Subdivision
| • | 501. Creative Artists | [X] |
| | 41 | Name: | Mr. Andrew Wyeth | | | Year Elected: | 1967 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1917 | | | Death Date: | January 16, 2009 | | | | | | |
Painter Andrew Wyeth was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania in 1917. Influenced by his father, the illustrator N.C. Wyeth, he had his first one-man exhibition in New York at age twenty and would go on to become one of the century's best-known artists. Acclaimed for his portrayals of both land and people (particularly in Pennsylvania and Maine), Mr. Wyeth has maintained a relatively consistent realist painting style for over fifty years, returning to several identifiable landscape subjects and models over a period of decades. Working primarily in watercolor, drybrush or egg tempera, he has created such famous works as Christina's World; Winter, 1946; Groundhog Day; Soaring; and The Carry. His work can be found in the collections of most major American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. An especially large collection of his work can be seen at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art held a major Wyeth retrospective in 2006. The first painter to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977), Mr. Wyeth has also been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor and the National Medal of Arts and has been elected to both the Academie des Beaux-Arts and the Royal Academy. | |
| 42 | Name: | Mr. Riccardo Muti | | | Institution: | Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini | | | Year Elected: | 1989 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Born in Naples, Italy in 1941, conductor Riccardo Muti is the music director of both the Chicago Symphony and the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. He assumed both posts at the beginning of the 2010-11 season. Maestro Muti previously served as music director of both the Philadelphia Orchestra (1980-92) and Milan's La Scala Opera House (1986-2005) during his distinguished career. As a young conductor, he won the Cantelli Prize in 1967 and went on to become principal director and music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (1968-80). Additionally, in 2011, he won the $1 million Birgit Nilsson Prize for his "extraordinary contributions" to the music world. He began regularly conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in London in 1972 and has also been a frequent guest of the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics and at the Salzburg Festival, where he is held in high esteem for his performances of Mozart operas. He is also considered to be one of the greatest conductors of the operas of Guiseppe Verdi. Educated at the University of Naples and Verdi Milan Conservatory, Mr. Muti is the recipient of numerous international prizes for recordings and an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2011, he won the presigious OPERA NEWS Award presented by the Metropolitan Opera Guild as well as the Prince Asturias Prize for Arts and in 2012 he was awarded the McKim Medal by the American Academy in Rome. He was honored by the government of Japan with Order of the Rising Sun Gold and Silver Star in 2016. | |
| 43 | Name: | Mr. Yannick Nézet-Séguin | | | Institution: | Orchestre Métropolitain, Montreal; Philadelphia Orchestra; New York Metropolitan Opera; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1975 | | | | | | |
Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a Conductor and Pianist. He is currently Music Director of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal), the Metropolitan Opera, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is also Honorary Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra after serving as Principal Conductor from 2008 to 2018. He studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at the Quebec Conservatory in Montreal and choral conducting at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. Other experience includes serving as Musical Director of Chœur Polyphonique de Montréal (1994), Musical Director of Choeur de Laval (1995), Founder of La Chapelle de Montréal (1995-2002), and Chorus Master, Assistant Conductor, and Music Adviser for the Opéra de Montréal (1998-2002).
Widely recognized for his musicianship, dedication, and charisma, he has established himself as a musical leader of the highest caliber and one of the most thrilling talents of his generation. His intensely collaborative style, deeply rooted musical curiosity, and boundless enthusiasm, paired with a fresh approach to orchestral programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times has called him "phenomenal," adding that under his baton, "the ensemble, famous for its glowing strings and homogenous richness, has never sounded better."
At a time when few conductors had personal recording contracts, Nézet-Séguin enjoyed an open-ended agreement with Deutsch Grammophon. His extensive discography includes numerous recordings for the German label, including the 2015 Rachmaninov Variations with Daniil Trifonov and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is also a notable opera conductor. His operas on video include: Carmen, Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Grammophon, 2010; Rusalka, Metropolitan Opera, Decca Classics, 2014; Faust, Metropolitan Opera, Decca Classics, 2014. He was the 2000 recipient of the Virginia Parker Prize and the 2010 recipient of the National Arts Centre Award. He was named a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2012. Nézet-Séguin was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2022. | |
| 44 | Name: | Ms. Joyce Carol Oates | | | Institution: | Princeton 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: | 1938 | | | | | | |
Joyce Carol Oates is a leading American woman of letters. As a prolific and elegant writer of fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry for over five decades, to the delight and astonishment of readers and critics, she probes a vast range of contemporary issues and themes including poverty, race relations, crime and violence, childhood and adolescence, love, sexuality and the roles of women, the movie industry, the boxing industry, the American city and suburb, and the American university. She has authored sympathetic and satiric fictionalized versions of public figures as diverse as Marilyn Monroe, Ted Kennedy and Woodrow Wilson, and as an erudite critic she has written brilliantly of, for example, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James and Simone Weil. She is the author of story collections Beautiful Days [2018] and Night-Gaunts [2018]. Her services to literature include co-editing The Ontario Review with her former husband Ray Smith, frequent reviews for The New York Review of Books and other journals, and mentoring a whole generation of younger writers fortunate enough to have been her students at Princeton University where she has been a professor since 1978. Her awards include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Humanities Medal. | |
| 45 | Name: | Mr. Orhan Pamuk | | | Institution: | Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1952 | | | | | | |
Orhan Pamuk is one of the greatest of living writers. At the age of 23 he decided to devote himself to writing fiction, though in fact he has done very much more. A series of novels has won him worldwide recognition and countless awards, notably the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. He has also written for the stage and screen and his novel Snow was adapted for a staged reading. His international profile and advocacy for human rights and freedom of expression have created challenges for him in his home country. About the time of his Nobel Prize he was tried and acquitted for making "un-Turkish" pronouncements about the Armenian genocide. In addition to his writing, Pamuk has curated a book of photographs of Istanbul, and founded a museum there, the Museum of Innocence. This museum, which displays objects related to his novel of the same name, won the European Museum of the Year Award for 2014. Orhan Pamuk was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. | |
| 46 | Name: | Mr. Itzhak Perlman | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1945 | | | | | | |
Israeli-born violinist Itzhak Perlman is known worldwide for his flawless technique and warm stage presence. Propelled into the international arena with his 1958 appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show" at age 13, Mr. Perlman has since gone on to tour internationally both in recital and with orchestra and earned 13 Grammy awards for his recordings. Among the few classical artists to be on the cover of Newsweek magazine, he has appeared on television shows as diverse as the Tonight Show and Sesame Street. As a performer, speaker, teacher, collaborator and friend to countless young musicians, he is an invaluable ambassador for the human spirit and has transcended the traditional bounds of musicianship. Mr. Perlman was appointed artistic director of the Westchester Philharmonic, from 2008 to 2011. He will conduct the orchestra at three of its five programs for three seasons beginning in October 2008. In 2015 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016 he was awarded the Genesis Prize. | |
| 47 | Name: | Professor André Watts | | | Institution: | Indiana University | | | Year Elected: | 2020 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | Death Date: | July 12, 2023 | | | | | | |
André Watts is currently Jack I. and Dora B. Hamlin Endowed Chair in Music and Distinguished Professor of Music at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. He has been a professional pianist since 1963, having later earned a B.M. from the Peabody Institute from 1972.
André Watts is one of the greatest living American classical pianists, and the first internationally famous Black concert pianist. Watts was a prodigy when he started playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 9, and at age 16 he won a competition to play in Bernstein's televised Young People's Concert with the New York Philharmonic. Watts was later called in by Bernstein as a replacement for a sick pianist and Watts's resulting solo performance on New Year's Day in 1963 was enrapturing, inspiring immediate worldwide acclaim. This was followed by his first album, The Exciting Debut of André Watts, and a Grammy Award for most promising new classical music artist. In 1976, he made history with PBS's Live From Lincoln Center program by playing the first fully televised piano recital. Watts has recorded a number of albums over the years, providing interpretations of Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Liszt, among others.
Watts won a Grammy Award in 1964, the Avery Fisher Prize in 1988, the George Peabody Medal in 1990, and received the National Medal of Arts in 2011. He's performed all over the world, and notably performed the following: Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat at Young People’s Concert, 1963; New York Philharmonics Liszt E-flat Concerto, 1963; Great Performer Series at Avery Fisher Hall, 1976; 38th Casals Festival performance, 1995; 100th Anniversary Gala, Philadelphia Orchestra, 2013. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. André Watts was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2020. | |
| 48 | Name: | Mr. Gerhard Richter | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | | | | |
A towering figure in the history of German art, Gerhard Richter is widely regarded as one of the greatest living painters. His retrospectives at MOMA, SFMOMA, and the Hirschhorn (2002) established him as a pivotal figure in modern art. Richter’s immense oeuvre, which includes the great stained glass window in Cologne Cathedral (2007), is characterized by a plurality of means, most notably both photorealist compositions that are blurred in a signature way, and abstract paintings that, in the layered application of their paint surfaces, create spaces different from but analogous to those evoked by his photorealist images. The dialogue between these modes and others (color chart paintings, glass and mirror works, portraits), and the fact of a painter not maintaining a cohesive style, has altered the approach of artists in fashioning an oeuvre. Richter engaged in pivotal reflections on the nature of history, especially German history. His work represented in the exhibition Baader-Meinhof was a milestone in Germany’s "coming to terms with its past." Richter has encouraged artists of several generations likewise to think of painting as a vital art form that not only reflects on the human condition but that can change history. Richter’s work is instantly recognizable: the haunting blurred landscapes, evocations of a latter-day Romanticism, are unique in the history of art, and yet, within the context of the artist’s oeuvre, and through the detachment that the blurring effects and that the photo source implies, these images transcend personal expression. Art historically, Richter represents a profound local (i.e., German or European) response to Abstract Expressionism. Rooted in his biography (WWII experience, formation in the former GDR, emigration to West Germany, engagement in late 1960s agitations, etc.), his works profoundly revise the central directions that painting has taken since the 1960s. Richter’s oeuvre motivates a set of pivotal narratives about the history of modern and contemporary art. | |
| 49 | Name: | Mr. Martin Scorsese | | | Year Elected: | 2008 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1942 | | | | | | |
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese was born in New York in 1942 and received his MFA from New York University in 1964. Among his numerous awards and honors, he has received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1997, the Academy Award for Best Director in 2006, the French Legion of Honor in 2007, the Motion Picture Association of America's Jack Valenti Humanitarian Award in 2009, the Cecil B. Demille Award in 2010, and an Emmy in 2011. Additionally, in 2007 he was recognized for career excellence and cultural influence by the Kennedy Center Honors committee and was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. With the pace and energy of his third feature film, Mean Streets (1973), Scorsese led a new generation of directors into the American cinema and introduced the world to the first of nine collaborations with Robert de Niro. Raging Bull (1980) is on the short list of the best films of all time, appearing as the American Film Institute's #1 sports film, while in many minds Goodfellas (1990) has eclipsed The Godfather as the finest gangster movie ever made. Best known for his depiction of a variety of criminal underworlds, Scorsese has also made films exploring religion (The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun) and American biography (The Aviator). He has directed a total of 21 films, which have won a combined 15 Academy Awards and 9 Golden Globes. His other feature films include: Who's That Knocking at My Door (1968), Boxcar Bertha (1972), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), The King of Comedy (1983), After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), Gangs of New York (2002), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010), Public Speaking (2010), and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). In addition to his own continuing work he is a dedicated supporter of many programs for the restoration and care of classic films. He is a major artist and yet loves his art form as if he were a devoted amateur. His current projects include a film about Frank Sinatra and the restoration and distribution of classic films from around the world through his World Cinema Foundation and the website www.theauteurs.com. Martin Scorsese was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2008. | |
| 50 | Name: | Mr. Rudolf Serkin | | | Institution: | Marlboro Music School and Festival & Institute for Young Performing Artists | | | Year Elected: | 1983 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1903 | | | Death Date: | 5/8/91 | | | | |
| 51 | Name: | Mr. Richard Serra | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1938 | | | Death Date: | March 26, 2024 | | | | | | |
Richard Serra was born November 2, 1938, in San Francisco. Serra attended the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara from 1957 to 1961, receiving a B.A. in English literature. He then studied at Yale University, New Haven, from 1961 to 1964, completing his B.F.A. and M.F.A.
Serra was honored with solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany, in 1978; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 1984; the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany, in 1985; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1986. Serra participated in Documenta V (1972), Documenta VI (1977) and Documenta VII (1982). The 1990s saw further honors for Serra’s work: a retrospective of his drawings at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; the Wilhelm Lehmbruck prize for sculpture in Duisburg in 1991; and the following year, a retrospective at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. In 1993. In 1997-98, his Torqued Ellipses (1997) were exhibited at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York. Other recent projects include the eight-part permanent installation The Matter of Time at the Guggenheim Bilbao (2005) and "Richard Serra, Sculpture: Forty Years" at The Museum of Modern Art (2007) and Promenade (2008) conceived for Monumenta exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris.
The French Government made Serra Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1985, Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1991 and Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2008. Serra was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993 and in 1994, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale by the Japan Art Association. Serra was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2001 Venice Biennale. In 2003 Serra was awarded the Orden Pour Le Merite fűr Wissenschaften und Kűnste and in 2009 he received das Grosse Verdienstkreuz mit Stern des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. In 2008 Serra was awarded La Medalla de la Orden de las Artes y las Letras de Espaňa. He has received Honorary Doctorate degrees from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Nova Scotia College for Art and Design, Williams College, the University of Navarra, Yale University, University of London and Harvard University. In 2010 the Fundación Principe de Asturias in Spain honored Serra the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts and in 2014 he received the President's Medal of the Architectural League of New York. | |
| 52 | Name: | Professor Tracy K. Smith | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2023 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1972 | | | | |
| 53 | Name: | Mr. Frank Stella | | | Year Elected: | 1999 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | Death Date: | May 4, 2024 | | | | | | |
One of the most significant abstract painters of the last fifty years, Frank Stella is an important figure in minimalism, post-painterly abstraction and offset lithography (a technique he devised). After studying history at Princeton University, he began work in 1958 on a series of strikingly sombre and intelligent paintings known as the black paintings. The Museum of Modern Art recognized the power of these paintings, which addressed themselves simultaneously to the empirical limitations of the flat space of paintings and the temporal extent of human life. Soon after this work was recognized with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, his restrained style was unleashed in a series of paintings that broke open the pictorial surface, appearing now as large 3-dimensional planes of aluminum. Painted in bright colors, these paintings launched a novel investigation of pictorial space that was uniquely recognized by a second retrospective. In 1983, in recognition of Stella's interest in aesthetic theory, he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. In recent years he has taken on large-scale projects for public spaces and has received architectural commissions. He was presented with the John Singleton Copley Award in 2012 and the National Artists Award of the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in 2015. | |
| 54 | Name: | Mr. Isaac Stern | | | Institution: | Carnegie Hall | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1920 | | | Death Date: | September 22, 2001 | | | | |
| 55 | Name: | Ms. Twyla Tharp | | | Institution: | Twyla Tharp Dance | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Since graduating from Barnard College in 1963, Ms. Tharp has choreographed more than one hundred sixty works: one hundred twenty-nine dances, twelve television specials, six Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows and two figure skating routines. She received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President's Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, and a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor. Her many grants include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1965, Ms. Tharp founded her dance company, Twyla Tharp Dance. Her dances are known for creativity, wit and technical precision coupled with a streetwise nonchalance. By combining different forms of movement - such as jazz, ballet, boxing and inventions of her own making - Ms. Tharp’s work expands the boundaries of ballet and modern dance. In addition to choreographing for her own company, she has created dances for The Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, The Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Boston Ballet, The Australian Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Martha Graham Dance Company, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Today, ballet and dance companies around the world continue to perform Ms. Tharp’s works.
In 1992, Ms. Tharp published her autobiography PUSH COMES TO SHOVE. She went on to write THE CREATIVE HABIT: Learn it and Use it for Life, followed by THE
COLLABORATIVE HABIT: Life Lessons for Working Together.
Today, Ms. Tharp continues to create. | |
| 56 | Name: | Professor Natasha Trethewey | | | Institution: | Northwestern University | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1966 | | | | | | |
Natasha Trethewey currently serves as the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University. She was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 2012 and again in 2013. She earned her B.A. from the University of Georgia in 1989, her M.A. from Hollins University in 1991, and her M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1995.
Trethewey is an exceptional poet and writer. Her works focus on problematic episodes in the American South and, more particularly, the Gulf Coast - and in her own family history. Thus, the themes of her poetry - ordinary lives in the Jim Crow South, Black soldiers in the Civil War, the life of a New Orleans sex worker, the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina, and, most recently, the difficult life and traumatic death of her mother, which led Trethewey to become a poet. During her appointment as Poet Laureate, Trethewey created a section of the PBS NewsHour, "Where Poetry Lives." As one critic has written, "A sense of justice made urgent by loss continues to underpin her work, which entwines historical narrative and lived experience, refusing to diminish either. Her poetry speaks plain truth rendered in forms strong enough to hold contradictions and sometimes devastating complexities."
Trethewey's bibliography includes: Domestic Work (2000), Bellocq's Ophelia (2002), Native Guard (2006), Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010), Thrall (2012), Monument: Poems New and Selected (2018), and Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir (2020). Among numerous awards, she was the 2003 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2007 recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the 2017 recipient of the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, and the 2018 recipient of the Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Letters since 2019, and was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2022. | |
| 57 | Name: | Ms. Mitsuko Uchida | | | Institution: | Marlboro Music Festival, Vermont | | | Year Elected: | 2003 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1948 | | | | | | |
Mitsuko Uchida is one of the world's most renowned pianists. Born to a family of Japanese diplomats, she spent most of her life in various European capitals. At the age of 15, she gave her first public recital in the Brahms Hall in Vienna. Her recordings of Mozart's complete piano sonatas and concertos in the 1980s rank among the most sensitive and profound interpretations of Mozart's keyboard music. She has since set similar milestones for the piano music of Schubert and Schoenberg. Ms. Uchida has been an inspired artistic director at the Marlboro Festival since 2000 and at the Ojai Festival in California in earlier years. She lectures frequently on music and performing arts. She is deeply interested in musical history and musicology, and that interest is integrated in her performances. In 2015 she was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, Japan's highest cultural honor. She has won two Grammy awards: one for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance in 2011 and one for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album in 2017. | |
| 58 | Name: | Ms. Kara Walker | | | Institution: | Rutgers University | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1969 | | | | | | |
New York-based artist Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide.
Born in Stockton, California in 1969, Walker was raised in Atlanta, Georgia from the age of 13. She studied at the Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1991) and the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1994). She is the recipient of many awards, notably the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997 and the United States Artists, Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008. In 2012, Walker became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work can be found in museums and public collections throughout the United States and Europe including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; and the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome.
Walker’s major survey exhibition, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, was organized by The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis where it premiered in February 2007 before traveling to ARC/ Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; and the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented the Art Institute of Chicago (2013); Camden Arts Centre in London (2013); Metropolitan Arts Center (MAC) in Belfast (2014), The Cleveland Museum of Art (2016), and DESTE Foundation Project Space in Hydra, Greece (2017).
In February 2018, on the closing weekend of Prospect New Orleans art triennial, Walker premiered The Katastwóf Karavan, a wagon-mounted thirty-eight note steam calliope that plays songs associated with the history of African-American protest and celebration in styles ranging from traditional spirituals to jazz to funk. Sited on Algiers Point where slaves entering New Orleans were held before transport across the river to be sold, the work gave shape and voice to those who suffered through the great Catastrophe that was the result of the institution of Slavery.
During the spring of 2014, Walker’s first large scale public project, a monumental installation entitled A Subtlety: Or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, was on view at the abandoned Domino Sugar refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Commissioned and presented by Creative Time, the project - a massive sugar covered sphinx-like sculpture - responded to and reflected on troubled history of sugar. The installation was seen by over 130,000 visitors over the course of 9 weekends that the exhibition was open to the public and received an overwhelming critical response. For this project, Walker was also awarded the 2015 Brendan Gill Prize, presented by the The Municipal Art Society of New York "for a work of art that embodies the spirit of New York City."
Kara Walker currently lives and works in New York City and is the Tepper Chair in the Visual Arts at Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts. | |
| 59 | Name: | Ms. Rosanna Warren | | | Institution: | Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Rosanna Warren is the Hanna Holborn Gray Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Her book of criticism, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry, came out in 2008. Her most recent books of poems are Departure (2003) and Ghost in a Red Hat (2011). In 2020 she wrote Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters. She is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, The American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Lila Wallace Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the New England Poetry Club, among others. She was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. | |
| 60 | Name: | Professor John Edgar Wideman | | | Institution: | Brown University | | | Year Elected: | 2005 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
The author of twenty novels, over fifty short stories and numerous essays on literary theory and criticism, John Wideman received the 1996 James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical writing. He is a two-time winner of the PEN-Faulkner Award (the only person to have done so twice) for his books Philadelphia Fire (1990) and Sent for You Yesterday (1983). His story "Weight" received the 2000 O. Henry Award for best short story, and the essay "Whose War" was included in The Best American Essays of 2003. His other prizes include a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Grant, the Rea Prize for short fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Lannan Literary Award for fiction, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences' Katherine Anne Porter Award in Literature. Mr. Wideman is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and has served on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania (1967-74), the University of Wyoming (1974-86), the University of Massachusetts (1986-2004) and Brown University (2004-), where he is Asa Messer Professor and Professor of Africana Studies and English. A graduate of Oxford University's New College (B.Ph., 1966), he was the second African American to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. His novel, Fanon (2008), is a part fictional, part biographical account tracing the life, message and legacy of Martiniquean revolutionary Frantz Fanon. He recently published a collection of short stories called American Histories (2018). | |
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