Congratulations are in order for Matthew Coolidge, director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) and winner of the 2006 SAAM Lucelia Artist Award. The Center is a bold choice, if only for the obvious fact that an institution is a tricky pick for an artist award. But that’s what makes Coolidge’s organization such a compelling project—CLUI straddles the borders distinguishing artist and collective, observer and activist, micro and macro.

CLUI is a research organization broadly dedicated to the examination of the nation’s land use—a landscape art for the information age. To that end, CLUI has established a variety of programs and projects, including the American Land Museum (an association of satellite regional centers, which develop informational resources specific to their regions) and Land Use Database (a central depository for data regarding land use, organized by geographic region and state as well as by categorical use). In addition, CLUI has published ten books and maintains an image archive used by various publications.

http://eyelevel.si.edu/2006/04/the_lucelia_art.html