Barry Professor Receives Prestigious Fulbright Award for Research in Europe

Artist / Professor Stephen Althouse, Department of Fine Arts, College of Arts and Sciences, was recently awarded a Fulbright research grant to be an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Musée d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain) in Liège, Belgium during the Fall 2003 semester.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is administrated by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), and conducts the peer review of candidates under a cooperative agreement with the United States Department of State. Prof. Althouse was selected as a final grant recipient by the Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States of America, Belgium and Luxembourg, and the final award was approved the J. William Fulbright Scholar Board, a body appointed by the President of the United States. This competitive and highly selective grant is open to all academic and professional disciplines, including history, the sciences, government, math, medicine, etc.

The Fulbright Scholar Program acknowledges that professional visual artists’ creative activities are comparable to research activities in other academic disciplines, and the research grant was awarded to Stephen Althouse to facilitate the uninterrupted creation of new works of art, particularly his creative digital imaging.

The grant process began last summer when the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art formally invited Stephen Althouse to be an artist-in-residence at the museum. The museum and Althouse proposed establishing a stimulating professional environment to facilitate the creation and dissemination of Althouse’s new artwork. Two of the museum’s senior curators, Françoise Safin and Francine Dawans, have been named directors of the project and will be working closely with Althouse throughout the residency. They will schedule joint meetings with artists, photographers, art critics, and other curators who are in the position to disperse the project's information and influences throughout Belgium. The project directors will closely monitor the progress of Althouse’s work in anticipation of presenting their own future papers on his artwork. They will also coordinate the formal dissemination of Althouse’s aesthetic ideas through exhibitions of his artwork, and through the organization of his public speaking presentations in French and English at other institutions primarily in Belgium, as well as in France, Luxembourg, and Germany.

Althouse’s project proposal/museum invitation was reviewed and judged for eight months against the other all-discipline proposals, and his award was announced in late April, 2003.

Stephen Althouse has gained considerable recognition in the visual arts as is evident by his outstanding record of national and international exhibitions, museum acquisitions, and speaking engagements. His recent unique usage of computer manipulated photography and large-scale black and white digital printing has sparked a heightened degree of interest in his current work.

Professor Althouse has been very active in the development and promotion of Photography and Digital Imaging at the University. He introduced the Major of Photography into the Department of Fine Arts, and designed and implemented the Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Master of Arts (MA), and Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degrees in Photography.

In keeping with his international temperament, Professor Althouse has developed and introduced challenging studies abroad courses to the photography curriculum, repeatedly bringing his students to the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Madrid, London, and Paris.