Selection Committee
Patricia Cruz, Chairperson
Patricia Cruz is the Executive Director of Aaron Davis Hall, Harlem’s Principal Center for the Performing Arts. During her tenure, she has secured $2 million in endowment funds and initiated a $20 million capital campaign to secure the financial stability of the 22-year-old institution and expand its current facility. Among her recent accomplishments is the renovation of a 100-year-old landmark gatehouse building of the Croton Aqueduct System, which will provide a fourth theater and offices for the hall.
Prior to joining Aaron David Hall, Cruz was the deputy director for programs and the director of development for the Studio Museum in Harlem. She also held the position of program director for the Chicago Council on Fine Arts.
Cruz serves on the boards of the Andy Warhol Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is past president of the ArtTable, a national organization of women in the arts.
Anthony Davis
Professor of music at the University of California, San Diego and Grammy nominated Anthony Davis is recognized as one of the most versatile and original composers working today. After gaining prominence as a jazz pianist and composer, Davis quickly expanded his repertoire to include award-winning works for orchestras, ensembles, dances, opera and theater.
His music has been heard on Broadway in the acclaimed production of Angels in America, and he has received numerous commissions, among them the New York City opera, the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, as well as Carnegie Hall and symphonies from San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Houston and Atlanta.
Davis has taught music and Afro-America Studies at Yale and Harvard, and has received many honors including an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Bessie Award for Music for Dance.
John Hanhardt
As the Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum, John Hanhardt has been responsible for the worldwide development of the Guggenheim’s collections and exhibitions programs for film and media arts since 1996. Before that, he spent over 20 years at the Whitney Museum of American Art as curator of film and video and Head of the Department. He made the film and video selections for all of the Whitney Biennials from 1975 through 1995. Hanhardt also established the Film Department and Film Study Collection at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Hanhardt serves on the board of directors of Electronic Arts Intermix and has been a trustee of the MacDowell Colony. He is also a respected teacher and author, teaching at institutions including Columbia, MIT, Middlebury College, Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design and Williams College.
William Ivey
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.
Peter C. Marzio
Peter Marzio has served as director of the Museum of Fine Art in Houston since 1982. During his tenure, the museum’s endowment multiplied 18 times in value to $250 million, and its exhibition space rose in rank from the 30th to the sixth largest in the U.S.
Prior to that, Marzio was director and CEO of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and curator of Prints and chairman of the Department of Cultural History at the Smithsonian Institution. He serves on numerous panels and committees including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Museum panel for the National endowment for the Humanities and the Mayor’s Art Advisory Committee for the City of Houston. Marzio has served as president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and chairman of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.
