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GSB on the move
This summer the Graduate School of Business moves its European campus to London. Though its decade in Barcelona has been successful, and its 700th executive-MBA student will soon graduate, says Dean Edward Snyder, AM’78, PhD’84, “going forward the GSB belongs in Europe’s business center. ... [I]t’s no accident that business leaders rank London as the top European city in which to conduct business.” The new campus will be in the Woolgate Exchange at 25 Basinghall Street.
U of Cers win humanities prize
Paul Ricoeur, the John Nuveen professor emeritus in the Divinity School, and Jaroslav Pelikan, PhD’46, a former Chicago and Yale professor, shared this year’s $1 million John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences. The award, given by the Library of Congress, honors work in anthropology, philosophy, history, and religious studies.
Reigning in Scotland
Jean Bethke Elshtain, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller professor of social and political ethics, has been chosen to give the 2005–06 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. Elshtain, who will address topics related to sovereignty, is the fourth Chicago faculty member to deliver the lectures, more than any other institution.
OI catalogs missing Iraq objects
With a $100,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant, the Oriental Institute launched the Diyala Project, an online database housing all the artifacts recovered during the OI’s 1930–36 excavations in the Diyala river basin, northeast of Baghdad. The world’s largest online collection of Mesopotamian artifacts, the project is particularly valuable after the 2003 Iraq National Museum looting, when some 600 Diyala cylinder seals went missing. Photographs of each object remain as records.
Mellon of a prize
Philip Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker distinguished service professor of music, received one of four Mellon Distinguished Achievement Awards, which carry a $1.5 million prize. The first musicologist to win the four-year-old award, Gossett, a 19th-century Italian-opera expert, will use the grant toward his decades-long effort to create new critical editions of Rossini and Verdi works.
New order in the Court
While it searches for a permanent replacement for former executive director Diane Claussen, the Court Theatre has named Alan Salzenstein, who’s managed Chicago-area theaters for 20 years, interim director. Claussen joined New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse in August.
Women’s chorus debut
Formed this past fall by new choral-activities director Constance DeFotis, the 32-member University of Chicago Women’s Chorus performed its first concert in Bond Chapel January 16, featuring Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28.
Chamber Players get hip
In its 40th-anniversary season the University’s Contemporary Chamber Players are taking a “bold new artistic path,” according to their Web site. The approach includes a fresh moniker, Contempo; venues such as the Court Theatre and the Chicago Historical Society rather than Mandel Hall; and an updated logo. Artistic director Shulamit Ran, the William H. Colvin professor of music, says the players hope the shift helps them to “speak to a wider range of audiences.”
Props for campus architecture
Midwest Construction Magazine has named the Ratner Athletic Center, designed by Cesar Pelli, its 2004 project of the year. The Graduate School of Business Hyde Park Center, designed by Rafael Viñoly, won in the higher education/research category.
Smart showing
The Smart Museum exhibition Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, which ended January 16, won the International Association of Art Critics/ USA’s second-place award for best thematic museum show. It’s the first time in 30 years that the Smart has been honored by the association.
Argonne accelerates campaign
University-run Argonne National Laboratory is vying to win the Energy Department’s $1 billion Rare Isotope Accelerator project, a lab where researchers will study short-lived radio isotopes to learn, for example, how stars generate energy. Former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson and former U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley are leading the state’s campaign, facing off against former President Gerald Ford, heading Michigan’s effort. The DOE is expected to award the project this spring.
Prize for female economist
Marianne Bertrand, professor of economics in the GSB, received the 2004 Elaine Bennett Research Prize. Given by the American Economics Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, the award honors outstanding research by a woman early in her career. Bertrand has studied racial discrimination, CEO pay and initiatives, and the effects of regulation on employment.
Renaissance man
Hamza Walker, AB’88, Renaissance Society education director and associate curator, won the Walter Hopps Award for curatorial achievement. The $15,000 contemporary-art award, from the Houston–based Menil Collection, is given every two years. Walker recently curated A Perfect Union... More or Less and will organize the March 13–April 17 sculpture exhibit The Here and Now.
