Justin Willson receives Fulbright Study/Research Grant
Prestigious award will include stipend and travel funds to Russia
By Jada Haynes
ALBANY — Deerfield-Windsor School graduate Justin Willson received a Fulbright Study/Research Grant to study in the Moscow State University art history department and to research both Moscow and St. Petersburg’s archives.
Willson, an Albany native, said the grant will help him complete his dissertation on early Russian aesthetics and icon painting of the 14th and 15th centuries. Helping him with his research will be Engelina Smirnova, the so-called “queen of early Russian art history,” and Victor Vasilievich Bychkov, a philosopher and author at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“Russian art asks a lot of questions about the the medium,” Willson said. “What is the nature of art? What does art do? Why does art matter? I find that inspiring to think about.”
Willson will also have the opportunity to visit many of the monasteries and collections that house the works he will be sent to study.
Willson is a graduate of Deerfield-Windsor School and the University of Georgia, a past mentor at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Albany, and a former Language Arts teacher at Dougherty High School. He studied at the University of Texas at Austin, Yale University and the University of Chicago before pursuing his Ph.D. in the Art and Archaeology Department at Princeton University.
Willson said he will leave to begin his Fulbright Study in October.
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