The Vilcek Foundation ([8]) aims to raise public awareness of the contributions of immigrants to the sciences, arts, and culture in the United States.
The Foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the Foundation was inspired by the couple’s respective careers in biomedical science and art history, as well as their personal experiences and appreciation for the opportunities offered them as newcomers to the United States. The Foundation hosts immigrant artists at the Vilcek Foundation gallery space in New York City, awarding annual prizes in the biomedical sciences and the arts and humanities, and sponsoring programs such as The Santa Fe Opera and the Hawaii International Film Festival.[1]
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The Vilcek Prizes are awarded to foreign-born individuals for achievement in the arts and sciences; they consist of a $50,000 cash award and an award sculpture designed by Stefan Sagmeister. The Foundation awards two Vilcek Prizes annually, one in biomedical science and the other in the arts and humanities. Each year, the Vilcek Prize for the Arts is awarded in a different category of the arts and humanities; previous categories include fine arts, architecture, music, film-making and culinary arts. The 2011 Vilcek Prize for the Arts will be awarded in the field of literature.[2]
Candidates of the Vilcek Prize are nominated independently, and the final recipients are selected by an independent panels of experts in each respective field.
Previous recipients of the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science include Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch, the founding member of the Whitehead Institute at MIT; Dr. Joan Massagué, Chairman of the Cancer and Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Dr. Inder Verma, the American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Biology at the Salk Institute; and Dr. Huda Zoghbi, Professor of Pediatrics, Neurology, Neuroscience, and Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The 2010 recipient of the Vilcek Prize for Biomedical Science is Dr. Alexander Varshavsky, the Howard and Glen Laurie Smits Professor of Cell Biology at the California Institute of Technology.
Recipients of the Vilcek Prize in the Arts include the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude; architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown; acclaimed classical music composer Osvaldo Golijov; and director Mike Nichols, responsible for American classics such as The Graduate.[3] In 2010, José Andrés, the chef behind celebrated restaurants such as Jaleo and Minibar by jose andres, and the host and producer of the PBS travel series Made in Spain, received the Vilcek Prize in the category of the culinary arts.
The Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise is awarded to foreign-born individuals who have demonstrated outstanding achievement during the early stages of their careers. Like the Vilcek Prize, the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise is awarded each year in the fields of biomedical science and the arts or humanities. Unlike the Vilcek Prize, however, awardees are selected through an application process. In order to be eligible for the $25,000 prize, applicants must have been born abroad, reside permanently in the United States, and be no older than 38 years of age. [4] The first recipients of the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise are filmmaker Ham Tran and Dr. Howard Chang, an Associate Professor of Dermatology and principal investigator in the Program in Epithelial Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The 2010 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise was awarded to Dr. Harmit Malik, an Associate Member at the Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and to Chef Varin Keokitvon, a Chef Instructor at the non-profit organization FareStart, which provides culinary job training to homeless and disadvantaged individuals. [5] The Vilcek Foundation is currently accepting applications for the 2011 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science and Literature.
The Foundation is located in a landmark, Beaux Arts-style carriage house in New York City's Upper East Side, which serves as both its headquarters and gallery space. The space is used to showcase the work of innovative immigrant artists, designers, filmmakers, and others, many of whom have yet to achieve critical or financial success. Currently, the Vilcek Foundation Gallery is previewing the spring 2011 collection of Russian-born fashion designer Madina Vadache. Their last exhibition focused on the immigrant and first-generation talent behind the ABC television show LOST. Previous artists and performers hosted at the space include Cambodian-born filmmaker Kai-Duc Luong; Slovak composer and pianist Peter Breiner; Japanese-born sculptor Ryo Toyonaga; and Korean-born artist Il Lee.[6]