Pitt Visiting Art Lecturer Weissberger Receives 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship

University of Pittsburgh Visiting Lecturer Barbara Weissberger, whose dynamic contemporary art has been exhibited internationally, has won a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Weissberger has taught in Pitt’s Department of Studio Art since 2004. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the Guggenheim awards on April 5.

Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The 2007 Fellowship winners include 189 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from almost 2,800 applicants for awards totaling $7.6 million. The Guggenheim program considers applications in 78 different fields, from the natural sciences to the creative arts.

Weissberger received the Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and the Bachelor of Art degree from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Her work has been exhibited in Tokyo, Zurich, New York, Cleveland, Miami, and elsewhere. Her 2005 installation in Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory titled “Did you find everything you were looking for today?” was said by a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (P-G) review to lift “one into a curious realm that fires the imagination.”

“Her oversized hamburger with flurry of pickle chips covers a wall, its fixings dripping onto the floor, initiating thoughts of health and environment. It’s sobering that it’s such an embedded cultural emblem that each component may be easily read by color and sketchy suggestion,” wrote P-G reviewer Mary Thomas.

Pitt was the only institution of higher learning in Western Pennsylvania to be represented in this year’s Guggenheim awards. In eastern Pennsylvania, the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University had winners.