Selection Committee
Ned Rifkin, Chairman
Ned Rifkin began his museum career at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, where he made a name daring to expose emerging talent in notable exhibitions of cutting-edge works. Ned and I were colleagues at the New Museum back in the early 80s.
He continued his innovative work as curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and later as Chief Curator of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
In 1991, Rifkin became Director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, ushering in a period of unprecedented growth, increasing attendance and membership figures, tripling the endowment and expanding the permanent collections.
After serving as Director of the Menil Collection in Houston, Rifkin returned to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden this year as its Director. He also serves on numerous boards and key national panels, including the board of the American Association of Museums.
Patricia Cruz
Patricia Cruz is the Executive Director of Aaron Davis Hall, Harlem’s Principal Center for the Performing Arts. She oversees all program development, long range planning, fundraising, and other administrative management of the facility.
Cruz also 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.
Ming Cho Lee
Ming Cho Lee is arguably the single most influential force to emerge in American stage design since the mid-1960s.
Over the years, Lee has designed sets for the Martha Graham Dance Company, the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Shakespeare Festival, and many other top performing arts companies.
On Broadway, his work has won a Tony Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, and a Joseph Maharam Award. His other honors include the National Opera Institute Special Award for Service to American Opera and a 1995 Obie Award for Sustained Achievement.
Lee is currently Co-Chair of Yale University’s School of Drama, Design Department, where he has taught since 1969.
Susana Leva
Susana Leval is the director emeritus of El Museuo del Barrio, New York’s leading museum representing the art and cultural experience of the Hispanic community. Serving first as curator and then as director, Leval has spent the last eight years guiding the institution’s transformation from small grassroots endeavor to a major cultural force.
Leval has a special interest in integrating the city’s cultural resources into education, and was recently named by Mayor Bloomberg to the New Panel for Educational Policy and was appointed to the State Council on the Arts by Governor Pataki.
Alvin Singleton
Alvin Singleton is an acclaimed composer for theater, orchestra, solo instruments, and a variety of chamber ensembles. After working for more than a decade in Europe, he returned to the United States to become Composer-in-Residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and subsequently served as Resident Composer at Spelman College in Atlanta, Composer-in-Residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Visiting Professor of Composition at the Yale University School of Music.
Singleton has won numerous international awards for his compositions, and his music has been performed around the world by orchestras and groups including the Boston Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Nash Ensemble of London.
