Michael Ashkin, assistant professor of art in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, has received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The fellowship will help support Ashkin's solo sculpture exhibition this fall at Secession in Vienna, Austria -- an institution also known as the Union of Austrian Artists, co-founded by Gustav Klimt in 1897.

Ashkin teaches undergraduate and graduate sculpture courses and is also the director of graduate studies in the Department of Art. He says his work "spans various media (sculpture, photography, video) and addresses issues of landscape, specifically the intersection of subjectivity with the social, economic and political production of space." He has previously had solo exhibitions in Cologne, Germany; London, Paris, Chicago and New York City.

Ashkin was the only Cornell honoree among 180 Guggenheim fellowship recipients this year, who were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants. The annual competition awards fellowships to artists, scientists and scholars in the creative arts, social sciences, humanities and natural sciences.

"The award of a Guggenheim fellowship is a prestigious intellectual and cultural accolade and an endorsement of the significance, relevance and urgency of a scholar's or an artist's work," said art department chairwoman Patti Phillips. "Michael Ashkin is a deeply accomplished artist and public intellectual. This fellowship confirms the quality and integrity of his research and practice and brings distinction to the College of Architecture, Art and Planning and Cornell University."