2019 Gala

Join us at our Annual Gala in New York City to celebrate the unique contributions of significant artists, collectors, dealers, historians, and philanthropists in the American art world.

Archives of American Art 2019 Gala
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Essex House, New York City

Honoring:

Howardena Pindell
American Academy of Arts and Letters
Alexander Nemerov

Click here to purchase your tables or tickets today.
For more information, call (202) 633-7989 or email AAAGala@si.edu.

On Tuesday, October 22, at Essex House in New York City, we will present artist Howardena Pindell and the American Academy of Arts and Letters with the Archives of American Art Medal, honoring distinguished members of the American arts community.

Howardena Pindell is a painter and mixed media artist. Using materials such as glitter, talcum powder, and perfume, she has experimented and engaged with a wide range of subject matter to defy the staid traditions of the art world and assert her place in its history. Throughout her career, Pindell has exhibited extensively, including landmark exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Among the prominent group exhibitions in which her work has been featured are We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–1985 (2017, the Brooklyn Museum, New York) and WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles). In 2018, a retrospective exhibition of Pindell’s work co-curated by Naomi Beckwith and Valerie Cassel Oliver, Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen, was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Pindell was interviewed in 1972 and 2012 for the Archives’ oral history program.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s 250 leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. The Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in literature, music, and the fine arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theater, and purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country. Early members included Albert Bierstadt, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, John Lafarge, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Current artist-members include Lynda Benglis, Lee Bontecou, Vija Celmins, Chuck Close, Mark di Suvero, Jim Dine, Ann Hamilton, Mary Heilmann, Jasper Johns, Alex Katz, Robert Mangold, Claes Oldenburg, Judy Pfaff, Susan Rothenberg, Joel Shapiro, Kiki Smith, Pat Steir, Wayne Thiebaud, and Kara Walker, among many others. The Academy’s members are elected for life and pay no dues.

The Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History will also be conferred on Alexander Nemerov. The Award was created in 1998 by Trustee Emerita Barbara G. Fleischman as a tribute to her late husband, who co-founded the Archives with Edward Richardson in 1954.

Alexander Nemerov writes about the presence of art, the recollection of the past, and the importance of the humanities in our lives today. Committed to teaching the history of art more broadly as well as topics in American visual culture, he is a noted writer and speaker on the arts. His most recent books are Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine (2016), Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus and Howard Nemerov (2015), Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s (2013), and Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War (2010). He also published To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America (2011), the catalogue to the exhibition of the same title he curated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Gala Host Committee

Evelyn Day Lasry
Bridget Moore
Adele Merck
George Frederick Mead Merck

Karen Z. Gray-Krehbiel & John H. Krehbiel, Jr.
Deborah Schmidt Robinson & Perry Robinson
Barbara & John R. Robinson

Past Honorees

The Archives of American Art Medal honors distinguished members of the American art community.

2018 Sam Gilliam
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation

2017 Sharon Percy Rockefeller
Glenn Ligon

2016 Steve Martin
Catherine Opie

2015 Ford Foundation
Robert Gober

2014 Robert E. Meyerhoff
Claes Oldenburg

2013 James Turrell
Alice Walton

2012 Richard Serra
Melva Bucksbaum & Raymond Learsy

2011 Cindy Sherman
The Leadership of Ann L. Gund,
Jo Carole Lauder, Wendy W. Luers, Carol Price, &
Eden Rafshoon of the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies

2010 Mark di Suvero
Sheila Hicks
Don & Mera Rubell

2009 Richard Artschwager
Douglas S. Cramer
Jack Lenor Larsen

2008 Ellen Phelan
Joel Shapiro
Joan T. Washburn
Virginia M. Zabriskie

2007 John Baldessari

2006 Paula Cooper

2005 Barbara G. Fleischman & the Fleischman Legacy

2004 Eli Broad

2003 Rita Fraad & Margaret & Raymond Horowitz

2002 André Emmerich

2001 Wayne Thiebaud

2000 Salute to the Founders of the Archives of American Art

1999 Ellsworth Kelly

1998 Robert Hughes

1996 Chuck Close

1994 Agnes Gund

1993 Frank Stella

1991 Roy Lichtenstein

1990 Richard Manoogian

1988 Benjamin D. Holloway

The Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History originated in 1998 by Trustee Barbara G. Fleischman as a tribute to her late husband, who founded the Archives in 1954.

2018 Cécile Whiting

2017 Tomás Ybarra-Frausto

2016 Thomas Crow

2015 William H. Truettner

2014 Teresa A. Carbone

2013 Richard J. Powell

2012 Morrison H. Heckscher

2011 Dore Ashton

2010 William H. Gerdts

2009 Klaus Kertess

2008 Neil Harris

2007 H. Barbara Weinberg