Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture announces 2015 Awards Dinner

New York, NY, (April 20, 2015) —The 44th annual Skowhegan Awards Dinner will be held Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 4 World Trade Center (150 Greenwich Street at Liberty Street) in New York City. Cocktails at 6:30 PM; Dinner and Awards Ceremony at 7:30 PM; hosted by Martin Kersels (F '10). Honorary Co-Chairs Charles Atlas (F '13), Richard Hell, Catherine Opie (F '10), Richard Prince and Dinner Co-Chairs Eleanor Acquavella Dejoux, Chiara Edmands, Rob Looker, Mihail Lari, along with the Trustees, Governors, and Co-Directors Katie Sonnenborn and Sarah Workneh of Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, celebrate the following 2015 honorees:

Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky will receive the Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Award for Outstanding Patronage of the Arts from Kate D. Levin, Principal at Bloomberg Associates and head of the Arts Program at Bloomberg Philanthropies, and recipient of Skowhegan's Award for Exceptional Civic Leadership in 2014. Mr. Brodsky is the Senior Partner of the Brodsky Organization, a family real estate business that has specialized in large-scale residential and mixed-use development in Manhattan over the last fifty years. Mrs. Brodsky is an art historian and independent curator specializing in modern and contemporary art from Latin America. Together, they have helped transform New York’s cultural landscape. Their generous gift in 2014 endowed two curatorial positions, one for architecture and another for Latin American art, bearing their names in the Modern & Contemporary Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Mr. Brodsky serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Mr. Brodsky additionally serves on the Board of Directors of The New York City Ballet, and is a past Trustee of New York University, Lincoln Center Development Project, Inc., American Museum of Natural History, and The Municipal Art Society, among other cultural, civic, and educational boards. Mrs. Brodsky has endowed or funded curatorial positions for Latin American Art at The Museum of Modern Art and at Tate Modern. She is a member of MoMA’s Latin American and Caribbean Fund, serves on the boards of The Tate America’s Foundation and the Institute of Fine Arts, and is former Co-Chair of the board at El Museo del Barrio. In 2011, Mrs. Brodsky received the Manhattan Borough President’s Outstanding Achievement award in recognition of her work in the field of Latin America art in the City of New York.

Lia Gangitano (A '90), founder and director of PARTICIPANT INC, will receive the Governors’ Award for Outstanding Service to Artists. Virgil Marti (A '90, F '12) who attended Skowhegan with Gangitano in 1990, will present the award. Through its adjacency to the urban life that advanced and embraced it, PARTICIPANT INC is committed to forging in-depth alliances with artists that result in exhibitions, screenings, performances, and educational programs. Exhibitions at PARTICIPANT have been devoted to the work of Marti, Charles Atlas, Kathe Burkhart, Michel Auder, Renée Green, and Greer Lankton. Previously, as curator of Thread Waxing Space, her exhibitions, screenings, and performances included Spectacular Optical (1998), Luther Price: Imitation of Life (1999), Børre Sæthre: Module for Mood (2000) and Sigalit Landau (2001). She is editor of Dead Flowers (2010) and the forthcoming anthology, The Alternative to What? Thread Waxing Space and the '90s. As associate curator at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston she co-curated Dress Codes (1993) and Boston School (1995) and edited New Histories (with Steven Nelson, 1997) and Boston School (1995). She has contributed to publications including Renée Green, Endless Dreams and Timebased Streams, Lovett/Codagnone, Whitney Biennial 2006-Day for Night, and 2012 Whitney Biennial on Charles Atlas. As curatorial advisor to MoMA PS1, her exhibitions have included Lutz Bacher, My Secret Life (2009). She currently teaches at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, NYU, and Hunter College. She is a Board member of Primary Information and Dirty Looks; Advisory Board member of the Outpost Artist Resources’ Cuts and Burns Residency Program; and John Kelly Performance.

Christopher Wool will receive the Skowhegan Medal for Painting from Glenn O’Brien, a writer, editor, and creative director who has written extensively on Wool’s work. Wool grew up in Chicago, and settled in Manhattan in 1972 where he has maintained a studio ever since. Wool’s work has always been closely tied to his urban surroundings, and as early as 1986, he began to create monochrome paintings that employed commercial tools and imagery appropriated from a variety of mass cultural sources. Since the early 1990s, Wool has relied heavily on the silkscreen process to transfer pre-existing images to a surface. His most recent works consist of spray painted lines and recurrent gestures of erasure as well as abstract forms that have been digitally manipulated in Photoshop. While Wool is primarily known as a painter, his photographs, artist books, and prints are also integral to his practice. His work has been presented at institutions around the world over the past thirty years, including solo exhibitions at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, and Kunsthalle Bern; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, and Kunsthalle Basel; Institut Valencià d'Art Modern and Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, and Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. A major retrospective was presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Art Institute of Chicago (2013–2014) and Wool’s first public sculpture is currently on view at Buckingham Plaza in Chicago.

Meredith James (A '11) will present an anamorphic floor sculpture framed by curtains that will function as a stage for guests during cocktails. Dessert and drinks will be held in an installation curated by Beverly’s (A ’12), the hybrid art-bar space on the Lower East Side. Music by Derrick Adams (A '02, F '13) Holdout Radio Playlist and guest host Heather Hart (A '05).

Along with honorees and chairs, attendees to include: Debra Abell, Alexander Acquavella & Mollie Ruprecht, Nicholas & Travis Acquavella, Richard Armstrong (Guggenheim Museum), Jan Aronson, Roland Augustine & Lawrence Luhring (Luhring Augustine), Abby Bangser (Frieze Art Fairs), David Beitzel (A ‘82) & Darren Walker, Barbara Bertozzi Castelli, Mark H.C. Bessire (Portland Museum of Art), Margo & Mitchell Blutt, Marianne Boesky (Marianne Boesky Gallery), Mrs. Mildred C. Brinn, producer Marcy Carsey, Andrew Cogan and Lori Finkel, John R. Coleman (The VIA Agency), Sharon Corwin (Colby College Museum of Art), Andrea Crane, Caryl Englander, Lonti Ebers, George Farias, Susan Paul Firestone (A ‘72), Louise Grunwald, Sandy Heller, Janine and Tom Hill, Michael Jenkins (Sikkema Jenkins & Co.), John Khoury, Tina Kim, Sims Lansing, Victoria Love Salnikoff (Love Fine Art), Libbie and David Mugrabi, Scott Murray, Mary Kathryn Navab, Claudia Overstrom, Greg & Susie Palm, Marcie & Jordan Pantzer, Connie Butler and Annie Philbin of the Hammer Museum, Lauren Cornell and Lisa Phillips of the New Museum, Francine du Plessix Gray, Marina & Tom Purcell, Billy & Kathy Rayner, BB & Jud Reis, Eleanor Revson, Lisa & Reuben Richards, Mary Sabbatino (Galerie Lelong), Erica & Joseph Samuels, Jack Shainman (Jack Shainman Gallery), Steve Shane, Mark Simon & Thomas Simon, William Sofield, Robert Soros, Srinija Srinivasan, Walter & Virginia Tomenson, architect Alan Wanzenberg, and Aerin Zinterhofer.

Additional artists in attendance to include: Ellen Altfest (A '02), Charles Atlas (F '12), Nadia Ayari (A '06), Andisheh Aveni, Anthony Aziz (Parsons The New School for Design), Sarah Bedford (A ‘97), Michael Berryhill (A ‘07), Tei Blow and Sean McElroy, Royal Osiris Karoake Ensemble (A ‘14), Cecily Brown, Luis Camnitzer (F ‘14), Christopher Carroll (A '08), Alessandro Codagnone, David Coggins (A '01), Esteban del Valle (A '11), Simone Douglas (Parsons The New School for Design), Rackstraw Downes (F ‘75, ‘81, ‘02), David Driskell (A '52, F '76, '78, '91, '04), Michelle Elzay, Anoka Faruqee (A '95, F '10), James Benjamin Franklin (A '94), Robert Gober (F ‘94), Maya Hayuk (A '11), musician Richard Hell, Gordon Hall (A ‘13), Heather Hart (A ‘TK), Jennie C. Jones (A '96, F '14), Deborah Jones Buck (A '75), Byron Kim (A '86, F '99, '13), Joyce Kozloff (F ‘98), Ellie Krakow (A '08), Megan Lang, Nicholas Lawrence (A '83), Whitfield Lovell (A '85, F '01, '02, '05), Katherine Mangiardi (A ‘07), Virgil Marti (A ‘90, F ‘12), Charles Marburg (A '77), Mary Mattingly (A '10), Marlene McCarty (F '11), Suzanne McClelland (F '99), Melissa Meyer (F '02), Joiri Minaya (A ‘TK), Donald Moffett (F ‘04), Carrie Moyer (A ‘95, F ‘10), Ilse Murdock (A '12), Maggie Ogden (A '11), Alix Pearlstein (F '04), Sheila Pepe (A ‘94, F ‘13), Paul Pfeiffer (F '05, '10), Richard Prince, Birgit Rathsmann (A ‘04), David Reed (A '66, F '88), Clifford Ross (A ‘73), Sean Ryan (A '03), Gabriela Salazar (A ‘11), Lisa Sigal (A '86, F '06), Nataliya Slinko (A '10), Barb Smith (A ‘12), Josh Smith, Clare Torina (A '12), Jonathan Van Dyke (A '06), Cullen Washington, Jr. (A ‘10), and Fred Wilson (F '95, '02).

Attendance at the Awards Dinner is by pre-registration only. Tickets begin at $750; tables begin at $10,000. Dinner proceeds sustain Skowhegan’s nine-week summer program for emerging artists, held on its 350-acre campus in central Maine, and the scholarship grants that are provided to over 94% of participating artists. Skowhegan was founded in 1946 and has since brought together emerging and established artists for an intense and transformative period of artistic risk-taking, mentorship and peer-topeer exchange. The highly competitive program maintains a need-blind application process, which ensures that artists are accepted based on demonstrated commitment, ability, and potential, not financial circumstance.

A – Skowhegan Alumni / F – Skowhegan Faculty