The University of Wisconsin–Madison Arts Institute provides research support to faculty, staff and students in the arts. Each spring, the Arts Institute recognizes achievements and professional service along with supporting future creative endeavors and research. The recipients were honored on May 9, 2017 in the Education Building.
The Institute offered nine awards this year, amounting to approximately $86,000. The awards are divided into three categories: Arts Faculty Research, Arts Faculty and Staff Outreach and Undergraduate and Graduate Student Achievement in the Arts.
This year's committee was:
- Kate Corby (chair), Dance Department
- Mary Hark, Design Studies Department
- Mark Hetzler, Mead Witter School of Music
- Matt Mauk (graduate student representative), Art Department.
Donors that support the awards include:
- Emily Mead Baldwin
- The Joyce J. and Gerald A. Bartell family
- David and Edith Sinaiko Frank
- Suzanne and Roberto Freund
- The Bassett and Evjue Foundations
- Lyman S.V. Judson and Ellen Mackechnie Judson
- Emily McKay and Ruth and Hartley Barker
- Duane and Susan Tirschel
L&S Recipients
Faculty Associate Ron Kuka, Creative Writing Program, Department of English
Joyce J. and Gerald A. Bartell Award in the Arts
Ron Kuka received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, one of the most competitive and highly ranked graduate programs in the field of creative writing. His creative work was honored with a Wisconsin Arts Board Individual Artist grant. Kuka is a faculty associate in the English Department’s Creative Writing program and serves as faculty mentor to The Madison Review, the print journal edited exclusively by undergraduates. He is the recipient of the 2001 Brenda Pfaehler Award for Teaching and the 2000 Chancellor’s Hilldale Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Kuka serves on a number of English Department and university committees, and, most recently has become faculty mentor of the creative writing program’s online literary zine, Devil’s Lake, which is edited by creative writing’s graduate students. Since 2011 he has also been the lead teacher for the fiction and memoir classes offered in the Oakhill Correctional Institution in Oregon, WI.
Professor Beverly Taylor, Mead Witter School of Music
Emily Mead Baldwin Award in the Creative Arts
Professor and Director of Choral Activities, Beverly Taylor is Assistant Conductor of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Director of the Madison Symphony Chorus. Recognized by The Boston Globe as a conductor with "the crucial gift of inspiring people to give of their best, and beyond,” Taylor leads the UW–Madison choral conducting program and its premiere vocal ensembles. For seven years, she was Music Director of the Back Bay Chorale, performing with the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and other professional ensembles. Her recording of Robert Kyr's Passion According to Four Evangelists is available on the New Albion label. Past positions include Harvard University, Boston Bar Association Orchestra and guest engagements with international orchestras and choruses. With degrees from University of Delaware (BA, English and BM, voice) and Boston University (MM, music history), she received fellowships from Chorus America and Aspen, and is a 2016 semi-finalist for the American Prize in choral conducting.
View all of the 2017 recipients here.