at the Concept Art Gallery in Regent Square. She is the artist whose sign “There are Black People in the Future” was deemed too provocative to sit atop a building at a prominent intersection in East Liberty for its entire scheduled run a few years ago.
Panar is the co-founder of Spaces Corners, an artist-run photo-book gallery and project space on the North Side. In the Post-Gazette in 2013, his modus operandi was described this way: “Ed Panar’s job is to wander around Pittsburgh with a camera, looking for the beauty hidden in nooks and crannies of the city.”
“I’m obviously in a state of shock,” Panar said. “[Winning a Guggenheim Fellowship] is unexpected, overwhelming and an honor to representing Pittsburgh. It’s amazing to be in this [distinguished] company. I’m humbled and thrilled.”
Fellows are chosen from a peer review process of 2,500 applicants. The fellowship grants vary between $35,000 and $45,000 to use as the recipients choose.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631. Twitter @Tony_NormanPG.
First Published: April 8, 2022, 4:45 a.m.
Updated: April 8, 2022, 12:49 p.m.
