United States Artists, an organization dedicated to supporting America’s finest artists working across diverse disciplines, announced their selection of Rob Ickes as the 2010 United States Artists Cummings Fellow at a ceremony tonight at the Lincoln Centre.
The USA Fellows program awards a $50,000 grant to fifty artists each year in the disciplines of music, theater arts, visual arts, dance, literature, media, crafts/traditional arts, and architecture/ design. United States Artists was formed by the Ford Foundation in 2005 with $22 million in seed funding from The Ford, Rockefeller, Rasmuson and Prudential Foundations, with a mission “to invest in America’s finest artists and illuminate the value of artists to society.”
USA Fellowship nominations are made by an anonymous group of arts leaders, critics, scholars, and artists chosen by USA. An expert panel for each discipline then chooses the USA Fellows to be recommended for approval by the USA Board. Previous USA fellows from the field of music include Michael Doucet, Bill Frisell, Ali Akbar Kahn, Terry Allen, Lionel Loueke, violinist Leila Josefowicz, jazz musician Muhal Richard Abrams, and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk.
…chosen for the caliber and impact of their work, the USA Fellows for 2010 hail from 18 states and Puerto Rico, range in age from 32 to 71, and represent some of the most innovative and diverse creative talents in the country – Katharine DeShaw, USA Executive Director.
Rob Ickes is the first artist with roots in bluegrass music to be named a USA Fellow. His work spans multiple genres, and Ickes plans to use his fellowship to continue to explore “the vast musical potential that the dobro has to offer,” and to raise the visibility of the instrument.
Congratulations Rob.
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