Selection Committee

David Henry Hwang, Chairman
He 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 the upcoming Broadway 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 feature films such as M. Butterfly, Golden Gate, and Possesion. 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 for the Arts, the Guggenheim and Rockefellar Foundations and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Ken Brecher
Since 1996, Ken Brecher has been the Executive Director of the Sundance Institute, an organization “dedicated to the support and development of emerging screenwriters and directors, and to the national and international exhibition of new, independent dramatic and documentary films.” Brecher has served as President of the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia, Director of the Boston Children’s Museum, and Associate Artistic Director of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. An anthropologist by training, he has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, including a research grant from the Getty Center for Education in the Arts and a Ford Foundation fellowship for his study of Amazonian tribesmen in Brazil. He serves on a number of boards, is a Trustee of the Wildwood School in Los Angeles, and is a member of the International Arts Advisory Council for the Wexner Center for the Arts. Brecher has lectured and published widely, and has served as an international consultant on current challenges facing arts leadership.

Red Burns
She has served as Chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University since 1983 and was named Tokyo Broadcasting System Chair in 1997. During the 1970’s, as co-creator and director of NYU’s Alternate Media Center, Burns designed and directed a series of telecommunications projects including two-way television for and by senior citizens and telecommunications applications to serve the developmentally disabled. This innovative research center set the stage for the creation of the ITP at NYU in 1979, where she continues to research and teach. Burns has received awards including induction into the New York Women in Communications, Inc. Matrix Hall of Fame, the Mayor of New York’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology, and was most recently honored with a Distinguished Leadership Award from the New York Hall of Science. She serves as a board member for the Charles Revson Foundation, The Art Director’s Club and Creative Capital, and formerly served on the New York Times Digital Company Advisory Board, among others.

Joel Conarroe
After serving as president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for eighteen years through 2002, Joel Conarroe was appointed to and recently completed his presidency of the PEN American Center. Previously, he served as Executive Director of the Modern Language Association, and held various positions at the University of Pennsylvania including Chair of the English Department and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Conarroe is the author of numerous books, articles and anthologies dealing with contemporary literature. He has earned degrees with contemporary literature. He has earned degrees from Davidson College, Cornell University and New York University, and holds honorary degrees from various colleges and universities. He has served as Chairman of the National Book Foundation, chair of juries for the Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and Commonwealth Awards.

Adam Weinberg
He has served as the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art since October 2003. While previously at the Whitney Museum, Weinberg served as Senior Curator and Curator the Permanent Collection, as well as Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art at the Equitable Center. Prior to his directorship, Weinberg served as the Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts where he set the institutional vision for one of the county’s leading museums of American art, building the collection, developing the exhibition program, and overseeing the museum’s publications and artist-in-residence program. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Minetta Brook Foundation and is a member of the National Council of the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and the Association of Art Museum Directors.