Elyn Saks wins a 2009 MacArthur "genius" grant

USC law professor Elyn Saks, author of the memoir The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (which I posted about last year, here), has won one of this year's prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowships--the so-called "genius" grants--that "celebrate and support exceptional men and women of all ages and in all fields who dream, explore, take risks, invent, and build in new and unexpected ways in the interest of shaping a better future for us all."

Good news from Toledo

The Regional Disability Archive collection in the Ward M. Canaday Center is set to receive the Society of Ohio Archivists' Merit Award for 2007, in recognition of its work to collect, preserve, and make available records documenting disability in northwest Ohio. The award will be presented at the Midwest Archives Conference meeting on May 4, in Columbus. The Regional Disability Archive in Toledo includes the papers of Hugh Gallagher, among other very interesting records. (The photo at left shows a girl using crutches and a younger girl flanking Helen Keller, seated, in a black dress; from the Toledo Rotary Club Records, held at the Canaday Center.)

And, coming in the fall of 2008, the Canaday Center will collaborate with the Disability Studies program and the Public History Institute in the University of Toledo history department to mount an exhibit on the history of disability in northwest Ohio, with a nice grant from the university's Program for Academic Excellence. There's word that an online virtual exhibit will complement the in-person version, too, so we may all get a chance to visit this worthy project.

Riva Lehrer wins first Wynn Newhouse Award

I am forwarding an exciting announcement from David Mitchell, about a recent honor for the Chicago-based artist Riva Lehrer. What David doesn't say here is that he and his partner Sharon Snyder are at least in part responsible for raising the arts community's awareness of Riva Lehrer's work, through the DVD they produced and showed at film festivals and conferences across the country called "Self-Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer," 2004.

Simi Linton showed parts of "Self-Preservation as part of her Mini Course "Approaching Disability Through the Arts" sponsored by the Institute on Disabilities last Spring 2006.

Learn more about Riva Lehrer and her art on her website.

-----Original Message from David Mitchell-----

For those who haven't heard -- Riva Lehrer's art was just awarded the prestigious Newhouse Award for artists of excellence. This is a monumental achievement for her work and disability arts in general. Please send her your heartiest congratulations!

RIVA LEHRER WINS FIRST WYNN NEWHOUSE AWARD

The Samuel I Newhouse Foundation announced today that Chicago artist Riva Lehrer is the winner of the first annual $50,000 Wynn Newhouse Award for artists of excellence. Ms Lehrer was selected from a group of eighteen nominees by a committee of persons respected in the arts community.

This award was established by collector Wynn Newhouse, who believe this program can draw attention to the work of the most talented artists having disabilities. He hopes this award will expose the art world and the public to important contributions made by these fine artists.

Ms Lehrer is currently on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her recent Circle Series, includes expressionistic portraits of powerful and successful creative persons with disabilities. Over the years Ms. Lehrer has explored the schism between "normal" and "different" in her art with powerful results.

She believes, "Disability and art are natural partners. In order to have a good life with a disability, you have to learn to re-invent your world almost hour by hour. You discover ways to re-imagine everything, and how not to take the average answers to everyday questions. There is a great deal of creativity in disability if you decide that "reality" is just a raw material for you to mould. So many times, these re-inventions have been the keys to open new doors for everyone." Her recent work can be reviewed at http://rivalehrer.com

Four other artists tied as runners-up in this competition. They are: Darra Keeton of Houston and New York, Terrence Karpowicz of Chicago, Jonathan Sarkin of Gloucester and Sunaura Taylor of Berkeley.

In addition to Mr Newhouse, this competition was judged by Cheryl Brutvan, Beal Curator of Modern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, William A Newman, artist and faculty member at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, Dr Olivia Raynor, scholar, author and Director of the National Arts and Disabilities Center at UCLA, and New York artist Dorothea Rockburne.

The foundation will soon begin the nominations process for the 2007 Wynn Newhouse Awards.
Questions about this awards program can be addressed to William R Butler by e-mail.

MacArthur Fellows 2006--a few to watch

BlindConfidential and Kestrell have today pointed out that one of the newly announced batch of twenty-five MacArthur Fellows is Jim Fruchterman (left), CEO of The Benetech Initiative, an engineer who has taken particular interest in designing software and technology for human rights and literacy applications; Benetech's Bookshare.org is "the world's largest library of scanned books and periodicals [for] people with visual or print disabilities." Says BlindConfidential, "the word 'genius' may be an understatement" when describing Fruchterman's enthusiasm, energy, and effectiveness.

There are a few other new MacArthur Fellows who work on disability-related projects. D. Holmes Norton, MD, is director of the Clinic for Special Children in rural Strasburg, PA, treating Amish and Mennonite children with rare genetic conditions, with attention to the supports that will work in their communities; Norton's work has reduced local infant mortality and improved outcomes for newborns since the Clinic opened in 1989.

Anna Schuleit is a young German-born artist whose work involves multimedia commemorative installations around defunct mental institutions. Her Habeas Corpus (2000), for example, rattled the walls of the Northampton State Hospital in Massachusetts with Bach's Magnificat, for an audience composed of former hospital staff and inmates. She has also used flowers and choral performances to mark sites of past pain, current emptiness, and common humanity. Her MALS project at Dartmouth, "Ladies and Gentlemen: An Artist's Book" (2005) uses fragments of paper and rust from Northampton to create a bound volume of poignant extracts and haunting details.