The Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation has bestowed its annual “genius grants”, with two artists among the 24 lucky recipients of a $625,000 stipend each awarded over five years. The new MacArthur “fellows” include the New York-based painter Nicole Eisenman who expands “the critical and expressive capacity of the Western figurative tradition through works that engage contemporary social issues and phenomena”, according to foundation officials. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence) and teaches at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. “I think the fellowship gives me a vote of confidence,” she says in a video on the foundation website, explaining how she was in a supermarket when she was notified about the award. Meanwhile, the Chicago-based photography and video artist LaToya Ruby Frazier documents the postindustrial decline of her hometown Braddock in Pennsylvania, exploring "identities of place, race, and family in work that is a hybrid of self-portraiture and social narrative”. Winning the award means that she can continue to “make meaningful work and have a purposeful life”, she says.
