SU fine arts prof Lillich receives Guggenheim Fellowship

SU fine arts prof Lillich receives Guggenheim FellowshipApril 19, 2007Jaime Winne Alvarezjlwinne@syr.edu

Meredith Parsons Lillich, fine arts professor in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The fellowships are awarded each year to further the development of artists and scholars who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

Lillich is a medieval art historian. Her expertise lies in medieval art and architecture, stained glass and monastic arts. During her fellowship year, she will study the Gothic stained glass of Reims Cathedral. Also called the Cathedral of Notre-Dame at Reims, the cathedral is located in the Champagne-Ardennes region of France. It is considered to be one of the finest examples of High Gothic architecture. Lillich plans to prepare these studies and augment them to form a book on the stained glass of Reims Cathedral.

“This honor is richly deserved,” says Cathryn R. Newton, dean of The College of Arts and Sciences. “Professor Lillich’s distinguished career has established her as one of the world’s premier scholars of stained glass. Her proposed work on the stained glass of Reims Cathedral will be a tremendous contribution.”

A past recipient of the Wasserstrom Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and the Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement, Lillich is a member of Corpus Vitrearum, an international organization to study stained glass. She has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, in addition to a Fulbright Grant for research in Paris.

Lillich is author of numerous books on Gothic stained glass, editor of the series “Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture” (Cistercian Publications), and has published articles in Art Bulletin, Metropolitan Museum Journal, the Journal of Medieval History, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Journal of Glass Studies, among other publications.

The 2007 winners in the Guggenheim Foundation’s 83rd annual United States and Canadian competition include 189 artists, scholars and scientists selected from almost 2,800 applicants for awards totaling $7.6 million. Decisions were based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and were approved by the foundation’s board of trustees, which includes six members who are themselves past fellows of the foundation — Joel Conarroe, SU alumna Joyce Carol Oates ’60, HON’00, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles A. Ryskamp, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Edward Hirsch.