Meadows School of the Arts Announces Launch of Meadows Prize

DALLAS (SMU) — The Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University announces the launch of the Meadows Prize, a new international arts residency to be awarded to up to four artists a year.

Prize recipients will be professionals with an emerging international profile, active in a discipline represented by one of the academic units within the Meadows School: advertising, art, art history, arts administration, cinema-television, corporate communications, dance, journalism, music and theatre.

The prize includes housing for a one-to-three-month residency in Dallas, transportation expenses, studio/office space and project costs, in addition to a substantial prize/stipend. In return, recipients will be expected to interact in a substantive way with Meadows students and to leave a lasting legacy in Dallas, such as a work of art that remains in the community, a composition or piece of dramatic writing that would be performed either in the Meadows School or through a local professional arts organization, a new tradition of community outreach involving students, a new work of scholarship, or a new way of teaching in a particular discipline, among other possibilities.

The Meadows Prize is sponsored by the Meadows School and The Meadows Foundation, in partnership with the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts and local Dallas arts organizations.

“Dallas is becoming an international destination for cultural tourism, thanks to its growing private and public collections of major works of art, its signature new facilities for the performing arts, and its well established, sophisticated media community,” said José Bowen, dean of the Meadows School. “To become a leader in the creative world, however, Dallas must also become a preeminent center for the generation of new and innovative art and scholarship. With the establishment of the Meadows Prize and our associated collaboration with partner arts organizations in Dallas, our goal is simultaneously to stimulate the creation of new works, provide unique learning opportunities for our students, and raise awareness of Meadows and Dallas as centers of artistic excellence.”

A nominating committee of 12 international arts professionals is currently working on selection of the prize recipients. The nominating committee includes Dore Ashton, award-winning art critic, historian, professor and author/editor of 30 books on art and culture; Joanne Cassullo, New York-based philanthropist and arts supporter; James Houghton, the Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division at The Juilliard School and the Artistic Director of Signature Theatre in New York; artist/architect/filmmaker Alfredo Jaar;  Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning actress Laura Linney; Marla Price, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth; Deedie Potter Rose, chair of the Dallas Museum of Art board of directors; Severino Salvemini, professor of organization and human resources management at the SDA Bocconi  School of Management in Italy; Paul Taylor, choreographer and founder of the Paul Taylor Dance Company; Jaap van Zweden, conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Stan Wojewodski, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Directing at the Meadows School; and John Zorn, experimental New York composer, performer and producer.

The Meadows Prize winners will be announced in October during the opening of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts and will begin their residencies in Dallas later in the fall.

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