Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:04:48 +0000

One of many ongoing projects with the Crow Collection of Asia Art is a series of portraits of visiting artists, speakers and curators. The Crow showed a stunning collection of Roger Shimomura’s work and hosted and evening with Roger last summer. I made this portrait in my studio while Roger was in town. Below is a narrative biography taken from Roger’s personal website – rshim.com:

Roger Shimomura’s paintings, prints, and theatre pieces address sociopolitical issues of Asian America and have often been inspired by diaries kept by his late immigrant grandmother for 56 years of her life.

Shimomura received his B.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle, and his M.F.A. from Syracuse University, New York. He has had over 125 solo exhibitions of paintings and prints, as well as presented his experimental theater pieces at such venues as the Franklin Furnace, New York City, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. He is the recipient of more than 30 grants, of which 4 are National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Painting and Performance Art. Shimomura has been a visiting artist and lectured on his work at more than 200 universities, art schools, and museums across the country. In 1999, the Seattle Urban League designated a scholarship in his name that has been awarded annually to a Seattle resident pursuing a career in art. In 2002, the College Art Association presented him with the “Artist Award for Most Distinguished Body of Work,” for his 4 year, 12-museum national tour of the painting exhibition, “An American Diary.”

The following year, he delivered the keynote address at the 91st annual meeting of CAA in New York City. In 2006, he was accorded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the School of Arts & Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle. A past winner of the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award, in 2008, he was designated the first Kansas Master Artist and the same year was honored by the Asian American Arts Alliance, N.Y.C. as “Exceptional People in Fashion, Food & the Arts.”

Shimomura began teaching in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS in 1969. In the fall of 1990, Shimomura held an appointment as the Dayton Hudson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota.

In 1994, he became the first Fine Arts faculty member in Kansas University’s history to be honored as a University Distinguished Professor. In 1998, he was the recipient of the Higuchi Research Award, the highest annual research honor awarded to a faculty member in Humanities and Social Sciences. In the fall of 2002, he received the Chancellor’s Club Career Teaching Award for sustained excellence in teaching and dedication to students at KU. In 2004 he retired from teaching and started the Shimomura Faculty Research Support Fund, an endowment to foster faculty research in the Department of Art at KU.
Shimomura is in the permanent collections of over 80 museums nation wide.

His personal papers and letters are being collected by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He is represented by The
Flomenhaft Gallery, New York City; Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle; and Jan Weiner Gallery, Kansas City.

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Here is a list of relevant links:
Roger Shimomura on Artnet
The Crow Collection of Asian Art
Archives of American Art
Flomenhaft Gallery
Greg Kucera Gallery
Jan Weiner Gallery
Chris Korbey Photography

Updated Jan. 26, 2010
Posted Jan. 14, 2010
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Three Candidates for Provost to Give Public Lectures

The University has narrowed the search for its next provost to three candidates who will visit Chapel Hill beginning this month and will give public lectures.

A fourth candidate who had been scheduled to be on campus this week has withdrawn from consideration.

In a letter to the campus community, Chancellor Holden Thorp '86 said the candidates would answer questions at the lectures about themselves and their views regarding the future of public universities.

The position, which is the University's top academic officer, also carries the title of executive vice chancellor. One of the three is expected to succeed Bernadette Gray-Little, who left UNC last year to become chancellor at the University of Kansas.

The candidates and the dates, times and locations of their public lectures are:

• Anthony P. Monaco, pro-vice-chancellor for planning and resources at the University of Oxford since 2007. At Oxford, Monaco is professor of human genetics and head of the Neurodevelopmental and Neurological Disorders Group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. He directed the center for nine years, and he served from 1995 to 1998 as a fellow and founding member. He has been a University Research lecturer at Oxford. He previously served as senior scientist and head of the Human Genetics Laboratory, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Institute of Molecular Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, at Oxford. He received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1982 and both a doctorate (1987) and medical degree (1988) from Harvard University. Monaco will speak at 3 p.m. Jan. 28 in Toy Lounge, Dey Hall.
• Scott L. Zeger, vice provost for research at The Johns Hopkins University since 2008. He is Hurley-Dorrier Professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health. He served as the university's interim provost from March to August 2009, and for 12 years he chaired the department of biostatistics at Hopkins' school of public health. At Hopkins since 1982, Zeger holds a joint appointment in the department of epidemiology and the School of Hygiene and Public Health. From 1974 to 1978, he was a biomathematician at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974; a master's from Drexel University in 1978; and a doctorate from Princeton in 1982. Zeger will give a public presentation at 3 p.m. Feb. 1 in the Pleasants Assembly Room, Wilson Library.
• Jeffrey S. Vitter, professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University since 2008. Vitter served as provost and executive vice president for academics there in 2008-09. From 2002 to 2008, he was Frederick L. Hovde Dean in the College of Science and professor of computer science at Purdue University. Previously, he was founding member and co-director of the Center for Geometric and Biological Computing at Duke University, where he held an appointment as Gilbert, Louis and Edward Lehrman Professor and chair of the department of computer science. Prior to that, he was a faculty member in computer science at Brown University. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1977, a doctorate from Stanford in 1980 and an MBA from Duke in 2002. Vitter will speak at 3 p.m. Feb. 4 in Toy Lounge, Dey Hall.

The fourth candidate who withdrew from consideration was Philip J. Hanlon, vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs at the University of Michigan.

More online...

• Gray-Little Leaving for Kansas
  News report from June 2009