Guggenheim Fellowship

Founders of the Guggenheim Fellowship

The Guggenheim Fellowship was created in 1925 by Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife, Olga Guggenheim. The couple created the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in memory of their son, who died at 17, just before heading off for college. John Simon Jr. was a promising young scholar, so the Guggenheims wanted to commemorate his intellect by contributing to the field of knowledge in the sciences and the arts.

Fig. 1 ‐ Senator Simon Guggenheim was a Republican senator from Colorado from 1907 to 1913.

The founder of the Memorial Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim (1867‐1941), was an American businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He came from an American‐Jewish family with an established mining and smelting company. Guggenheim worked for his family's mining company before becoming a politician.

Guggenheim was also a generous philanthropist. When he married his wife Olga Hirsch in November of 1898, the couple held a Thanksgiving dinner for 5,000 poor children in Manhattan, New York City. When their first child John Simon Guggenheim, Jr. was born in 1905, the couple donated $80,000 to the public research university, the Colorado School of Mines. At the time, it was the largest private grant ever given to a state university.

Fig. 2 ‐ The Guggenheim Museum in New York City was designed by the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship

The purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship is to financially support professionals who have greatly contributed and published within the humanities, creative arts, and natural and social sciences. The Guggenheim Fellowship aims to support scholars and creatives regardless of race, creed, sex, or belief. The fellowship has supported women and ethnically diverse people in their scholarly and creative pursuits since its conception in 1925.

In creating the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Senator Simon Guggenheim acknowledged that many of the great minds of society are hampered by their lack of financial support. The Memorial Foundation was created to financially back scholars and creatives to foster contributions to education, literature, art, and science.

Impact of the Guggenheim Fellowship

The Guggenheim Fellowship has helped numerous scholars and artists produce significant work. Since its establishment in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has provided nearly $400 million to over 18,000 recipients.

Over 125 recipients of the Guggenheim fellows have gone on to become Nobel Prize winners. Many Guggenheim fellows have also received Pulitzer Prizes, Fields Medals, Turing Awards, Bandcroft Prizes, and National Book Awards.

The fellowship aims to support artists and scholars whose works will have an immediate and lasting impact. For example, the American author Zora Neale Hurston (1891‐1960) wrote her seminal novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), with the aid of a Guggenheim fellowship she was awarded in 1936.

Famous writers who were awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction include:

• Margaret Atwood—Atwood was awarded the fellowship in 1981, and her novel The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1985.
• Tim O'Brien—O'Brien, the author of The Things They Carried (1990), became a fellow in 1981.
• Langston Hughes—Hughes became a fellow in 1935; his play Mulatto premiered the same year.
• Vladimir Nabokov—Nabokov was awarded a Fellowship in 1943, allowing him to engage in a biographical study of Nikolai Gogel, a Russian writer.
• Joyce Carol Oates—Oates, the author of Blonde (1999), received the fellowship in 1967.
• John Updike—Updike was awarded the fellowship in 1959, helping him write his novel Rabbit Run (1960).
• Kurt Vonnegut—Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), was awarded the fellowship in 1967.
• Alice Walker—Walker, the author of The Color Purple, was awarded the fellowship in 1977.

Famous poets who were awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry include:

• A. R. Ammons—Ammons, the author of the poetry book Briefings (1971), became a Guggenheim fellow in 1966.
• Gwendolyn Brooks—Brooks received the fellowship in 1946. It allowed her to work on her second poetry book, Annie Allen (1949).
• Hart Crane—The American modernist poet famous for his book The Bridge became a Guggenheim fellow in 1931.
• E. E. Cummings—Cummings, the poet famous for writing "i carry your heart with me," was awarded the fellowship in 1933 and 1951.
• Robert Lowell—Lowell was awarded the fellowship in 1947, the same year he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his second poetry book, Lord Weary's Castle (1946)
• Theodore Roethke—The poet famous for writing "The Waking" (1953) received the fellowship in 1945 and 1950.
• Richard Wilbur—The American poet and literary translator was awarded the fellowship in 1953 and 1963.

History Timeline of the Guggenheim Fellowship

Here are some significant events in the timeline of the history Guggenheim Fellowship:

• 1925—Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife, Olga, established the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
• 1926—The first 15 American Guggenheim fellows were selected and were required to spend their terms of work/study outside of the United States.
• 1929—The Guggenheim Foundation expressed its goal to make Fellowships available to citizens of different countries in the Western Hemisphere.
• 1930—The Guggenheim Fellowship was established in Mexico.
• 1931—The Guggenheim Fellowship was established in Argentina, Chile, and Cuba
• 1932—The Guggenheim Fellowship was established in Puerto Rico
• 1940—The Guggenheim Fellowship became open to Canadians as well as Americans.
• 1941—The Guggenheim Foundation retracted the requirement that Fellows must work/study outside of the U.S.
• 1951—All citizens and permanent residents in Latin America became eligible for Fellowships.
• 1952—The Guggenheim Fellowship became open to people from the British West Indies.
• 1988—Residents of the Philippines had been eligible to apply for the fellowship as the Philippines was a U.S. territory from 1898 to 1946. However, in 1988 applications from the Philippines were no longer accepted.
• 2016—The Guggenheim Fellowship suspended its Latin American and Caribbean Fellowship program to examine its efficacy.
• 2022—The Fellowship is still open for the United States and Canadian permanent residents and citizens.