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FELLOWSHIPS IN RUSSIA-2009
July 10, 2009

For Immediate Release

The Likhachev Foundation

with support from the St. Petersburg City Government
and
The Fund of the First Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin

Presents the Program:

FELLOWSHIPS IN RUSSIA-2009

In 2009, the Likhachev Foundation of St. Petersburg, Russia, announced its second annual open competition for its Fellowships in Russia Program. This program is designed for American professionals in the field of arts and culture who currently work on creative projects on (or related to) Russian culture or history. Such projects, supported by the Fellowship in Russia Program, should help in spreading information abroad about Russian culture among a broader Western audience.

Participants of the Program arrive to St. Petersburg for two-week fellowships in late August, their stay organized and financially supported totally by the Russian side. Each fellow will have his/her program individually tailored according to their project and professional interests.

This is the first Russian program of this kind. Its organizer is the Likhachev Foundation, acting with support of the St. Petersburg City Administration and The Fund of the First Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.
Among the Program’s U.S. partners are the Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, CEC ArtsLink, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), the Kennan Institute, and the Consulate General of U.S.A. in St. Petersburg. Alumni of the 2008 Fellowships in Russia also help to disseminate information about this Program.

The selection of 2009 Fellows was done from a pool of 43 applicants who participated in an open competition. The selected group consists of 10 American professionals in the field of culture, arts and arts history. They will arrive in St. Petersburg on August 24, and take part in programming for the duration of two weeks. They will visit (according to their individual projects and schedules) the city’s cultural organizations, archives, libraries, and museums, as well as meet and consult with experts and cultural figures of St. Petersburg.

The Program’s participants will meet with the Head of Cultural Committee and Committee on External Relations of St. Petersburg.

The Program’s organizers believe that contacts between the American Fellows in Russia and the Russian cultural establishment will:
• Expose American society to the cultural diversity of contemporary Russia;
• Improve cultural ties between the United States and Russia;
• Bring to attention of U.S. cultural institutions (museums, theaters, libraries) new cultural opportunities in Russia and launch new partnerships and projects;
• Promote and popularize Russian culture in the U.S.


For additional information contact
Likhachev Foundation
Russia 191028 St. Petersburg, Mokhovaya street, 15
Phone/fax:: +7 (812) 272-2912
Email: vitenberg@lfond.spb.ru
Program Coordinator Elena Vitenberg


PARTICIPANTS OF FELLOWSHIPS IN RUSSIA-2009

Amy Ballard
Ms. Ballard is Senior Historic Preservation Specialist at Architectural History and Historic Preservation Division of Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. She has curated a number of exhibitions, including “The Art of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna.” Among her publications is “A Guide to Smithsonian Architecture.”
Ms. Ballard is working on a guide to the musical venues and history of music in St. Petersburg.

Christina Davis
Ms. Davis is Curator of Poetry, Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. She is the author of several books, including “Forth a Raven: Poems.” She will devote her fellowship to recording the vital and defining voices of contemporary Russian poetry. These unique recordings will be added to Harvard’s preeminent audio archive (the largest poetry audio collection outside of the Library of Congress) and shared with the American literary community through public programs at Harvard University, through audio links via online library catalogue, and through collaborative programs with the Zephyr Press.

Janet Fitch
Ms. Fitch is a writer, author of three novels, including “White Oleander” (an Oprah Book Club selection.) A film version of the book was released in 2002. She is Adjunct Professor in creative writing at the University of Southern California. She will be working on a new novel: “Written in verse and in prose, the novel follows an aspiring young poet through the February and October revolutions and the Civil War in Petrograd.”

Laura Kaminsky
Ms. Kaminsky is Associate Artistic Director at Symphony Space, New York. She is a composer whose works are frequently performed in the U.S. and abroad, a concert presenter, and producer of cultural programs. She is also a co-founder of the Musicians Accord: A New Music Project.
She will do research into Russian music composed between the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Soviet Union for a daylong concert marathon which she will be producing in New York in May 2010 at Symphony Space. The Wall to Wall music marathons bring in upwards of 2,500 people in its one day every year. Additionally, it is recorded for future web-casts and is broadcast live on the radio, reaching hundreds of thousands of people. The day is offered free to the people of New York City and has, over the past 30 years, become an important part of the New York cultural landscape.

Elizabeth Kendall
Ms. Kendall is a writer and Dance and Arts Critic-Historian. She has written four books, including “Autobiography of a Wardrobe”, as well as regular articles in Dance Magazine where she is a contributing editor. She is also an Associate Professor at New School University.
She will work on a book project entitled “Lidochka, the Lost Muse: George Balanchine, Lidiia Ivanova, Ballet, and Murder in St. Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad”. She will also work on several articles for mainstream American magazines, including one about the poetry of Anna Akhmatova for Vogue Magazine.

Leslie Lee
For the stage, Mr. Lee has authored numerous plays that have been produced in New York City and regionally. His plays include “The War Party”, “Colored People’s Time”, “Blues in a Broken Tongue”, “The Rabbit’s Foot”, “Black Eagles”, “Hannah Davis”; and “Martin”, a children’s musical about Martin Luther King, Jr. A new play, “The Book of Lambert”, opened at La MaMa ETC in February, 2009. Another play, “Sundown Names” and “Night-gone Things”, will opened on June 4, 2009, directed by Woodie King, Jr. Mr. Lee teaches playwriting and screenwriting in the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing Program, the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Mr. Lee’s will be working on a screenplay about Alexander Pushkin.

Сathleen Lewis
Ms. Lewis is Curator of Soviet and Russian components, Space History Division, at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Among her publications is “Spaceflight: A Smithsonian Guide”. She has curated six exhibitions.
The purpose of her fellowship is threefold: to conduct research on the films of Pavel Klushantsev for a chapter in a book on the cultural history of human spaceflight in the Soviet Union, to establish contacts with and to conduct research at the Leningrad Mint, which had contributed to the material culture of the Soviet space program; and to establish institutional contacts between the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and museums in St. Petersburg.

Kristen Regina
Ms. Regina is Chief Art Librarian at Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens in the Washington D.C. area. The museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of eighteenth and nineteenth-century imperial Russian art outside of Russia. She is will conduct research in various St. Petersburg libraries and archives for a web exhibition project on the art of the Imperial illustrated book, and to start exploring new projects on the history of printing in Imperial Russia. Ms. Regina and Hillwood have hosted groups of Russian museum librarians, archivists and curators in collaboration with the Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress. The fellowship will help her develop relationships with other museum professionals for future collaboration and exchanges.

Scott Ruby
Mr. Ruby is Associate Curator of Russian and Eastern European Art at Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens in the Washington D.C. area. He is the author of books on icons and Applied Art. He has curated a number of exhibitions related to Russian art.
Mr. Ruby is working on and exhibition “From Samovars to Vodka Cups: The Russian Art of Drink” due to open at Hillwood in 2010.

Michael Wachtel
Mr. Wachtel is a Full Professor in Princeton University’s Slavic Department. He is the author of number of monographs, including “The Development of Russian Verse: Meter and its Meanings” and “The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Poetry”.
Mr. Wachtel is working on comments to Pushkin’s lyrics. The book will include comments on all lyrics written by Pushkin from 1826-36.

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