Board Committee Documents Academic Policy, Programs and Research Agendas I-B-18 Graduate School and University Center

I.B.18 – GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CENTER - RESOLUTION TO AWARD HONORARY DEGREES

RESOLVED, that the Graduate Center award Lorna Simpson, Reba White Williams, and Curtis Wong the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, at the college’s annual Commencement ceremony on June 3, 2016.

EXPLANATION: Lorna Simpson is an internationally renowned artist, who first came to prominence in the 1980’s for her large-scale works that drew on photography and text to confront the topic of race. In the mid- 1980s, Simpson was celebrated as a pioneer of conceptual photography. A decade later, she was creating multi-panel works, printed on felt that showed the sites of public – yet secret and hidden – sexual encounters. Today, she is known worldwide for her provocative works that address concepts of gender, ethnicity, culture and identity. Her work has also expanded to include film and video. Simpson’s work has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Miami Art Museum, the Walker Arts Center, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. In 2007, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented a 20-year retrospective of her work.

Reba White Williams has a wide and varied career as an expert on fine art prints, a mystery writer, and a philanthropist. In the 1970’s Williams and her husband, Dave H. Williams, began to collect American fine-art prints, focusing on the early 20th century. Over the subsequent three decades, they amassed a collection of more than 5,000 prints, most of which were donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, in 2008. As a writer, Williams’ works have appeared in American Artist, Art and Auctions, Journal of the Print World, Print Collectors’ Newsletter, the South Magazine, The Tamarind Papers, and Works on Paper. More recently, she pursued her interest in writing fiction and is the author of four mystery novels. Williams has an M.A. in Art History from Hunter College, an M.S. in Fiction Writing from Antioch University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, one of only 30 women in her graduating class of 1970. Williams is also an alumna of the Graduate Center, having earned her Ph.D. in Art History in 1996.

Curtis Wong, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, is an inventor and creator devoted to the future of digital media and interactive entertainment. He holds 55 patents in his name, in areas ranging from data visualization and user interaction, to media browsing and automated cinematography. Before joining Microsoft, Wong was the Director of Intel Productions in Silicon Valley, where he developed the first Broadband blockbuster art museum exhibition network on the Web. It featured 3D recreations of art exhibitions in the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and other museums. He was a producer for the Criterion Collection, where he led the development of the first CD-ROM title from Microsoft, released in 1991. Wong has dedicated considerable time to working with nonprofits involved in education and the arts. In 2006, working with WGBH Frontline, he helped produce the online streaming interactive website The Age of AIDS, which explores the AIDS pandemic. Wong has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the first Interactive Television Emmy nomination in 2002, a British Academy Award, and several New York Film Festivals Gold Medals.

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson, an artist whose work has been heralded as “refined and impassioned” by The New York Times, achieved national prominence in the 1980s with large-scale works that drew on photography and text to confront the topic of race. Today, she is known internationally for her provocative works that address concepts of gender, ethnicity, culture, and identity.

Simpson was born in Brooklyn, attended the High School of Art and Design and the School of Visual Arts in New York, and received an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. She started as a documentary street photographer before moving on to compose her photographs in the studio.

By the mid-1980s, Simpson was celebrated as a pioneer of conceptual photography. A decade later, she was creating multi-panel works, printed on felt, that showed the sites of public —yet secret and hidden — sexual encounters. More recently, her work has expanded to include film and video. Simpson is known for her portrayals of black women, using text to express contemporary society’s relationship with race, ethnicity, and sex.

In 2007, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented a 20-year retrospective of her work. She was also the first African-American woman to participate in the Venice Biennale. Her work has been widely exhibited by museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Miami Art Museum, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Reba White Williams

Reba White Williams has had a wide and varied career as an expert on fine art prints, a mystery writer, and a philanthropist. She earned an M.A. in Art History from Hunter College and is an alumna of The Graduate Center, having obtained her Ph.D. in Art History here in 1996. Raised in Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina, Williams acquired her Bachelor of Arts from Duke University. After graduation, she moved to New York City, and began writing articles — on art, business, and finance. On resuming her studies, Williams earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1970, one of only 30 women in her graduating class.

Williams has an M.A. in Fiction Writing from Antioch University. Her writing has appeared in American Artist, Art and Auction, Print Quarterly, Journal of the Print World, Print Collectors’ Newsletter, The South Magazine, The Tamarind Papers, and Works on Paper. More recently, she pursued her interest in writing fiction and is the author of four mystery novels.

In the mid-1970s, Williams and her husband, Dave H. Williams, began to collect American fine-art prints, focusing on the early 20th century. Over the subsequent three decades, they amassed a collection of more than 5,000 prints, most of which were donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 2008. Williams and her husband are also philanthropists in the world of literature. The Reba and Dave Williams Foundation for Literature and the Arts sponsors the annual Willie Morrie Award for Southern Fiction and has also supported the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.

Williams has served on the Print Committees of The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Whitney Museum, and on the Editorial Board of Print Quarterly. She is an Honorary Keeper of American Prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University. In addition, she has served as president of the New York City Art Commission and as vice chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts. Curtis Wong

His recent work has included leading Microsoft’s interactive spatial-temporal data visualization project, which allows users to gain insight into the flow of data generated from devices and services. The finished project, Power Map, was included as part of Microsoft’s Office 2013 and Office 365. In collaboration with Bill Gates, Wong conceived and created Project Tuva, enabling the Messenger Series Lectures by acclaimed Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Richard P. Feynman to be available for free online.

In 2008, Wong created the WorldWide Telescope, a free, rich interactive virtual simulation allowing children of all ages to explore and understand the universe. Used by more than 20 million children, WWT is available in the Hayden Planetarium in New York, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and other cities.

Before joining Microsoft, Wong was the Director of Intel Productions in Silicon Valley, where he developed the first Broadband blockbuster art museum exhibition network on the Web, featuring 3D recreations of art exhibitions in the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and other museums. He also served as the General Manager of Corbis Productions, where he created award-winning CD-ROM series on art and history. Prior to Corbis, he was a producer for the Criterion Collection, where he led the development of the first CD-ROM title from Microsoft, released in 1991.

Wong has dedicated considerable time to working with nonprofits involved in education and the arts. In 2006, working with WGBH Frontline, he helped produce the online streaming interactive website The Age of AIDS, which explores the AIDS pandemic.

Wong has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the first Interactive Television Emmy nomination in 2002, a British Academy Award, and several New York Film Festivals Gold Medals. He is an honorary professor of History and Humanities at Trinity College Dublin.