While we can’t quite call this the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame, we are proud to present the following renowned artists -- all of them at one time NYFA supported, and most in their up and coming years, long before becoming prominent. Among them you’ll find filmmakers, writers, painters, composers, choreographers, and more. Each began with a creative vision, needing only freedom, time, and reassurance to transfer that inspiration onto canvas, reel, paper or stage.
For further information, please contact Mark Rossier, Director of Development & Marketing, at 212.366.6900 x211 or mrossier@nyfa.org
Names You Know
Spike Lee (1985 NYFA Fellow, Film) is one of America’s best known and critically-acclaimed filmmakers. His oeuvre includes Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Jungle Fever, and 25th Hour. Said Lee: "While their file says that I used the no-strings attached money from NYFA to finish editing She's Gotta Have It, it makes no mention of the recognition I felt at that crucial point in my career -- recognition that I was a filmmaker, that I had something important to say. I can't begin to describe how much that meant to me as a young artist."
Kimberly Peirce (1998 NYFA Fiscally Sponsored Artist) is the co-writer and critically-acclaimed director of Boys Don’t Cry, for which Hilary Swank won the 1999 Oscar for Best Actress. Ms. Peirce utilized NYFA's Fiscal Sponsorship to create a trailer for her film.
Todd Haynes (1989 Film Fellow, 1990 Fiscally Sponsored artist) is one of the best known directors of "independent film," who first gained recognition for 1991 Sundance winner Poison. Since then, he has written and directed several critically-acclaimed films including Far From Heaven and Velvet Goldmine. He is also the writer and director of I'm Not There, a soon to be released film about Bob Dylan, in which several leading actors will portray him in various stages of his career.
Antony Hegarty (1997 NYFA Fellow, Performance Art) is the lead singer of the critically acclaimed band Antony & The Johnsons, whose hit album I Am A Bird Now has been called a classic by vaunted music publications in the U.S. and England. It won the UK's presitgious 2005 Mercury Prize for best album. Of Antony, the New York Daily News said: "Womanly in pitch and creamy in texture, Antony's vocals have the falsetto flutter of Bryan Ferry, the operatic flow of Klaus Nomi and the deep lung power of Nina Simone."
Mira Nair (1988 NYFA Fellow, Film) is a leading film director whose works include: Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, Salaam Bombay!, and Mississippi Masala.
Nathaniel Kahn (2000 NYFA Fiscally Sponsored Artist) is the director of the noted documentary film My Architect, which explores the life, work and legacy of the renowned architect Louis I. Kahn. My Architect earned Nathaniel Kahn a Directors Guild Award in 2004 and was nominated for a 2003 Academy Award.
Jose Rivera (1988 NYFA Fellow, Screenwriting) wrote the screenplay for the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries -- the story of a young, coming of age Che Guavara. Rivera was nominated for a 2004 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Terry McMillan (1986 NYFA Fellow, Fiction), gained national attention in 1992 with her third novel Waiting To Exhale, which remained on The New York Times bestseller list for many months, and was made into a movie in 1995. Another of Ms. McMillan’s popular novels How Stella Got Her Groove Back, was made into a movie in 1998. Her most recent work is The Interruption of Everything, which was published in 2005.
A.M. Homes (1988 NYFA Fellow, Fiction) is a widely-read, critically acclaimed author of such short story compilations as Things You Should Know (a New York Times notable), The Safety of Objects, the novels The End of Alice and In a Country of Mothers, and the recently released This Book Will Save Your Life (2006). Her stories appear frequently in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, among others.
Betty Woodman's (1985 NYFA Fellow, Crafts) art lies at the intersection of ceramics, painting and sculpture. Said The New York Times' Grace Glueck of Ms. Woodman's 2006 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, The Art of Betty Woodman: "Fixating on the vase, a time-honored vessel that goes back maybe to the dawn of history, Betty Woodman has brought it to spectacular new life in contemporary art. Her work both challenges and invokes the traditional elements of vase and vesselhood so imaginatively that it lives in a class by itself."
Billy Collins (1986 Fellow, Poetry) was America's poet laureate from 2001-2003. He has written six books of poetry, and has recorded a CD of his works, called The Best Cigarette. Collins has also had poems included in The Best American Poetry 2002 and The Best American Poetry 2003. In 1992, he was chosen by the NY Public Library to serve as Literary Lion.
Reginald Hudlin (1989 Fellow, Film) is a noted film director, with several popular films under his belt including: Boomerang, House Party, The Ladies Man, and Serving Sara, among others. He was also a director of the hit television program, “The Bernie Mac Show.” Mr. Hudlin, also an actor and producer, is currently the President of the Black Entertainment Television network.
Carroll Dunham (1987 Fellow, Painting) is a highly influential American painter whose work bucks the trend of more traditional styles and incorporates an idiosyncratic combination of cartooning and biomorphism. The New Museum of Contemporary Art presented a major survey of his work in 2003. Mr. Dunham’s work is also a part of MoMA’s permanent collection.
Sherrie Levine (1987 Fellow, Painting) is a photographer and conceptual artist. Much of her work is in the form of very direct image appropriation. She first gained critical attention for her work in the 1980s, where she was considered part of an emerging group of political, conceptual artists which also included Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger.
Barbara Kruger (1985 Fellow, Inter-Arts) is a photographer and socially conscious artist. She was an influential art director at Mademoiselle magazine. Recurring themes in her work are feminism and consumer culture. A UCLA professor, Ms. Kruger was honored at the 2005 Biennale with the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement award.
Ross Bleckner (1985 Fellow, Painting) is a noted New York painter and the youngest artist ever to have a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. His work has been featured in several Absolut Vodka ads, an honor shared by Andy Warhol.
Doug Aitken (2000 Fellow, Video) is the creator of various visual arts works, including video installations and music videos. His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennale, Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), among others. His video installation at MoMA in winter 2006/2007 will turn the facade of the building into an outdoor movie screen.
Tamara Jenkins (1995 Fellow, Film) is the writer and director of the 1998 film Slums of Bevery Hills, starring Alan Arkin, Marisa Tomei and Natasha Lyonne.
Phillip Lopate (1991 Nonficiton Fellow) is an essayist, fiction writer and poet. His body of work includes the essay collections Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, and Portrait of My Body; the novel Confessions of Summer and two poetry collections. Mr. Lopates’s writing appears in The New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, and Film Comment, among other publications. A collection of his movie criticism Totally Tenderly Tragically, was published in 1998.
Andres Serrano (1987 Photography Fellow) is a noted American photographer whose large portraits include celebrities and controversial figures such as Klansmen.
Audre Lord (1985 Poetry Fellow) was a noted poet, writer and activist. Some of her better known poetry collections include The First Cities, Coal, and The Black Unicorn. Another published work, The Cancer Journals, documented her struggles with breast cancer.
Marilyn Minter's (1988 & 1992 Painting Fellow) photo-realist paintings focus on the concept of “glamour” and how it is represented. A former student of Diane Arbus, Ms. Minter was a featured artist at the 2006 Whitney Biennial.
Zana Briski (1998 & 2004 NYFA Fellow, Photography)is the writer and director of Born into Brothels, which won the 2005 Oscar for Best Documentary. The film is about the children of prostitutes in Calcutta’s red light district. The idea for the film came about while Ms. Briski was photographing the children of Calcutta – for which she had used her NYFA Fellowship no-strings attached funds. Briski has since started a non-profit organization to continue this kind of work in other countries, Kids with Cameras.
Maryann De Leo (1989 NYFA Fellow, Video) directed Chernobyl Heart, which won the 2004 Oscar for Best Documentary Short.
Elliot Goldenthal (1989 NYFA Fellow, Music Composition) is an American composer of contemporary music and has written works for major motion pictures, concert hall, theater, and dance. His work includes music for films such as The Good Thief, Batman Forever, Heat, and the 2002 Academy Award winning score for Julie Taymor’s Frida.
Barbara Kopple (1985 NYFA Fellow, Film) is a film director who has won two Academy Awards, both for documentaries - first in 1976 for Harlan County, USA and the second in 1991 for American Dream the story of the Hormel Foods strike in Austin, Minnesota.
George Tsontakis (1988 NYFA Fellow, Music Composition) is an American composer whose music has been performed and broadcast by major orchestras, chamber ensembles, and festivals throughout North and South America, Europe and Japan. He was honored with the American Academy's prestigious award for lifetime achievement in 1995; and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto No. 2 in 2005.
Aaron Jay Kernis (1988 NYFA Fellow, Music Composition) is one of the most highly-honored contemporary composers. Widely known works include the New Era Dance, which won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, Colored Field for English horn and orchestra, and Symphony in Waves. Mr. Kernis is an active composer in high demand by such groups as the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony.
Ida Applebroog (1986 NYFA Fellow, Graphics & 1990, Painting) is one of America’s leading painters. Some common themes of her work are gender and identity. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art and in galleries and museums all over the world. She was a 1993 MacArthur Fellow.
Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio (1985, 1987, 1998, NYFA Fellows, Architecture) are the principals of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, one of the world’s better known and imaginative architecture firms. Current, critically acclaimed projects include The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Manhattan’s High Line and the Eyebeam Atelier of New Media & Technology. Noted completed projects include their Blur Building in Switzerland. They are the first architects to win a MacArthur Prize.
David Hammons (1987 NYFA Fellow, Sculpture) was recently referred to by the New York Times as "one of the three or four most interesting and influential American artists of the last 30 years." Hammons’ work is derived from the African American, urban experience. His art works spring from artifacts of African-American life to confront cultural and racial issues and stereotypes.
John Jesurun (1988 NYFA Fellow, Performance Art/Multidisciplinary Work) is widely known as one of the innovators of avant-garde theater. His Chang In A Void Moon is the first serialized play ever produced in New York City.
Ann Lauterbach (1988 NYFA Fellow, Poetry) is the author of five collections of poetry, including And For Example and Clamor. In 1993 she was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. She is a professor at the City College and Graduate Center; she is also head of the writing faculty in the MFA program at Bard College.
Meredith Monk (1985, 1996 NYFA Fellow in Music Composition, Choreography) is American dancer, choreographer, composer, filmmaker, a 1995 MacArthur Fellow, and a major figure in the avant-garde. She has recorded several albums of her own songs, as well as music for films including The Big Lebowski. The 40-character multimedia theater piece Quarry (1976) is recognized as a masterpiece.
Pepon Osorio (1988, 1995 NYFA Fellow, Sculpture) is one of America’s leading sculptors and a 1999 MacArthur Fellow. Best known for large-scale installations, Osorio was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1955. His work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art and El Museo del Barrio in New York, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, DC, among others.
Eiko Otake and Koma (1987 & 1996 NYFA Fellows, Choreography), known as the duo Eiko and Koma, have collaborated for more than two decades, choreographing and performing their own work. Among their recent efforts is River, an "outdoor environmental exploration." Premiered in Lexington, NY, in 1995, the work brought modern dance to an open-air setting and integrated choreographed movement with motifs from nature. They were 1996 MacArthur Fellows.
Suzan-Lori Parks (1990 NYFA Fellow, Playwriting) won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Top Dog Underdog - a play about family identity, fraternal interdependence, and the struggles of everyday African American life. Parks wrote her first screenplay for the 1996 Spike Lee movie Girl 6; and her most recent teleplay is Their Eyes Were Watching God, based upon the novel by Zora Neale Hurston. She is the author of the novel Getting Mother's Body. She was a 2001 MacArthur Fellow.
Yvonne Rainer (1990, 1995 NYFA Fellow, Choreography) is a cutting-edge filmmaker best known for her film MURDER and murder. She is also a 1995 MacArthur Fellow.
Elizabeth Streb (1986, 1990, 1994, & 2002 NYFA Fellow, Choreography) was a 1997 MacArthur winner. Her work has been seen on The David Letterman Show, in a special on CBS Sunday Morning, on CNN's Showbiz Today, Nickelodeon, NBC's Weekend Today, MTV, Larry King Live (debating with Dick Armey about the National Endowment for the Arts) and ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings.
Julie Taymor (1985 NYFA Fellow, Performance Art) is a leading theater director, having brought The Lion King to Broadway, and an innovative filmmaker, with Frida (starring Selma Hayek) among her credits. Frida, about the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, earned six Academy Award nominations, including winner for Best Score. In 1998, Ms. Taymor became the first woman to ever win a Tony Award for best director (The Lion King).
Julia Glass (2000 NYFA Fellow, Fiction) was the recipient of the 2002 National Book Award in fiction for The Three Junes. She has also won several prizes for her short stories, including three Nelson Algren Awards and the Tobias Wolff Award. "Collies," the first part of Three Junes, won the 1999 Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal for Best Novella.
Oscar Hijuelos (1986 NYFA Fellow, Fiction) is the author of several novels including, A Simple Habana Melody, the Pulitzer Prize winner The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Empress of the Splendid Season, and Mr. Ives' Christmas. His five previous novels have been translated into twenty-five languages.
Aaron Jay Kernis (1988 NYFA Fellow, Music Composition) is one of the most highly-honored contemporary composers. Widely known works include the New Era Dance, which won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, Colored Field for English horn and orchestra, and Symphony in Waves. Mr. Kernis is an active composer in high demand by such groups as the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony.
Tony Kushner (1987 NYFA Fellow, Playwriting) is one of America’s leading playwrights, having won a 1993 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, which was later made into an HBO film, as well as an opera. Mr. Kushner also won a 1994 Tony Award for Angels in America: Perestroika. More recently, he co-wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated 2005 Steven Spielberg film Munich.
Donald Margulies (1988 NYFA Fellow, Playwriting) is an award-winning playwright who won a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner With Friends – the story of a seemingly happy couple who re-examine their own relationship when their best friends decide to divorce. Other plays include Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment and Collected Stories.
Suzan-Lori Parks (1990 NYFA Fellow, Playwriting) won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Top Dog Underdog - a play about family identity, fraternal interdependence, and the struggles of everyday African American life. Parks wrote her first screenplay for the 1996 Spike Lee movie Girl 6; and her most recent teleplay is Their Eyes Were Watching God, based upon the novel by Zora Neale Hurston. She is the author of the novel Getting Mother's Body. She was a 2001 MacArthur Fellow.
David Henry Hwang (1985 NYFA Fellow, Playwriting) is one of America’s leading playwrights, having won the 1988 Tony Award for M. Butterfly. Other plays include Golden Child (which received a Tony® nomination), Trying To Find Chinatown and Bondage.
Tony Kushner (1987 NYFA Fellow, Playwriting) is one of America’s leading playwrights, having won a 1993 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, which was later made into an HBO film (2004 Emmy winner), as well as an opera. Mr. Kushner also won a 1994 Tony Award for Angels in America: Perestroika. More recently, Mr. Kushner co-wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated 2005 Steven Spielberg film Munich.
Julie Taymor (1985 NYFA Fellow, Performance Art) is a leading theater director, having brought The Lion King to Broadway (which she directed for some time) and an innovative filmmaker, with Frida (starring Selma Hayek) among her credits. Frida, about the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, earned six Academy Award nominations, including winner for Best Score. In 1998, Ms. Taymor became the first woman to ever win a Tony Award® for best director (The Lion King).
