Selection Committee
Bill Ivey, Chairman
Bill Ivey is the Harvey Branscomb Distinguished Visiting Scholar and the director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Arts and Culture, a Washington D.C. think tank and chairs the board of the National Recording Preservation Foundation.
Ivey has served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and is credited with restoring Congressional confidence in the work of the NEA. His Challenge America Initiative has to date garnered more than $25 million in additional Congressional appropriation for the Endowment.
In addition, Ivey has been director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, twice-elected chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and a four-time Grammy Award nominee in the Best Album Notes category.
Anne d’Harnoncourt
Anne d’Harnoncourt has served as the George D. Widener Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1982 and assumed additional responsibilities as Chief Executive Officer in 1997.
Prior to her directorship, d’Harnoncourt served as curator of 20th century art, helping the museum build a substantial contemporary collection, acquiring works by Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Claes Oldenberg, Frank Stella, among others.
She serves on numerous boards including the Smithsonian Institution, the Henry Luce Foundation and the Japan Society, and has been recognized with awards including the Philadelphia Award.
David Henry Hwang
David Henry Hwang is best known as author of Broadway’s M. Butterfly, winner of the 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, John Gassner and Outer Critics Circle Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He gained further recognition for his award-winning play Golden Child, and books for Flower Drum Song and Disney’s Aida, and most recently, he has written the book for an upcoming production of Disney’s Tarzan with music by Phil Collins.
As an opera librettist, Hwang has written works with composers Philip Glass, Bright Sheng and Osvaldo Golijov, and as a screenwriter, he has penned features films such as M. Butterfly, Golden Gate and Possession.
From 1994-2001, Hwang served by appointment of President Clinton on the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. He serves on the boards of the Dramatists Guild and Young Playwrights Inc. and has received many honors including fellowships from the National Endowment fro the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Louis Massiah
Independent documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah has explored historical and political subjects in award-winning films such as W.E.B. DuBois – A Biography in Four Voices seen widely on public television and at film festivals internationally. Other production duties include serving as senior creative consultant for Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project on “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer” and creating reports for “The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour”.
As founder and executive director of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, Massiah has facilitated and executive produced over 100 tapes documenting major issues and concerns facing urban communities, produced collaboratively with community members.
Massiah has received awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and Emmy’s, and he has received numerous fellowships such as the Pew and MacArthur Foundation fellowships. In addition to teaching at Scribe, he is also a respected teacher at institutions including City College of New York, Princeton University and Haverford College.
Robert Pinksy
Professor of creative writing in the graduate program at Boston University, Robert Pinsky served as the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, completing an unprecedented three terms in that post in April 2000. His numerous collections of poetry include Jersey Rain and The Figured Wheel, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize nomination. He has edited works including American’s Favorite Poems and Poems to Read, anthologies that grew out of his Favorite Poem project, his main undertaking as Poet Lauereate.
In addition to his teaching and personal writings, Pinsky is the poetry editor of the online journal Slate and serves as a regular contributor to “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS.
Pinsky is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, holds honorary degrees from institutions such as Northwestern and Stanford Universities and has received many honors including writing awards from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
