From left, National Medal of Arts recipients Mark Bradford and Carrie Mae Weems. | Photos: Courtesy of Mark Bradford; © Rolex, Audoin Desforges. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
The President will also award National Humanities Medals today
PRESIDENT BIDEN is celebrating excellence in the arts and humanities. Biden is awarding the National Medal of Arts to visual artists Mark Bradford and Carrie Mae Weems, and filmmaker Spike Lee. The artists are among 20 recipients the President will recognize with the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given to artists and patrons of the arts by the federal government.
The 2022 and 2023 National Medals of Arts will be awarded in a private ceremony at the White House this evening, followed by remarks that will be live-streamed on the White House website. The event will also include a presentation of the National Humanities Medals. The news was announced this morning.
Recipients of the National Medal of Arts are pioneers and models in their fields, change agents who are shifting the culture.
Los Angeles-based Bradford makes complex, abstract paintings that explore social and political structures and the adverse ways they impact marginalized and vulnerable communities. His layered works have addressed an array of issues, including redlining, cash bail, and HIV/AIDS. One of the most critically acclaimed artists working today, Bradford represented the United States at the 2017 Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition in the American pavilion. An artist and activist, he is the co-founder of Art & Practice in Leimert Park, a nonprofit that presents museum-curated exhibitions and supports local transition-age foster youth and children experiencing displacement around the world. “Mark Bradford: Exotica” recently opened at Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong and “Mark Bradford: Keep Walking,” the artists’ first solo exhibition in Germany, is currently on view at the Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of Contemporary Art in Berlin.
The longstanding artistic practice of Weems is an insightful meditation on race, history, and power. She works across photography, video, and installations. Her best known work, “The Kitchen Table Series” (1990), examines the experiences of women. A few weeks ago, she launched “Contested Sites of Memory: A Performance with Artist Carrie Mae Weems” at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. The traveling performance about racial healing will be staged in New York and Washington, D.C., in 2025. Scheduled to coincide with the Presidential election, “Carrie Mae Weems: The Shape of Things” is currently on view at Gladstone Gallery in New York. The exhibition is anchored by “Cyclorama: The Shape of Things” (2021) a video installation in the round that explores the history of racial justice and contemporary police killings of unarmed Black men. Part of a For Freedoms initiative, a billboard by Weems was installed near the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. The billboard featured images of Weems standing before the Lincoln Memorial, accompanied by the following text: “With democracy in the balance there is only one choice.”
Lee’s movies are cultural touchstones, interrogating American history and racism and exploring Black family dynamics and HBCU traditions. Over more than three decades, his seminal films have included early projects such as “Do The Right Thing,” “She’s Gotta Have It,” “Crooklyn,” and “Mo’ Better Blues”; a biopic of Malcolm X and “4 Little Girls,” a documentary about the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four Black girls; and big budget features like “Inside Man” and “BlacKkKlansman,” for which Lee won the Oscar for Best Screenplay in 2019. He found success through perseverance, creating a path and opportunities for other Black directors in film and television. Sharing his wisdom in the classroom, Lee is a professor of film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His passion for cinema, art, culture, sports, and history was showcased in “Spike Lee: Creative Sources,” a recent Brooklyn Museum exhibition dedicated to his expansive collections.
“The arts enrich our lives, helping us to ask questions, imagine new possibilities, and create community.” — NEH Chair Maria Rosario Jackson
THE PRESIDENT is recognizing artists across disciplines, from painting, to hip hop music and documentary filmmaking. The 11 recipients of the 2022 National Medal of Arts, include Weems; sculptor Ruth Asawa (1926-2013); Melissa “Missy” Elliott, artist and producer; and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tenn. The nine artists recognized with 2023 National Medals of Arts, include Bradford and Lee; documentary filmmaker Ken Burns; painter Alex Katz; Queen Latifah, artist and actress; and filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
In a statement, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson said: “The arts enrich our lives, helping us to ask questions, imagine new possibilities, and create community. The NEA is pleased to join President Biden in congratulating the 2022 and 2023 National Medal of Arts recipients whose curiosity, creativity, hard work, and dedication have inspired and touched so many in our country and around the globe.”
Nineteen recipients of the 2022 and 2023 National Humanities Medals will also be honored by the President this evening. The National Humanities Medal recognizes writers, historians, educators, and filmmakers, honoring individuals and organizations “whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience, broadened citizens’ engagement with history or literature, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to cultural resources.”
This group includes Ford Foundation President Darren Walker (2023), who heads a leading philanthropy and key funder of the arts, and Ruth J. Simmons (2022), the groundbreaking university administrator. Simmons led Smith College (1995-2001), the largest women’s college in the nation and then became the first Black president of an Ivy League university when she served as president of Brown University (2001-12). Subsequently, Simmons headed Prairie View A&M University (2017-23), the Texas HBCU.
“The National Humanities Medal recipients have enriched our world through writing that moves and inspires us; scholarship that enlarges our understanding of the past; and through their dedication to educating, informing, and giving voice to communities and histories often overlooked.”
— NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe
Poet Joy Harjo and Jon Meacham, the author and historian, are also among the 2022 National Humanities Medal recipients. The 2023 honorees include Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018), chef, author and TV host; LeVar Burton, actor and literacy advocate; filmmaker Dawn Porter; Aaron Sorkin, playwright, screenwriter, and director; and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, another major funder of the arts, which is led by Elizabeth Alexander.
“The National Humanities Medal recipients have enriched our world through writing that moves and inspires us; scholarship that enlarges our understanding of the past; and through their dedication to educating, informing, and giving voice to communities and histories often overlooked,” NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo) said in a statement. “I am proud to join President Biden in recognizing these distinguished leaders for their outstanding contributions to our nation’s cultural life.” CT
SEE FULL LISTS of National Medal of Arts recipients and National Humanities Medal recipients for 2022 and 2023
FIND MORE The private White House ceremony will be followed by live-streamed remarks this evening, Oct. 21, 2024 at 5:30 p.m. EST. Speakers include President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, and NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo)
UPDATE (10/22/24): Read remarks of President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, as delivered, and watch all remarks on CSPAN here
FIND MORE about Carrie Mae Weems on her website, Gladstone Gallery, and Instagram; about Mark Bradford at Hauser & Wirth gallery and Art & Practice; and about Spike Lee on Instagram
BOOKSHELF
Recently published, “Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue” brings together the work of two artists, friends, and peers who each have developed influential photographic practices over nearly 50 years. “Carrie Mae Weems: Kitchen Table Series” is a special, fully illustrated volume dedicated to Carrie Mae Weems’s celebrated body of work made in 1990. The book includes essay contributions by Sarah Lewis and Adrienne Edwards. “Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video” coincided with Weems’s landmark traveling retrospective which concluded at the Guggenheim in 2014. Also consider, “Carrie Mae Weems: A Great Turn in the Possible,” “Carrie Mae Weems: The Shape of Things,” and “Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now.” The definitive volume, “Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day” was published on the occasion of the artist’s Venice Biennale presentation and “Mark Bradford: Pickett’s Charge” documents his exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Recent volumes also include “Mark Bradford” from Phaidon’s Contemporary Artists Series and the exhibition catalog “Mark Bradford: End Papers.” Also consider, “Mark Bradford: Process Collettivo”, which was published earlier this year. Bradford’s work was also featured in “A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration,” which accompanied the recent traveling exhibition featuring newly commissioned works by 12 artists. “SPIKE” is a career-spanning monograph of Spike Lee. The fully illustrated volume documents is life, work, and many cultural passions.
