Born in Lebanon, Mr. Chawky Frenn emigrated to the United States in 1981. He is currently an associate professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston in 1985 and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia and Temple Abroad in Rome in 1988.
Mr. Frenn has exhibited his works in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Paraguay, and India. He has participated in several museum exhibitions and his work is part of collections in places like MARe (Museum of Recent Art) in Bucharest and the Housatonic Museum of Art in Connecticut; it is also part of private collections.
Mr. Frenn has received numerous awards, including the Teaching Excellence Award from George Mason University and the Blanche E. Colman Award from the Mellon Trust in Boston. His work has received critical acclaim in publications like The New York Times, Art New England, and Boston Globe in the United States, and in An-Nahar, L’Orient-Le Jour, and The Daily Star in Lebanon.
Mr. Frenn is the author of two books, 100 Boston Artists (2013) and 100 Boston Painters (2012). His work has also appeared in 100 Artists of Washington, D.C, Male Nude Now, and Encyclopedia of Arab American Artists. Besides, there’s a monograph on his work, titled Art for Life’s Sake.
This is Mr. Frenn’s second Fulbright-Nehru Award; the first one was in 2017. In his current project, he is expanding cultural bridges initiated during his 2017 stint. The project involves: cultivating art as a voice for mutual understanding, social justice, and peace; teaching at Banaras Hindu University and building partnerships with artists; collaborating with students and colleagues to create an exhibit communicating individual voices on collective concerns; presenting lectures, panel discussions, and workshops at universities and art centers; guiding art education forward into new interdisciplinary perspectives; fostering global educational connections and artistic collaborations; and promoting student engagement and multicultural teaching opportunities between India and the United States.