Miami Dade College and CINTAS Foundation Announce 2011-2012 Fellows

Miami, Miami Dade College (MDC) and the CINTAS Foundation recently announced this year’s fellows for the annual CINTAS Foundation Fellowship competition at a special reception held at the college’s iconic Freedom Tower. The competition awards a $10,000 fellowship for each winner in three categories: visual arts, music and creative writing.

MDC is the new home of the world-renowned CINTAS Fellows Collection, and is currently showcasing an exhibition of this year’s visual arts finalists. The art work will remain on display through Dec. 16, free and open to the public, during gallery hours.

2011 – 2012 CINTAS Foundation Award in Visual Arts: Iván Abreu
Abreu's work incorporates multiple media, such as electronic devices, software development, sound experimentation, Internet, industrial design, documents, video, and photography. The Havana-born artist lives in Mexico City, and holds a grant awarded by the National System of Art Creators of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts of Mexico (FONCA) (2012-2014). His work has been exhibited internationally, include Greusslich Contemporary (Berlin, 2011), Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts (USA, 2010), Bienal de Portugal, Portugal Arte 10 EDP (2010), PAN Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, (Italy, 2009), The NTU School of Art, Design and Media, (Signapore, 2009), and more.

Past visual arts fellows include Guillermo Calzadilla, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Carlos Alfonzo, Teresita Fernandez, Anthony Goicolea, Ernesto Oroza, photographers Andres Serrano and Maria Martinez-Canas, sculptor Maria Elena Gonzalez.

2011 – 2012 CINTAS Foundation Brandon Fradd Award in Music Composition: Jorge Martín
Originally from Santiago de Cuba, Martín won his first CINTAS Fellowship in 1999. In 2010, the Fort Worth Opera Festival presented the world premiere of his first full-length large-scale opera, Before Night Falls, inspired by Reinaldo Arena’s acclaimed memoir. In 2005, he was awarded a fellowship by the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, and artist's residencies at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs in 1993 and again in 2003. In addition, he received the 1998 American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award in Music. His one-act opera, Tobermory, won first prize in the 1993 National Opera Association's Fifth Biennial Chamber Opera Competition.

Past music fellows include Fabian Almazan, Sergio Barroso, Armando Bayolo, Mario Bauza (known as the father of Afro-Cuban jazz), José Bernardo, Aldo Rafael Forte, Orlando Jacinto Garcia Julián Orbon, Tania León.

2011 – 2012 CINTAS Foundation Award in Creative Writing: Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas
Cortiñas has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists in New York City since 2004. Awards and recognitions include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Helen Merrill Award, Writers Community Residency from the YMCA National Writer’s Voice, and the Robert Chesley Award, among others. His critically-acclaimed play, Blind Mouth Singing, completed runs at Chicago’s Teatro Vista and the New York-based National Asian American Theatre Company.

Past literature fellows Ivan Acosta, Reinaldo Arenas, Lourdes Blanco, Lourdes Casal, Adrian Castro, Silvia Curbelo, Uva de Aragon, multiple Obie Awards winner Maria Irene Fornes, Cristina Garcia, Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos, Manuel Martin, Pablo Medina, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Achy Obejas, Martha Padilla, Ricardo Pau Llosa, and Armando Valladares,

Hortensia E. Sampedro, president, CINTAS Foundation, in announcing the winners remarked on the historical footnote of holding the CINTAS Award Ceremony for the first time in 48 years at the Freedom Tower through which so many Cuban exiles transited. The CINTAS Foundation sincerely appreciates the partnership with MDC and looks forward to increasing collaboration.

For more information about the CINTAS program at MDC, please contact Jessica Brodsky at 305-237-7722, or jbrodsky@mdc.edu.

For more information about the exhibition, please contact MDC’s Art Gallery System at 305-237-7700.

Media-only contacts: Juan Mendieta, MDC director of communications, 305-237-7611, jmendiet@mdc.edu; Tere Estorino, director of media relations, 305-237-3949, testorino@mdc.edu; Sue Arrowsmith, 305-237-3710, sue.arrowsmith@mdc.edu; or Tarnell Carroll, 305-237-3359, tcarroll@mdc.edu.

This and other MDC releases are available on the web at www.mdc.edu.

About the CINTAS Foundation
The CINTAS Fellowship Program encourages creative development in architecture, literature, music composition and the visual arts. The Foundation was established with funds from the estate of Oscar B. CINTAS (1887-1957), the former Cuban ambassador to the United States, a prominent industrialist and patron of the arts. In June of 2011, the Cintas Foundation entered into an extended loan to MDC’s Art Gallery System (AGS) of the Cintas Fellows Collection, comprised of nearly 300 pieces by artists of Cuban descent living outside Cuba who have received prestigious Cintas Fellowships, awarded since 1963. For more information, visit www.cintasfoundation.org.

Miami Dade College
Miami Dade College has a long and rich history of involvement in the cultural arts, providing South Florida with a vast array of artistic and literary offerings including The Miami Book Fair International, the Center @ MDC, the Miami International Film Festival, the MDC Live! Performing Arts Series, the Cuban Cinema Series, the Prometeo Theatre, the Miami Leadership Roundtable speakers’ series, the Miami International Sculpture Park, a renowned art gallery system, several campus theaters, and the nationally recognized School of Entertainment and Design Technology. It is also the home of the National Historic Landmark Miami Freedom Tower.

Jessica Brodsky
300 NE 2nd Avenue • Miami, FL 33132-2204
305-237-7722
jbrodsky@mdc.edu

This release was published on openPR.