ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Ellen Frank

In 2004, Dr. Frank founded Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation, Inc., a non-profit global organization dedicated to the transformative power of art to build a culture of understanding and peace. CITIES OF PEACE ILLUMINATED® is its primary initiative. As artistic director, Dr. Frank has trained artist-interns from more than 52 countries, and unites scholars and experts to work on its joint creations.

Artist, scholar, and writer, Ellen Frank has received many awards in painting, book design, and scholarship including a Fulbright Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation Fellowship, Pollock Krasner Award in Painting, New York State Council on the Arts, and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant. In 2018, Dr. Frank was named Fulbright Specialist in Peacebuilding and Reconciliation, U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and World Learning, and received an Award for Excellence for Cities of Peace from KFOR / NATO.

Dr. Frank studied art history and connoisseurship at Yale University, the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes in London, and holds an interdisciplinary doctorate in English Literature and the Visual Arts from Stanford University. In 2015, she received an Honorary Doctorate for Cities of Peace from the Russian Armenian (Slavonic) University.

Dr. Frank was Assistant Professor of English Literature at UC Berkeley where she co-designed and created the first interdisciplinary major “Literature and the Visual Arts.” Her first book, Literary Architecture: Essays Toward a Tradition (University of California Press), was awarded the New York Institute for Graphic Arts 50 Best Books; Ronce & Coffin Club Design Award; and “Best Book in 50 Years” by University of California Press.

Ongoing EFIAF Projects: The Breathing Project (2020-2021), A Tribute to Cities of Peace Illuminated (2023)