VCUarts Alumni Awarded Fulbright Professional Scholar Award
February 8, 2016
The National Scholarship Office is pleased to announce that Leah Beeferman (P+P MFA 2010) has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant to Finland for 2016-2017. She will spend about five months from October 2016 through February 2017 in Finland as a Fulbright Scholar. Here’s an abstract from her application:
“I plan to attend 2-3 artist residencies in various parts of Finland, where I will take photographs, record sound and video, and research towards a new body of artworks. For the remainder of the award, I will live in Helsinki and complete works to be exhibited at Sorbus Galleria, Helsinki, and Titanik-Galleria, Turku. I also am scheduled to give an artist’s talk at the Kuvataideakatemia. In Helsinki, I will connect with the Finnish art community, which I know to be exciting, vibrant, welcoming, and experimental. This will give me a new perspective on my own art practice, time to focus on it with intensity, and connections with a diverse group of new artist colleagues.”
Leah initially applied for a Fulbright Student Scholarship when she was completing her MFA. While that application was not successful, Leah stayed in touch with the National Scholarship Office (NSO) as she began her professional career in NYC. She expressed interest in applying for Fulbright again early in 2015. She worked with the NSO during the summer as she finalized her plan to spend time in Finland and developed her proposal, which was submitted on August 3. She learned just before Thanksgiving that her application had been recommended to the Fulbright Commission in Finland and received notice on Tuesday, January 19, that she has been selected for a Fulbright grant. This is an exciting development as it provides a terrific potential professional development opportunity for VCU’s arts alumni, especially those who are ready to expand their international networks and carry the VCUarts banner abroad.
Please join us in congratulating Leah on her Fulbright award. We are looking forward to seeing the products of Leah’s Fulbright time in Finland and know that she will continue to represent the very best of the School of the Arts. We hope to have Leah back on campus sometime in the future to share her Fulbright experiences with the faculty, staff, and students in the SOTA.
