Today, the Terra Foundation for American Art announced the recipients of its 2014 international academic awards and fellowships, including Hiroko Ikegami, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies at Kobe University. Ms. Ikegami received one of seven publication grants awarded by the foundation this year to translate her critically acclaimed book The Great Migrator: Robert Rauschenberg and the Global Rise of American Art into Japanese.

“Relatively little scholarship about the historical art of the United States exists in Japanese, but we’re seeing an increasing desire in Japan for texts on the subject,” explained Amy Zinck, vice president and director of the Terra Foundation for American Art in Europe. “The translation of Ms. Ikegami’s book represents an important advancement for American art history in Japan, where it will inform scholars and help initiate and sustain a meaningful dialogue in the field.”
 
An art historian who specializes in American art and the postwar globalization of the art world, Ms. Ikegami originally published The Great Migrator, which positions the global rise of American art as a cross-cultural phenomenon, in 2010 with MIT Press. Her translation will be published in 2015 by Japan’s Sangensha Press.

Additionally, Dr. John Fagg, director of the American and Canadian Studies Centre at the University of Birmingham, was awarded the foundation’s international essay prize for “Bedpans and Gibson Girls: Clutter and Matter in John Sloan’s Graphic Art,” which will be published in the 2015 volume of American Art (vol. 29), the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s peer-reviewed journal for new scholarship.

Fagg is the fifth winner of the prize, which recognizes excellence in research and writing by a scholar in the field of American art history based outside the United States. The annual award supports essays that advance the understanding of historical American art and demonstrate new findings and original perspectives.
 
“The overarching goal of our academic awards and fellowships, which we’ve been granting since 2005, is to stimulate robust cross-cultural conversations among scholars in the field of American art,” added Zinck. “Collectively, this year’s recipients help us advance our mission of fostering the exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States with audiences across the globe.”