Contact:
Eric Sloss
412-268-5765

For immediate release:
April 21, 2006

Art Professor Lowry Burgess Earns College of Fine Arts' Teaching Award

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's College of Fine Arts (CFA) has selected Art Professor Lowry Burgess as the recipient of the 2006 Hornbostel Teaching Award. Burgess, former CFA dean, was chosen for his creative legacy including the profound impact he has had as a teacher throughout the last 40 years —nearly 20 of which he's spent at Carnegie Mellon's School of Art. Burgess will receive the award during "A Celebration of Teaching at Carnegie Mellon," which begins at 4:30 p.m., April 27 in Rangos Hall in the University Center on Carnegie Mellon's campus.

Given annually to faculty in CFA for excellence in undergraduate teaching and advising, the award is named after Henry Hornbostel, the first CFA dean and architect of the original campus buildings. Hilary Robinson, the Stanley and Marcia Gumberg Dean of the College of Fine Arts, said, "Many students attest to the life-altering influence Lowry has had on their lives as artists and citizens of the world. On both individual and institutional levels, he has been an energetic and passionate contributor to the structure and content of our students' education."

Burgess is an internationally renowned artist and educator who created the first official art payload taken into outer space by NASA in 1989. His pioneering work has extended beyond conventional gallery venues, involving sites that crisscross the globe and even extend to outer space. The visionary qualities that motivate his work also inform his teaching and classroom interactions.

In addition to his role in the School of Art, Burgess has been a fellow in the Studio for Creative Inquiry since 1989. He has founded and administered many departments, programs and institutions, creating curricula in the arts and humanities in the United States and Europe while serving for 12 years on the National Humanities faculty. For decades, he has been a fellow and senior consultant advisor at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served in several leadership roles at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he is an emeritus professor. He is also a distinguished artist and fellow at ECHO, University of Quebec in Montreal; and the Koopman Distinguished Chair at the Hartford School of Art in Connecticut.

Burgess' accomplishments have been recognized with awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Massachusetts Artists foundations. His book, "Burgess, the Quiet Axis," received the Imperishable Gold Award from Le Devoir in Montreal.

The School of Art is one of five schools within Carnegie Mellon's College of Fine Arts, a community of nationally and internationally recognized artists and professionals organized into Architecture, Art, Design, Drama and Music, and their associated centers and programs.

For more information about the Henry Hornbostel Teaching Award or the College of Fine Arts, contact Eric Sloss at 412-268-5765 or ecs@andrew.cmu.edu.