About the Award Sculpture
Recipients will receive an award sculpture, commissioned by the Office of International Programs and designed by University art professor and visual artist Thomas Rose.
As an artist, I have always been drawn to narratives and to the metaphor. It is in response to my love of travel and the enthusiasm I have for new experience that this award has been designed. As a reader, I have been drawn to histories of place and the stories of experience. The book as a door to new awareness of the self and of one’s responsibility to others is a critical aspect of the design set forth here. The transparency and translucence of glass as it reflects and mirrors the book is both the fiction of myth and the reality of experience. The ladder leads to the distant unknown suggesting the potential for an ever-expanding awareness. The latitude and longitudinal lines scribed on the glass are the indicators of global engagement.
—Thomas Rose (2005)
About the Artist
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Thomas Rose is a visual artist whose sculpture and multimedia works have been included in exhibitions in Korea, France, Italy, Sweden, as well as the United States, including The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., The Whitney Museum, Downtown Branch, The Clocktower and P.S. 1 in New York, The Walker Art Center, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work was shown at the Steinbaum/Krauss Gallery and Socrates Sculpture Park in New York in 1996 and 1999, the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami, Florida, in 2001 and 2005, and the Flanders Gallery in Minneapolis in 2002 and 2005.
His architectural sculpture initiated several commissions including a gallery space in Miami and the design of a private residence, also in Miami. Among his projects for public spaces are works for interior and exterior sites: Coffman Memorial Union, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN; Park St Lofts in Springfield, MA; Wavehill, Bronx, NY; Target Center, Minneapolis, MN; The Marine Education Center Plaza at Minnesota Zoological Gardens, with Tom Oslund and HGA Architects, Apple Valley, MN; Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT; The Children's Story Room at the Hennepin County Library in Ridgedale; the Bennett Memorial for Dunwoody College of Technology, and others.
Rose’s work is included in numerous public collections: The Walker Art Center, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Getty Institute, the Stanford University Library, and The Fredrick Weisman Museum are but a few.
He was the recipient of a 1992 residency fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation at the study center in Bellagio, Italy. He has also received two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, as well as fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, The Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, and others. Rose was awarded the Fesler-Lampert Chair in the Humanities at the University of Minnesota.