CAA News Today
The Michael Aurbach Fellow for Excellence in Visual Art Announced!
posted Mar 07, 2025
Congratulations to this year’s recipient of the Michael Aurbach Fellowship for Excellence in Visual Art, Eli Craven!
Eli Craven is a lens-based artist based in Lafayette, Indiana. Craven’s research resides in the critical investigation of the image and its relationship to ideologies of sexuality, desire, and death. He holds an MFA in photography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an undergraduate degree in photography from Boise State University. His work is exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at Kant Gallery, Copenhagen; KlompChing Gallery, Brooklyn; and at Blue Sky, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, in Portland. Select clients include Corriere della Sera, gestalten publishers, Penguin Random House, and the Paris National Opera. He is currently an assistant professor of photography at Purdue University.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Jeff Beebe received his BFA from the American Academy of Art College, Chicago, and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, and has taught art and design in both cities. In addition, he has spent over a decade working as a graphic designer in the publishing and education industries. For the last fifteen years his work has focused on Refractoria, an imagino-ordinary world that is equal parts autobiography and fantasy.
Chloe Pascal Crawford is a multidisciplinary artist highlighting the labor undertaken by disabled people to set the conditions for their existence in public spaces. Her work is often exhibited in relation to her perpetually seated sightline, challenging conceptions of lowness as an abject or overlooked place. She has shown at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Artists Space, New York; VAE, Raleigh, NC; and Hua International, Berlin. Crawford has been a recipient of fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Vermont Studio Center. She has a BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She is currently an assistant professor at Michigan State University.
Natalija Mijatović received a BFA from the University of Montenegro, and an MFA in painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Mijatović has exhibited internationally, including at the National Gallery of Serbia; CUE Art Foundation, New York; Philadelphia Museum of American Art; and the Dom Museum, Vienna, among many others. Mijatović is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, the Faculty Excellence Award from the Savannah College of Art and Design; Center for Contemporary Art (Podgorica, Montenegro ) Award; and was in residence as Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. She is professor in and chair of the Department of Art and Design at the University of Delaware.