Subdivision
| • | 501. Creative Artists | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Mr. Woody Allen | | | Year Elected: | 2010 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
In a career spanning nearly five decades and three dozen films, Woody Allen has established himself as one of the major auteurs of contemporary international cinema, with a comic voice that is distinctively twentieth-century American-jokey, anxious, unmistakably New York-and a moral and aesthetic vision that owes much to the filmmaker’s immersion in the great classics of European literature and cinema. Having established his comic bona fides with early works from Play It Again, Sam (an early foray into magical realism) to his paranoid futuristic fantasy Sleeper, Allen came into his own as a serious artist, with a special talent for depicting wry romantic disappointment in the context of American subcultural conflicts, in films such as his Oscar-winning Annie Hall and Manhattan. A series of marvelously rich tragicomedies of the 1980s, tinged with distinctively Continental colors and experimenting with great success with magical realism and metafictionality as technical means of exploring his perennial interest in the relationships between eros, art, and morality, includes The Purple Rose of Cairo, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Alice-an evolution that has been capped, in more recent years, by such acclaimed later works as Match Point and Vicky Christina Barcelona. His recent films include Midnight in Paris (2011) and Blue Jasmine (2013). In 2014 he was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. | |
| 2 | Name: | Mr. Emanuel Ax | | | Year Elected: | 2009 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Emanuel Ax is considered to be in the front rank of today’s pianists and has been widely recognized for both solo and chamber work as well as for chamber performance. He has won many awards, including seven Grammy Awards, five of which were for his chamber music (1986, 1987, 1992, 1993, 1996) and the other two were for his solo performances of Haydn (1995, 2004). In 1974, he won the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel-Aviv and in 1979 he was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. More recently, Columbia University presented him with the Alexander Hamilton Medal for Distinguished Service and Accomplishment (2003) and he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2007). Ax has performed frequently with APS member Yo-Yo Ma and regularly plays at music festivals such as Mainly Mozart, Ravinia, and Tanglewood. They (Ax and Ma) released Hope Amid Tears in 2021. | |
| 3 | Name: | Mr. Louis Begley | | | Institution: | Debevoise & Plimpton | | | Year Elected: | 2000 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1933 | | | | | | |
LOUIS BEGLEY, b. Poland, October 6, 1933. Author of: Wartime Lies (1991), The Man Who Was Late (1993), As Max Saw It (1994), About Schmidt (1996), Mistler’s Exit (1998), Schmidt Delivered (2000), Das Gelobte Land (2001), Venedig unter vier Augen (with Anka Muhlstein, 2003), Shipwreck (2003), Matters of Honor (2007), Zwischen Fakten und Fiktionen (2008), The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka (2008), Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters (2009), Schmidt Steps Back (2012), Memories of a Marriage (2013), Killer, Come Hither (2015), Kill and Be Killed (2016);, and numerous essays and articles. Retired partner, Debevoise & Plimpton. Education: AB (s.c.l), Harvard, 1954; LL.B. (m.c.l.), Harvard, 1959. Prizes include: The Irish Times-Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, National Book Award Finalist, National Book Critics’ Circle Finalist, PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award, Prix Médicis Étranger, Jeanette-Schocken-Preis, Bremerhavener Bürgerpreis für Literatur, American Academy of Letters Award in Literature, and Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung Literaturpreis. Past Trustee and President, PEN American Center. Chevalier, Ordre des Arts et Lettres. Ph. D. (h.c.), University of Heidelberg. | |
| 4 | Name: | Mr. Saul Bellow | | | Institution: | Boston University | | | Year Elected: | 1998 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | April 5, 2005 | | | | |
| 5 | Name: | Mr. Ken Burns | | | Institution: | Florentine Films | | | Year Elected: | 2011 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Ken Burns is considered by many to be one of the most distinguished and influential documentary filmmakers in the United States. His various documentaries - including: Brooklyn Bridge, 1981; The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God, 1984; The Statue of Liberty, 1985; Huey Long, 1985; The Congress, 1988; Thomas Hart Benton, 1988; The Civil War, 1990; Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, 1991; William Segal, 1992; Baseball, 1994; Vezelay, 1996; Thomas Jefferson, 1997; Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, 1997; Frank Lloyd Wright, 1998; Not For Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, 1999; In the Marketplace, 2000; Jazz, 2001; Mark Twain, 2001; Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip, 2003; Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, 2005; The War, 2007; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, 2009 - explore the history of America in a unique and inspiring way through the use of innovative and captivating cinematography, memorable underlying musical motifs, and a distinctive storytelling voice. Often playing multiple roles as filmmaker, Burns was the director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer of both Baseball and The Civil War. In cinematography, Burns’ technique of panning across a photograph to focus on the subject of narration is now referred to as the Ken Burns Effect. He has won numerous awards - The Civil War alone bringing in over 40 - including seven Emmy awards, and has been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. He is the recipient of the 2019 Lenfest Spirit of the American Revolution Award. His work continues with Baseball: The Tenth Inning (2010), Prohibition (2011), The Dust Bowl (2012) The Central Park Five (2012), and The Roosevelts (2014). He and his works are symbols of excellence and humanity. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2011. | |
| 6 | Name: | Ms. Rosalind Chast | | | Institution: | The New Yorker | | | Year Elected: | 2010 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1954 | | | | | | |
Rosalind (Roz) Chast received a BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1998 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Pratt Institute and in 2004 she was given the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art Festival Award. She is the author and illustrator of Last Resorts, 1979; Unscientific Americans, 1982; Parallel Universes, 1984; Mondo Boxo, 1987; The Four Elements, 1988; Proof of Life on Earth, 1992; The Joy of Being Single, 1992; Childproof, 1997; Rationalizations To Live By, 2002; Weird and Wonderful Words, 2004; The Party, After You Left, 2004; Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons 1978-2006, 2006; with Steve Martin, The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z!, 2007; What I Hate: From A to Z, 2011; and Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? 2014 (which won the National Book Award in Autobiography). She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2010.
Ms. Chast is one of the most gifted cartoonists of her generation. Since 1979 she has been on the staff of The New Yorker, where she has now published more than a thousand cartoons. Her first of many covers for The New Yorker appeared in 1986. Her work also appears in other publications, including Scientific American and Harvard Business Review. If her cartoons have a common denominator it must be that they are very clever and quietly and irresistibly funny. She draws little figures, sometimes inquisitive, sometimes abashed, and most often bewildered. Chast's subjects are usually domestic or family oriented. Her art is deceptively simple; many surprises await the reader who parses carefully the backgrounds against which her figures appear. Her comics reflect a "conspiracy of inanimate objects," an expression she credits to her mother. Her most recent book, Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons 1978-2006, offers a splendid review of Chast's work; amusement, with moments of breaking into uncontrollable laughter, is guaranteed. | |
| 7 | Name: | Ms. Lydia Davis | | | Institution: | SUNY Albany | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1947 | | | | | | |
Lydia Davis is a short story writer, novelist, essayist, translator, and Professor of English Emerita at the State University of New York, Albany. She earned her B.A. at Barnard College in 1968. She was a Lillian Vernon Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University in 2012.
One of the most original writers in English today, Lydia Davis is often credited with having reinvented the modern short story. Some of her stories are a page long, some a paragraph, some a single sentence–a poetry of the everyday. She has translated French classics, including works by Proust and Flaubert. Her MacArthur Fellowship and Man Booker International Prize attest to the literary world's esteem. A sui generis artist of language, Davis surprises with every phrase, every sentence, and because her prose is so concentrated, it trains the reader to be alert to each linguistic detail. At the same time, her stories reveal human motivation so masterfully, they can be read as much for their psychological and moral penetration as for their brilliance of style. She is an internationally renowned radical writer, of the stature of Samuel Beckett.
Davis's bibliography includes: The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories, 1976; Sketches for a Life of Wassily, 1981; Story and Other Stories, 1985; Break It Down (a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award), 1986; The End of the Story, 1994; Almost No Memory, 1997; Samuel Johnson Is Indignant, 2001; Varieties of Disturbance (a finalist for the National Book Award), 2007; Proust, Blanchot, and a Woman in Red, 2007; The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2009; The Cows, 2011; Can't and Won't: Stories, 2014; Essays One, 2019. Of contemporary authors, only Davis, Stuart Dybek, and Alice Fulton share the distinction of appearing in both The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Poetry series. She received the 1988 Whiting Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1998 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003, the American Academy of Arts and Letters's Award of Merit Medal in 2013, the Philolexian Society Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement, the Man Booker International Prize, and the 2020 PEN/Malamud Award. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 2005. Davis was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |
| 8 | Name: | Mr. Roberto Diaz | | | Institution: | The Curtis Institute of Music | | | Year Elected: | 2013 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1961 | | | | | | |
A violist of international reputation, Roberto Díaz is President and CEO of the Curtis Institute of Music, following in the footsteps of renowned soloist/directors such as Josef Hofmann, Efrem Zimbalist, and Rudolf Serkin. As a teacher of viola at Curtis and former principal viola of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Mr. Díaz has already had a significant impact on American musical life and continues to do so in his dual roles as performer and educator.
As a soloist, Mr. Díaz collaborates with leading conductors of our time on stages throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. He has also worked directly with important 20th- and 21st-century composers, including Krzysztof Penderecki, whose viola concerto he has performed many times with the composer on the podium and whose double concerto he will premiere in the United States during the 13-14 season; and Edison Denisov who invited Mr. Díaz to Moscow to work on his viola concerto. Ricardo Lorenz and Roberto Sierra have written concerti for Mr. Díaz, and he will premiere a concerto by Jennifer Higdon in 2015.
As a frequent recitalist, Mr. Díaz enjoys collaborating with young pianists, bringing a fresh approach to the repertoire and providing invaluable opportunities to artists at the beginnings of their careers. In addition to performing with major string quartets and pianists in chamber music series and festivals worldwide, Mr. Díaz has toured Europe, Asia, and the Americas a member of the Díaz Trio with violinist Andrés Cárdenes and cellist Andrés Díaz. The Díaz Trio has recorded for the Artek and Dorian labels.
Mr. Díaz’s recordings on the Naxos label with pianist Robert Koenig include the complete works for viola and piano by Henri Vieuxtemps and a Grammy-nominated disc of viola transcriptions by William Primrose. Also on Naxos are Brahms sonatas with Jeremy Denk and Jonathan Leshnoff’s Double Concerto with violinist Charles Wetherbee and the Iris Chamber Orchestra led by Michael Stern. On the New World Records label is a live recording of Mr. Díaz’s performance of Jacob Druckman's Viola Concerto with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Upcoming releases include the Walton Viola Concerto with the New Haven Symphony and William Boughton (Nimbus) and works for viola and orchestra by Peter Lieberson with the Odense Symphony Orchestra and Scott Yoo (Bridge Records).
Since founding Curtis On Tour six seasons ago, Mr. Díaz has taken the hugely successful program to North and South America, Europe, and Asia, performing chamber music side-by-side with Curtis students and other faculty and alumni of the school. In addition to Curtis On Tour, his tenure as president of Curtis has seen the construction of a significant new building which doubled the size of the school’s campus, the introduction of a classical guitar department, the launch of summer courses open to the public, and the debut of an online stage called Curtis Performs. In the fall of 2013 Curtis will become the first classical music conservatory to offer free online classes through Coursera. Also under Mr. Díaz’s leadership, the school has developed lasting collaborations with other music and arts institutions in Philadelphia and throughout the world and has established the Community Artists Program (CAP) to develop the entrepreneurial and advocacy skills of young musicians.
Mr. Díaz received an honorary doctorate from Bowdoin College and was awarded an honorary membership by the National Board of the American Viola Society. In the fall of 2013 Mr. Díaz will become a member of the prestigious American Philosophical Society founded by Benjamin Franklin. As a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he was selected by Music Director Christoph Eschenbach to receive the C. Hartman Kuhn Award, given annually to "the member of the Philadelphia Orchestra who has shown ability and enterprise of such character as to enhance the standards and the reputation of the Philadelphia Orchestra." Mr. Díaz received a bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music where he studied with Burton Fine, and a diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music where his teacher was his predecessor at the Philadelphia Orchestra, Joseph de Pasquale. Mr. Díaz also has a degree in industrial design.
In addition to his decade-long tenure as principal viola of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he performed the entire standard viola concerto repertoire and gave a number of Philadelphia Orchestra premieres, Mr. Díaz was principal viola of the National Symphony under Mstislav Rostropovich, a member of the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa, and a member of the Minnesota Orchestra under Sir Neville Marriner. Mr. Díaz plays the ex-Primrose Amati viola. | |
| 9 | Name: | Ms. Joan Didion | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1934 | | | Death Date: | December 23, 2021 | | | | | | |
Joan Didion was born in Sacramento, California, on December 5, 1934, and in 1956 received a B.A. degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Her novels include "Run River," 1963; "Play It as It Lays" (1970); "A Book of Common Prayer" (1977); "Democracy" (1984); and "The Last Thing He Wanted" (1996). Her nonfiction includes "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968); "The White Album" (1978); "Salvador" (1983), "Miami" (1987); "After Henry" (1992); "Political Fictions" (2001); "Fixed Ideas" (2003); "Where I Was From" (2003); and "Blue Nights" (2011). In 1964 she married John Gregory Dunne (May 25, 1932 - December 30, 2003). Their only child, Quintana Roo Dunne, was born March 3, 1966 and died August 26, 2005. Her best selling memoir "The Year of Magical Thinking" (2005) was borne of this blindsiding by death. A dramatic adaption, written by Ms. Didion and starring Vanessa Redgrave, opened on Broadway in 2007. For her "distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence," Ms. Didion was honored with the National Book Foundation's 2007 Medal for Distinguished Contribution in American Letters and the 2012 National Humanities Medal. | |
| 10 | Name: | Mr. E. L. Doctorow | | | Institution: | New York University | | | Year Elected: | 2007 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | Death Date: | July 21, 2015 | | | | | | |
E.L. Doctorow was a consummate American novelist whose works have masterfully explored the country's history. In The Book of Daniel it was the trial of the Rosenbergs; in Ragtime ebullient America at the turn of the nineteenth century; in the superb Billy Bathgate New York during Prohibition; and in The March Sherman's fabled sweep through the South. His 2009 book, Homer & Langley, details the lives of two wealthy Manhattan packrats who collected over 100 tons of miscellaneous items. All the Time in the World, published in 2011, is a collection of several of his short stories. His last work was Andrew's Brain (2014). Doctorow was a prolific writer of short stories, a deeply appreciated teacher of creative writing, and a dignified, highly erudite, yet convivial man. A graduate of Kenyon College, he was the Lewis and Loretta Glucksman Professor in American Letters and Professor of English at New York University. In 2014 he was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. E. L. Doctorow died July 21, 2015, at age 84, in Manhattan. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2006. | |
| 11 | Name: | Professor Rita Dove | | | Institution: | University of Virginia | | | Year Elected: | 1996 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1952 | | | | | | |
Rita Dove served as the Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993-95. She has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the 2008 Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2006 Common Wealth Prize, the 2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award, the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1996 National Humanities Medal, and Oregon State University's 2016 Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2012 and Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois medal in 2019.
Born in Akron, Ohio in 1952, Ms. Dove received her B.A. summa cum laude from Miami University of Ohio and her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She also held a Fulbright scholarship at the Universität Tübingen in Germany. She has published the poetry collections The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), Museum (1983), Thomas and Beulah (1986), Grace Notes (1989), Selected Poems (1993), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2006), Sonata Mulattica (2009), a book of short stories, Fifth Sunday (1985), the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992) essays under the title The Poet's World (1995), and Collected Poems: 1974-2004 (2016).
Ms. Dove is also the author of the play The Darker Face of the Earth, which had its world premiere in 1996 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and was subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Royal National Theatre in London and other theatres. Seven for Luck, a song cycle for soprano and orchestra with music by John Williams, was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1998. For "America's Millennium", the White House's 1999/2000 New Year's celebration, Ms. Dove contributed, in a live reading at the Lincoln Memorial accompanied by John Williams's music, a poem to Steven Spielberg's documentary The Unfinished Journey.
As a player of the viola de gamba, Ms. Dove is fond of incorporating music into her poetry. She is currently Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. In 2018 she became Poetry Editor at the New York Times Magazine, introducing the readership to a new poem each week. | |
| 12 | Name: | Dr. Johanna Ruth Drucker | | | Institution: | University of California, Los Angeles | | | Year Elected: | 2023 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1952 | | | | |
| 13 | Name: | Ms. Louise Erdrich | | | Year Elected: | 2023 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1954 | | | | |
| 14 | Name: | Ms. Suzanne Farrell | | | Institution: | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Suzanne Farrell Ballet; Florida State University | | | Year Elected: | 2016 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1945 | | | | | | |
Suzanne Farrell is one of George Balanchine’s most celebrated muses and remains a legendary figure in the ballet world. In addition to serving as artistic director of her own company, she is also a repetiteur for The George Balanchine Trust, the independent organization founded after the choreographer’s death by the heirs to his ballets to oversee their worldwide licensing and production. Since 1988, she has staged Balanchine’s works for such companies as the Berlin Opera Ballet, the Vienna State Opera Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, as well as many American companies.
Ms. Farrell joined Balanchine’s New York City Ballet in the fall of 1961 after a year as a Ford Foundation scholarship student at the School of American Ballet. Her unique combination of musical, physical, and dramatic gifts quickly ignited Balanchine’s imagination. By the mid-1960s she was not only Balanchine’s most prominent ballerina, she was a symbol of the era, and remains so to this day. She restated
and re-scaled such Balanchine masterpieces as Apollo, Concerto Barocco, and Symphony in C. Balanchine went on to invent new ones for her. Diamonds, for example, and Chaconne and Mozartiana, in which the limits of ballerina technique were expanded to a degree not seen before or since. By the time she retired from
the stage in 1989, Ms. Farrell had achieved a career that is without precedent or parallel in the history of ballet.
During her 28 years on the stage, she danced a repertory of more than 100 ballets, nearly a third of which were composed expressly for her by Balanchine and other choreographers, including Jerome Robbins and Maurice Béjart. Her numerous performances with Balanchine’s company (more than 2,000), her world
tours, and her appearances in television and movies have made her one of the most recognizable and highly esteemed artists of her generation. She is also the recipient of numerous artistic and academic accolades. Since the fall of 2000, Ms. Farrell has been a full-time professor in the dance department at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.
To ensure the preservation of Mr. Balanchine’s legacy, Ms. Farrell founded The Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center in 2001. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet evolved from an educational program of the Kennedy Center to a highly lauded ballet company. The Company has performed annually at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and has toured both nationally and internationally. Committed to carrying forth the legacy of George Balanchine through performances of his classic ballets, the Company announced the formal creation of the Balanchine Preservation Initiative in February 2007. This initiative serves to introduce rarely seen or "lost" Balanchine works to audiences around the world. To date, the Company’s repertoire includes 11 Balanchine Preservation Initiative Ballets including Ragtime (Balanchine/Stravinsky), Divertimento Brillante (Balanchine/Glinka), Pithoprakta (Balanchine/Xenakis) and Haieff Divertimento (Balanchine/Haieff).
In addition to her work for the Balanchine Trust, she is active in a variety of cultural and philanthropic organizations such as the New York State Council on the Arts, the Arthritis Foundation, the Professional Children’s School, and the Princess Grace Foundation. Summit Books published her autobiography, Holding On to the Air, in 1990, and Suzanne Farrell - Elusive Muse (directed by Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson) was an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Film in 1997.] | |
| 15 | Name: | Mr. Lee Friedlander | | | Year Elected: | 2007 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1934 | | | | | | |
Photographer Lee Friedlander studied with Edward Kaminski at the Art Center, Los Angeles, from 1953-55 before settling in New York, where he began photographing jazz musicians. Eugène Atget, Walker Evans and Robert Frank were among his early influences. His discovery of the work of E. J. Bellocq led to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970. His first one-man show was held in 1963 at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. Friedlander's fascination with reflections in glass that suggest multiple layers in depth received increased attention in the 1960s. His critical eye, which began photographing the U.S. social landscape in the 1960s, produced the first of many volumes, Newark, New Jersey, in 1962. He then developed affinities with Jim Dine and Pop art that resulted in their Works from the Same House. Urban life became more prominent in Friedlander's work in the 1970s (Albuquerque, 1972), which led to The American Monument (1976) devoted to public monuments. In the 1980s he photographed industrial areas in the Ohio valley (Factory Valleys: Ohio and Pennsylvania, 1982) and furthered a continuing interest in nature with Flowers and Trees (1981) and Cherry Blossom Time in Japan (1986). Friedlander received Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grants in 1960, 1962 and 1977; a MacArthur Foundation Award in 1990; a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from France in 1999; and a Skowhegan Medal in Photography in 2000. A recent exhibition, "Lee Friedlander: A Ramble in Olmsted Parks", appeared at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008, and "America by Car" was both published and exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art in 2010. In 2014 he published Family in the Picture: 1958-2013. | |
| 16 | Name: | Mr. Jon R. Friedman | | | Year Elected: | 2016 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1947 | | | | | | |
Jon R. Friedman’s portraits, landscape paintings, and sculptures have been shown in exhibitions throughout the United States. His portrait work is represented in numerous public and institutional collections here and abroad, including the National Portrait Gallery, the U.S. House of Representatives where his portraits of Barney Frank, Henry Waxman, Louise Slaughter and Dalip Singh Saund are on permanent display, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, the American Philosophical Society, the Carnegie Institute of Washington, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal Society in Great Britain, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the California Institute of Technology; the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, BrandeisUniversity, Wesleyan University, and the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
In 2008 Friedman was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to paint a double portrait of Bill and Melinda Gates. In 2014 the museum added his portrait of Ted Turner to its collection. In addition to these works on canvas, over the past decade, the museum has acquired twelve of Friedman’s preliminary studies for various public commissions. In 2013 Michael Bloomberg commissioned Friedman to paint his portrait for the NYC City Hall Portrait Collection.
Friedman grew up in Arlington, Virginia. He received a BA in philosophy from Princeton University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He also studied at the Corcoran Museum School and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He lives with his wife, the writer Joanne Barkan, in New York City and Truro, Massachusetts.
Friedman’s father, Herbert Friedman, a renowned astrophysicist and pioneering rocket astronomer, who passed away in 2000, was a long time member of the American Philosophical Society. | |
| 17 | Name: | Mr. Philip Glass | | | Year Elected: | 2009 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | | | | |
Philip Glass’s musical life began early; at eight he studied the flute at the Peabody Conservatory and by twelve he had begun composing. After receiving an M.A. in composition from Juilliard in 1961, he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and in India with the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. Glass’s composition matured in the early seventies, largely through works written for his own Philip Glass Ensemble. In 1974, with a performance of the complete Music in Twelve Parts at the New York Town Hall, he had his first performance in a traditional concert hall. Two years later Einstein on the Beach premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, bringing Glass accolades from the larger music world. This master work combines disparate media moments in unconventional visual juxtaposition with textless vocal exercises and numerals varying in pitch and rhythm. The operas Satyagraha (1980) and Akhnaten (1984) followed - the former portraying the early years of Mahatma Gandhi and utilizing a dronelike repetition of symmetrical sequences of chords to achieve haunting and hypnotic powers. In recent years Glass has focused increasingly on composition for theater, film and dance. His film scores have received three Academy Award nominations – for Kundun (1997), The Hours (2002) and Notes on a Scandal (2006) - and his collaborations with the director Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi, et al) are audiovisual tone poems of uncommon elegance and visceral power. All told, over the last 25 years, Glass has composed 22 operas, eight symphonies, 38 film soundtracks, numerous string quartets and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. In addition to his Academy Award nominations, Glass won a Golden Globe Award in 1999, the Asquith Award for Film Music in 2002, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010. He won a New York City Mayor's Award for Arts and Culture in 2013. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1994. | |
| 18 | Name: | Ms. Louise Gluck | | | Institution: | Yale University | | | Year Elected: | 2014 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | Death Date: | October 13, 2023 | | | | | | |
Louise Gluck is the author of Firstborn, 1968; Proofs and Theories (Collected Essays), 1994; The First Four Books, 1995; Meadowlands, 1996; Vita Nova, 1999; The Seven Ages, 2001; October, 2003; Averno, 2006; A Village Life, 2009; Poems, 1962-2012, 2012. Each of her books departs from the theme of its predecessors like a novel with lacunae opening onto the unspeakable. Myths of antiquity - the characters of Persphone, Achilles, Eurydice, Iphigenia, appear throughout the series, often used as a vehicle for psychological analysis. Many of her books contain dark poems of family relationships. The last volume, A Village Life, reinforces the themes that delineate the difficulties of interpersonal relationships. To read her books is to understanding the governing paradox of a life lived in the body and of the work wrested from it, the one fated to die and the other to endure.
She is the recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, 1985; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1975, 1987; Pulitzer Prize, 1993; the PEN Martha Albrand Award, 1994, the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2015; and the National Humanities Medal, 2016. She served as Poet Laureate of the United States in 2003.
Louise Gluck was Senior lecturer in English, 1984-98, and Preston S. Parish ‘41 Third Century Lecturer in English, 1998-2004, at Williams College, and was Regents Professor, 1985-87, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 2004 she has been the Rosenkranz Writer in Residence and Adjunct Professor of English at Yale University.
Louise Gluck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2014. | |
| 19 | Name: | Ms. Denyce Graves | | | Institution: | Denyce Graves Foundation; Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1964 | | | | | | |
Recognized worldwide as one of today's most exciting vocal stars, mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves continues to gather unparalleled popular and critical acclaim in performances on four continents. USA Today identifies her as "an operatic superstar of the 21st Century," and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution exclaims, "if the human voice has the power to move you, you will be touched by Denyce Graves."
Her career has taken her to the world's great opera houses and concert halls. The combination of her expressive, rich vocalism, elegant stage presence and exciting theatrical abilities allows her to pursue a wide breadth of operatic portrayals and to delight audiences in concert and recital appearances. Denyce Graves has become particularly well-known to operatic audiences for her portrayals of the title roles in Carmen and Samson et Dalila. These signature roles have brought Ms. Graves to the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, Royal Opera - Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Arena di Verona, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opernhaus Zürich, Teatro Real in Madrid, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Los Angeles Opera and the Festival Maggio Musi- cale in Florence.
Ms. Graves’s 2012-2013 season includes two world premieres; she creates the roles of Mrs. Miller in Minnesota Opera’s New Works Initiative commission of Doubt, composed by Douglas J. Cuomo and directed by Kevin Newbury, and of Emelda in Cham- pion by Terence Blanchard at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. The season also marks two role debuts for Ms. Graves as Herodias in Strauss’ Salome at Palm Beach Opera, and Katisha in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado with the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. Ms. Graves makes numerous concert and recital performances including at Opera Carolina, Arizona Musicfest, National Philhar- monic, San Diego Symphony and several prestigious universities throughout the nation. As Ms. Graves’s dedication to teaching the singers of the next generation continues to be an important part of her career, she joins the voice faculty of the Peabody Con- servatory of Music in Baltimore.
Denyce Graves made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1995–1996 season in the title role of Carmen. She returned the following season to lead the new Franco Zeffirelli production of this work, conducted by James Levine, and she sang the opening night performance of the Metropolitan Opera's 1997–1998 season as Carmen opposite Plácido Domingo. She was seen again that season as Bizet's gypsy on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera for Domingo's 30th Anniversary Gala, and she made her debut in Japan as Carmen, opposite the Don José of Roberto Alagna. Ms. Graves appeared in a new production of Samson et Dalila opposite Plácido Domingo at the Metropolitan Opera, and she performed Act III of this work opposite Mr. Domingo to open the Met’s season in 2005. She was partnered again with Mr. Domingo in the 1999 season-opening performances of this work for Los Angeles Opera. She was seen as Saint-Saëns’ seductress with Royal Opera – Covent Garden and Washington Opera, both opposite José Cura, the latter under the baton of Maestro Domingo, as well as with Houston Grand Opera. Her debut in this sig- nature role came in 1992 with the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival under the direction of James Levine and opposite Mr. Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, and she made a return engagement to the Festival in this same role in 1997.
Ms. Graves appears continually in a broad range of repertoire with leading theaters in North America, Europe and Asia. Highlights have included a Robert Lepage production of The Rake’s Progress at San Francisco Opera, the title role in Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner in the world premiere performances at Michigan Opera Theatre with further performances at Cincinnati Opera, Opera Carolina and the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the role of Charlotte in Werther for Michigan Opera Theatre opposite the Werther of Andrea Bocelli in his first staged operatic performances and Judith in a William Friedkin production of Bartok’s Blue- beard’s Castle in her return to Los Angeles Opera: she also has sung Judith at the Washington National Opera and for the Dallas Opera. Highlights of the mezzo-soprano’s other recent appearances include Azucena in Il trovatore, Nicklausse in Les contes d’Hoffmann and Dulcinée in Massenet's Don Quichotte with Washington Opera; Giovanna Seymour in a new production of Anna Bolena for Dallas Opera; the title role in La Périchole with the Opera Company of Philadelphia; a rare double-bill of El amor brujo and La vida breve specifically mounted for her by Dallas Opera; Federica in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Luisa Miller, led by James Levine; and Amneris in Aida with Cincinnati Opera. Ms. Graves’s debut with the Théâtre Musical de Paris – Chatelet was as Baba the Turk in a Peter Sellars/Esa-Pekka Salonen production of The Rake's Progress, and she returned to Covent Garden as Cuniza in Verdi's Oberto after her debut performances as Carmen. Her debut at Teatro alla Scala was as the High Priestess in La vestale led by Riccardo Muti, and she soon returned as Giulietta in a new production of Les contes d'Hoff- mann and as Mère Marie in the Robert Carsen production of Dialogues des Carmélites. She appeared at Teatro Bellini in Catania in the title role of La favorita, and audi- ences in Genoa saw her first performances of Charlotte soon after her debut there as Carmen. Her debut in Austria came as Carmen with the Vienna Staatsoper, and she has also been seen in this role with Grand Théâtre de Genève, Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice, the Bregenz Festival and festivals in Macerata, Italy and San Sebastian, Spain. Ms. Graves gave her first performances of Adalgisa in Norma for Opernhaus Zürich.
Denyce Graves has worked with leading symphony orchestras and conductors throughout the world in a wide range of repertoire. She has performed with Riccardo Chailly, Myung-Whun Chung, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti and Mstislav Rostropovich. Ms. Graves has appeared with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and National Symphony Orchestra among a host of others.
One of the music world's most sought-after recitalists, Ms. Graves combines her expressive vocalism and exceptional gifts for communication with her dynamic stage presence, enriching audiences around the world. Her programs include classical repertoire of German lieder, French mélodie and English art song, as well as the popular music of Broadway musicals, crossover and jazz together with American spirituals. For her New York recital debut, The New York Times wrote, "[h]er voice is dusky and earthy. She is a strikingly attractive stage presence and a communicative artist who had the audience with her through four encores."
In 2001, Ms. Graves gave a series of appearances in response to the tragic events in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. Ms. Graves was invited by President Bush to participate in the National Prayer Service in Washington's National Cathedral in which she sang “America, the Beauti- ful” and “The Lord’s Prayer.” This event was televised worldwide and was followed by Ms. Graves’ appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in a live musical program of “Healing through Gospel Music.” Ms. Graves has since participated in numerous other benefit concerts, and RCA Records released a recording of patriotic songs by Denyce Graves, the proceeds of which benefit various groups who have been affected by the events of September 11. Ms. Graves recently continued her patriotic activi- ties when she sang for President and Mrs. Bush, among other dignitaries, at “An American Celebration at Ford’s Theatre” to benefit U.S. soldiers in Iraq. This concert was taped for television and aired on the ABC network on July 4, 2005. In 2003, Denyce Graves was appointed as a Cultural Ambassador for the United States, and she now travels around the world under the auspices of the State Department appearing in good-will missions of musical performances, lectures, and seminars. Her first trips in 2003 brought her to Poland, Romania and Venezuela.
Ms. Graves appears regularly on radio and television as a musical performer, celebrity guest, and as the subject of documentaries and other special programming. In 1997 PBS Productions released a video and audio recording titled, Denyce Graves: A Cathedral Christmas, featuring Ms. Graves in a program of Christmas music from Washington's National Cathedral. This celebration of music including chorus and orchestra is shown each year on PBS during the Christmas season. She was seen on the Emmy-award winning BBC special “The Royal Opera House,” highlighting Ms. Graves’s debut performances there, and in a program of crossover repertoire with the Boston Pops, which was taped for national television broadcast. In December 1999 Ms. Graves participated in a concert given at the Nobel Peace Prize Awards in Oslo, Norway, which was televised throughout Europe. As the only classical music artist to be invited for this event, she performed selections from her RCA Red Seal release alongside performances by Sting, Paul Simon, Tina Turner and others. She has been a frequent guest on television shows including Sesame Street, The Charlie Rose Show and Larry King Live. In 1996, she was the subject of an Emmy-award winning profile on CBS's 60 Minutes.
In 1999, Denyce Graves began a relationship with BMG Classics/RCA Red Seal. That same year Voce di Donna, a solo recording of opera arias, was released on RCA Red Seal. The Lost Days, a recording with jazz musicians of Latin songs in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, was released in January 2003. In June 2003, Church was released – this recording, developed by Denyce Graves, brings together African-American divas from various forms of music, all of whom were first exposed to music through their upbringing in church. Participants recorded music of their choice and include Dr. Maya Angelou, Dionne Warwick, En Vogue, Patti LaBelle and others. Other recordings of Ms. Graves include NPR Classics’ release of a recording of spirituals, Angels Watching Over Me, featuring the mezzo-soprano in performance with her fre- quent partner, Warren Jones and an album of French arias, Héroïnes de l'Opéra romantique Français, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo under Marc Soustrot. Her full opera recordings include Gran Vestale in La vestale, recorded live from La Scala with Riccardo Muti for Sony Classical; Queen Gertrude in Thomas’s Hamlet for EMI Classics; Maddalena in Rigoletto with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James Levine; and Emilia in Otello with Plácido Domingo and the Opéra de Paris, Bastille Orchestra under Myung-Whun Chung, both for Deutsche Grammophon.
Denyce Graves is a native of Washington, D.C., where she attended the Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts. She continued her education at Oberlin Col- lege Conservatory of Music and the New England Conservatory. In 1998, Ms. Graves received an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. She was named one of the "50 Leaders of Tomorrow" by Ebony magazine and was one of Glamour magazine's 1997 "Women of the Year." In 1999, WQXR Radio in New York named her as one of classical music's "Standard Bearers for the 21st Century." Denyce Graves has been invited on several occasions to perform in recital at the White House, and she provides many benefit performances for various causes special to her throughout each season.
Denyce Graves has been the recipient of many awards, including the Grand Prix du Concours International de Chant de Paris, the Eleanor Steber Music Award in the Opera Columbus Vocal Competition and a Jacobson Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. In 1991, she received the Grand Prix Lyrique, awarded once every three years by the Association des amis de l’opéra de Monte-Carlo, and the Marian Anderson Award, presented to her by Miss Anderson. In addition, Ms. Graves has received honorary doctorates from Oberlin College, College of Saint Mary and Centre College. | |
| 20 | Name: | Ms. Beverly Sills Greenough | | | Institution: | Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts & Metropolitan Opera & New York City Opera Company & Lincoln Center Theatre | | | Year Elected: | 1979 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | Death Date: | July 2, 2007 | | | | |
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