VCU Professor Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

By Tom Gresham

Michael Jones McKean, assistant professor of sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University, has received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.

McKean, a member of the faculty in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media in the VCU School of the Arts, is the fourth Guggenheim Fellow affiliated with the sculpture department at VCU since 2002. Previous recipients included Elizabeth King, a professor (2002); Teresita Fernandez, an alumna (2003); and Bonnie Collura, an alumna (2005). In addition, Hilary Wilder, assistant professor in the Department of Painting and Printmaking, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and David Wojahn, professor of English, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003.

McKean’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, including in solo exhibitions at Grand Arts in Kansas City, DiverseWorks in Houston, the Bemis Center in Omaha, SUNDAY and Horton & Co. in New York City and Project Gentili in Italy and Germany.

Amy Hauft, chair of the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media, said that she feels fortunate to be colleagues with McKean, an accomplished artist who also devises classes “for which students clamor to gain admission.” In his work, McKean creates striking collages with objects, Hauft said.

“Each object is either breathtakingly rendered by the artist or selected from the world with a precision akin to a Swiss watchmaker’s,” she said. “In composition, he invokes an alchemist’s calibration of each object’s position as it relates to another and to the whole. He asks the objects to sit next to and on top of one another so as to create a new kind of syntax – a rebel message of longing, mystery and beauty.

“It is no wonder that the Guggenheim committee noticed the finesse and depth of his work. I am thrilled to think about what he will now be capable, granted this generous fellowship of time and resource.”

McKean is one of 180 Guggenheim Fellows selected this year from a group of more than 3,000 applicants. Fellows receive grants for between six months and 12 months. The grants are intended to allow recipients blocks of time to pursue their work with as much creative freedom as possible. Recipients represent a range of fields, including both scholarship and the arts.