• Rockwell Painting Displayed at White House (July 2011)

Rockwell Painting Displayed at White House

In July 2011, the Luce Foundation’s American Art program assisted the Norman Rockwell Museum with the lending of Rockwell’s painting “The Problem We All Live With” to the White House, at the special request of President Obama. The painting remained there through October in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Ruby Bridges’ historic walk integrating an all-white public school in New Orleans.

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza; White House video here.)
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• The Philanthropy New York Blog, Smart Assets, Features Luce Foundation

The Philanthropy New York Blog, Smart Assets, Features Luce Foundation

The Philanthropy New York Blog, Smart Assets, features the Luce Foundation's American Art Renewal Fund (AARF) in a post written by the Foundation's American Art Program director, Ellen Holtzman. Read about the success of the AARF intiative here: "Proactive Support Pays Off."
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• Chinese scholars attend NYC workshop on American art

Chinese scholars attend NYC workshop on American art

From July 31 to August 11, fifteen scholars of Western art history from leading Chinese universities and art academies attended an intensive workshop in New York City focused on Modernism in American art. The workshop, co-sponsored with the Terra Foundation for American Art and hosted by the Asian Cultural Council, enabled Chinese art historians whose work centers on Western art to experience the subjects of their research firsthand, visiting New York City museums and deepening their knowledge through guest lectures. This workshop represented the most recent in a series of Luce Foundation initiatives over more than a decade to support dialogue between Chinese and American art scholars.
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• Video about Penn's Luce Grant for Asian Archaeology

Video about Penn's Luce Grant for Asian Archaeology



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• Clare Boothe Luce Professor Receives Prestigious Awards

Clare Boothe Luce Professor Receives Prestigious Awards

Cindy Regal, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, received two prestigious research awards this year — the David and Lucille Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award.
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• Jane Zimmer Daniels retires; Carlotta M. Arthur appointed Program Director for the Clare Boothe Luce Program

Jane Zimmer Daniels retires; Carlotta M. Arthur appointed Program Director for the Clare Boothe Luce Program

Dr. Jane Zimmer Daniels has retired from the Luce Foundation’s staff on December 31, 2011. Initially appointed in January 2001, she has served as the director of the Clare Boothe Luce Program, and since 2009 has also directed the Higher Education Program. For three decades, Dr. Daniels has been an advocate for women’s leadership in the STEM disciplines, having directed innovative programs for women in engineering at Purdue University and co-founded the national association, WEPAN. At the Luce Foundation, she expanded the scope of recipient institutions; introduced undergraduate research awards and post-doctoral fellowships to the Clare Boothe Luce Program’s grants for women in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering; and contributed research to advance the careers of women in these fields.

Dr. Carlotta M. Arthur has been appointed Program Director for the Clare Boothe Luce Program, effective on January 1, 2012. After completing the bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering at Purdue University, she worked as an engineer for 10 years in industry. She received the M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the State University of New York – Stony Brook, where she also taught undergraduates. Following a residency at the University of Texas, she was a Kellogg post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, then taught at Meharry Medical College in Nashville and later at Smith College. Most recently she has served on the staff of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where she has been director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program and program officer for Diversity Initiatives.
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• India China Institute hosts conference on religion and sustainability in the Himalaya

India China Institute hosts conference on religion and sustainability in the Himalaya

On March 7-8, 2013, the India China Institute (ICI) at the New School in Manhattan hosted a two-day conference to examine changing religious and environmental practice in the Himalaya region. The conference, entitled Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalaya and supported by a grant from the Luce Foundation, brought together together over 40 international scholars for sessions addressing Identity, Materiality, and Health; Practice in Sacred Landscapes; and Connections, Provocations and Policy. Speakers included Elizabeth Alison, Anil Chitrakar, Mukta Singh Lama, Charles Ramble, and Eklabya Sharma as well as ICI fellows Li Bo, Georgina Drew, and Mahendra Lama.
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• “The Politics of Religious Freedom: Contested Norms and Local Practices” hosts a workshop in Cairo

“The Politics of Religious Freedom: Contested Norms and Local Practices” hosts a workshop in Cairo

The third international workshop of this project, based at the University of California, Berkeley, took place in Cairo in January 2013. The meeting opened with a session devoted to the situation of the Copts in Egypt, and included representatives of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights as well as scholars. Other sessions explored comparative perspectives from India, Lebanon and South Sudan. In addition to organizing workshops and presenting papers at more than a dozen conferences, the organizers have curated a series of online essays on The Immanent Frame, and have published op-eds and articles for wider audiences in the Chicago Tribune, The Globe and Mail (Canada), and the Boston Review. Two journals will publish special issues, co-edited by project organizers, later this year.
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• Columbia University’s “Who’s Afraid of Shari’a?” project hosts a workshop in Paris

Columbia University’s “Who’s Afraid of Shari’a?” project hosts a workshop in Paris

Among the projects supported by an HRLI grant to Columbia University is “Who’s Afraid of Shari’a?” co-sponsored by Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD). Under the direction of anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod, a workshop was held in Paris in January 2013. Scholars and activists from Morocco, South Africa, Iraq, Turkey and Europe shared research and debated the promise and pitfalls of new forms of Muslim women’s activism in diverse political contexts, from the tense racial politics of France, to communal conflict in Iraq, to cosmopolitan gatherings in Malaysia where feminists and legal experts promote reform. The university’s new initiative, “Women Creating Change,” will include an expansion of the HRLI project, now named “Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies.”
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• Interfaith Youth Core to bring interfaith studies to the classroom

Interfaith Youth Core to bring interfaith studies to the classroom

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlights the efforts of the Interfaith Youth Core to introduce interfaith studies to university curricula. With the help of a Luce grant to the Council of Independent Colleges, IFYC, a Chicago-based organization headed by author and activist Eboo Patel, has begun training 120 professors in the Council’s member colleges in how to teach interfaith studies, with the aim of moving interfaith education from “niche to norm” in university classrooms. The article (available only to subscribers) describes in detail Patel’s quest to make religious understanding a core part of undergraduate education.
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• 2013-2014 Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology have been selected.