April 25, 2005
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Three members of the faculty at Amherst College are on this year's list of Guggenheim Fellows. David Gloman, a visiting lecturer in art, received a grant for his painting; Maria Heim, an assistant professor of religion, to study Buddhist theories of moral intention; and Natasha Staller, associate professor of fine arts, to research Goya's black paintings and the culture of the monstrous in Spain. They are among the 184 artists, scholars and scientists awarded 2005 Fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Gloman, who has taught at Amherst since 1997, refers to himself as “an abstract painter who paints the landscape.” Educated at Indiana University, where he received a B.F.A. degree, and Yale University, where he received the M.F.A., he has also taught at those universities, and at Smith and Hampshire Colleges. Gloman was awarded the 1997 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the 1997 purchase prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work was also included in the 2000 Exhibition of the National Academy of Design.

Heim, who received a B.A. degree in philosophy and religion from Reed College and a Ph.D. in Sanskrit and Indian studies from Harvard University, is interested in South Asian religion and ethics and Sanskrit and Pali language and literature. Her first book concerns specifically religious conceptions of the gift and generosity in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, and she is now working on Buddhist theories of moral agency. She has been a member of the Amherst faculty since 2003.

The author of A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism (2001), which was a finalist for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and Choice 2003 Outstanding Academic Title, and received the Eleanor Tufts Award of the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies, Staller was educated at Wellesley College (A.B.) and Harvard University (Ph.D.) and has taught at Amherst since 1992, after teaching at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. She has had fellowships at Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania and Radcliffe College. Working on The Sum of Destructions for more than 20 years, Staller has lectured on Picasso's cultural heritage in museums and universities, and published parts of the book in Arts Magazine, Art Bulletin, Art History and the catalog of Picasso:The Early Years (1997), an exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. Each fellow receives his or her grant for a minimum of six months and a maximum of 12 months. Since the purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is to help provide fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible, grants are made freely. No special conditions attach to them, and fellows may spend their grant funds in any manner they deem necessary to their work.

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