Webster University Professor Named Guggenheim Fellow

Webster University School of Communications Professor Van McElwee has been named a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow. According to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the fellowship is given to "men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." The Foundation receives between 3,500 and 4,000 applicants for the award each year. The selection process is vigorous where several hundred advisers, all former Guggenheim Fellows themselves, rank the applicants in their respective fields and a selection committee sends final recommendations to the Board of Trustees. McElwee will be honored at a reception at the Guggenheim Museum in early May.

A renowned artist of experimental video, McElwee's 40-plus video installations and single channel works has for decades been exhibited in prestigious festivals and shows both nationally and internationally. McElwee has also amassed numerous awards and grants including The American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award and seven fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. During his 27-year career at Webster, he has been a faculty member in the department of Electronic and Photographic Media where he has taught numerous courses in undergraduate video production. Mc Elwee holds an MFA in Multimedia from Washington University School of Art and a BFA in Printmaking from Memphis College of Art.

A retrospective of McElwee's work will exhibit in early June at the famed Anthology of Film Archives in New York.

For more information on Van McElwee and his body of work, go to: www.vanmcelwee.com.

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