Two faculty members in Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) have been awarded 2023 Guggenheim Fellowships in the field of photography by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris (Sayler/Morris) of VPA’s Department of Film and Media Arts were among the 171 scientists, writers, scholars and artists honored. Chosen from a rigorous application and peer review process out of almost 2,500 applicants, Sayler / Morris were appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.
“Like Emerson, I believe that fullness in life comes from following our calling,” says Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation and 1985 Fellow in Poetry. “The new class of Fellows has followed their calling to enhance all of our lives, to provide greater human knowledge and deeper understanding. We’re lucky to look to them to bring us into the future.”
Susannah Sayler (photo courtesy of Chris Meyer/Midwest Vision Photography)
Sayler is an associate professor of art photography and interim chair of the Department of Film and Media Arts, and Morris directs the Canary Lab at the University and is an instructor in the department. As Sayler/Morris, they work with photography, video, writing and installation to examine our changing notions of nature, culture and ecology. Their work is often place-based and focused on historical research.
Sayler/Morris’s work has been exhibited broadly in the U.S. and internationally, including at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Belvedere Museum, the Museum of Capitalism and the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art. They have been awarded numerous fellowships, including the New York Artist Fellowship, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, the Center for Art and Environment Research Fellowship and the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Their archives are collected by the Nevada Museum of Art/Reno, Center for Art and Environment.
Edward Morris (photo courtesy of Chris Meyer/Midwest Vision Photography)
In 2006, Sayler/Morris co-founded The Canary Project, a studio that produces visual media and artworks that deepen public understanding of climate change and other ecological issues. In 2020, they founded Toolshed, a platform for connecting ecological thought and action.
Created and initially funded in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought since its inception to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.”
Since its establishment, the foundation has granted nearly $400 million in fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award and other internationally recognized honors.
