Robert Feintuch, a member of the Bates College studio art faculty who is celebrated for his droll, evocative paintings, has received a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship.

The New York City-based John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation this year awarded 190 fellowships to artists, scientists and scholars. According to the foundation’s Web site, Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.

Individual grants in 2008 averaged $43,000, with awards totaling over $8 million.A resident of New York City, Feintuch will use the Guggenheim to support the creation of a body of work for his next exhibition at New York’s CRG Gallery in 2009.

“As both a vital, expressive painter and someone who knows intimately the demands of a career in creative work, Robert is a valuable teacher and mentor to our students and faculty,” says Jill Reich, dean of the faculty at Bates.

“We are delighted that he has this support that provides him time to reflect and hone his creative edge.”

A senior lecturer in the art and visual culture department at Bates, Feintuch is known for “an extraordinary kind of realist painting that is both conceptual and figurative,” as Artnet.com reviewer David Ebony described it. Feintuch hands his faceless, undressed figures ordinary or comic objects that become mysterious and suggestive in the context of the pictures.

He explains that unbroken stretches of concentrated painting enable him to make his best work. “When I’m working well and I’ve had enough time in the studio, I feel immersed in the stream of images I find, and one begins to lead to another,” he says.

Feintuch has an M.F.A. from Yale University and a B.F.A. from Cooper Union. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art Forum, ARTnews and Flash Art.

He has shown work in galleries including CRG, the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, and such overseas venues as the Studio La Citta in Verona, Italy, and Galerie Alfred Kren in Cologne, Germany. Feintuch has also participated in group exhibitions including “Figuration” at the Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, Italy, and “I Love You More Than My Own Death” at the Venice Biennale.

Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has awarded more than $265 million in fellowships to more than 16,000 individuals — among them such figures as Ansel Adams, W. H. Auden, Aaron Copland, Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Linus Pauling, Philip Roth, Wendy Wasserstein, Derek Walcott, James Watson and Eudora Welty.

Previous Guggenheim recipients with a Bates connection include William Pope.L, a senior lecturer in the theater department and a nationally known conceptual artist, and William Stringfellow, a member of the Class of 1949 known as a peace activist, human rights lawyer and theologian.

The Bates College Museum of Art presents “The Black Factory,” an installation by nationally acclaimed visual and performance artist William Pope.L, from 2:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday, May 6, at the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The recipient this month of a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Pope.L is known for his provocative explorations of culture and consumerism. The Black Factory is his most participatory, community-oriented project yet, aiming to re-energize discussions about race in America by inviting people to share objects that represent “blackness” to them.

During the past year at locations including Bates, where he has been a lecturer in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric for 12 years, Pope.L held events to collect such items from the public. These objects are incorporated into The Black Factory, a truck equipped to manipulate and present the objects in various ways.

Starting May 31, The Black Factory will appear at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in North Adams, in a group exhibition titled The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere. For more information about the exhibit, visit the MassMoCA home page:

http://www.massmoca.org/index.html

Earlier in April, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced this year’s recipients of the Guggenheim Fellowship, including Pope.L, whose award will support his installation work. The purpose of the Guggenheim program is to help provide fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible. He was one of 185 fellowship recipients in the United States and Canada, out of 3,268 applicants. Fellowships totaled $6,912,000, making the average award worth $37,362.

Working in sculpture, performance and installations, Pope.L has consistently challenged his audiences to confront and re-examine American notions about race, class, pop culture and consumerism. His work has been recognized by a host of awards and major profiles in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among other publications.

In Maine, Pope.L may be best-known for eRacism, a retrospective exhibition at the Maine College of Art that later toured to Texas, Oregon and New York.

The recipient this spring of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Pope.L is known for his provocative explorations of culture and consumerism. The Black Factory is his most participatory, community-oriented project yet, aiming to re-energize discussions about race in America by inviting people to share objects that represent “blackness” to them.

During the past year at locations including Bates, where he has been a lecturer in the Department of Theater and Rhetoric for 12 years, Pope.L held events to collect such items from the public. These objects are incorporated into the Black Factory installation, a truck equipped to manipulate and present the objects in various ways.

Starting May 31, the Black Factory will appear at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in North Adams, in a group exhibition titled The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere. For more information about the exhibit, visit the MassMoCA home page: http://www.massmoca.org/index.html

Working in sculpture, performance and installations, Pope.L has consistently challenged his audiences to confront and re-examine American notions about race, class, pop culture and consumerism. His work has been recognized by a host of awards and major profiles in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among other publications.

In Maine, Pope.L may be best-known for “eRacism,” a retrospective exhibition at the Maine College of Art that later toured to Texas, Oregon and New York.