PCA Sculpture Alum is 2020 Guggenheim Fellow

Now in its 96th year, the Guggenheim Fellowship remains one of the most prestigious awards for artists and scholars in the humanities and sciences. Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) alum Katy Schimert BFA ’85 (Fine Arts/Sculpture) was among the 175 talented writers, scholars, artists and scientists chosen for the 2020 Fellowship. 

Schimert’s art has been displayed in museums across the country, most recently in the University Museum of Contemporary Art at University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Moody Center for the Arts, Houston. Schimert is also an associate professor of ceramics at Rhode Island School of Design. Additionally, she was a 2020 Joan Mitchell Center Artist-in Residence.

Described on the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s website as utilizing “fragments of personal experience,” Schimert’s work in sculpture and drawing creates for the viewer, what she calls a “space for illusion.” Schimert’s most recent work focuses on humans’ relationship to nature, including ceramic sculptures and watercolor drawings of Niagara Falls. 

Over the years, recipients of the fellowship have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and have become Nobel Prize laureates. Created in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded over $375 million in fellowships to 18,000 recipients. Learn more about 2020’s Guggenheim fellows.