Press Release

Press Release

For Immediate Release

Media Contact Karen Schwarz Interim Director of Marketing and Communications 203 413-6735 | [email protected]

Bruce Museum to Honor Art World Luminaries at Fifth Annual Bruce Museum Icon Awards in the Arts Thursday, May 22, 2014

Artist James Turrell at Roden Crater; Photograph by Florian Holzherr; © James Turrell; Photo may not be cropped

GREENWICH, CT, May 8, 2014 – The Bruce Museum will recognize the accomplishments and contributions of nine distinguished figures in the art world at the Museum’s fifth annual Icon Awards in the Arts benefit on Thursday, May 22.

“We are delighted to recognize these distinguished figures from the art world who do so much to enrich all of our cultural lives,” says Peter C. Sutton, Executive Director of the Bruce Museum.

The honorees include accomplished individuals in seven categories: Artists, Patrons, Collectors, Historians, Art Consultants, Art Dealers and Museum Professionals.

This year’s honorees include internationally acclaimed light and space artist James Turrell, whose work can be found in collections and major museum exhibitions worldwide as well as at two sites in Greenwich, and the renowned museum professional Philippe de Montebello, who retired in 2008 as the longest serving director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Robert Storr, former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, highly regarded teacher, editor, lecturer, and current consulting curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art will be honored as historian.

In addition, awards will go to Bruce Museum patrons Beverly and John Watling of Greenwich, passionate collectors Lisa and Steven Tananbaum, art consultant Amy Cappellazzo, and art dealer Stuart P. Feld of Hirschl & Adler Galleries.

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Press Release

Proceeds from the Bruce Museum Icon Awards 2014 will benefit exhibitions and educational programs at the Bruce Museum of Greenwich, Connecticut. Co-chaired by Pam and Bob Goergen, the gala event will be hosted at an elegant Greenwich home. Cocktails will be served at 5:30 pm followed by the Awards presentation at 6:30 pm. For additional information, including ticket information, email or call Becky Conelias at (203)413-6745 or [email protected]. For a direct link to ticket information, go to https://iconawards2014.eventbrite.com.

About the Bruce Museum

The Bruce Museum is a museum of art and science and is located at One Museum Drive in Greenwich, Connecticut. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday from 1 pm to 5 pm; closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for students up to 22 years, $6 for seniors and free for members and children less than five years. Individual admission is free on Tuesday. Free on-site parking is available and the Museum is accessible to individuals with disabilities. For additional information, call the Bruce Museum at (203) 869-0376 or visit the website at brucemuseum.org

Additional Background on Bruce Museum Icon Awards Honorees

Artist, James Turrell

James Turrell is an internationally acclaimed light and space artist whose work can be found in collections worldwide. For more than four decades, he has created striking works that play with perception and the effect of light within a created space. His fascination with the phenomena of light is related to his personal, inward search for mankind’s place in the universe. Influenced by his Quaker upbringing, which he characterizes as having a “straightforward, strict presentation of the sublime,” Turrell’s art prompts greater self-awareness though a similar discipline of silent contemplation, patience, and meditation.

“My work is about space and the light that inhabits it,” says Mr. Turrell. “It is about how you can confront that space and plumb it. It is about your seeing, like the wordless thought that comes from looking into a fire.”

Turrell was born in Los Angeles and began his artistic career in California in the early 1960s as one of the leaders of a new group of artists working with light and space. For the past two decades, his work has been recognized in exhibitions in major museums around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California and the Panza di Biumo Collection, Varese, Italy.

Whether harnessing the light at sunset or transforming the glow of a television set into a fluctuating portal, Turrell’s art places viewers in a realm of pure experience. His large-scale, often architectural works incorporate the complex interplay of sky, light and atmosphere in motion across expanses of ocean, desert, and city. The recipient of several prestigious awards such as the Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, Turrell currently resides in Flagstaff, Arizona, in order to oversee the completion of his most important work, a monumental land art project at Roden Crater, an extinct volcano the artist has been transforming into a naked-eye celestial observatory for the past 33 years.

Museum Professional, Philippe de Montebello

Philippe de Montebello has the distinct title of having been the longest-serving director in the 140-year-long history of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2008, Mr. de Montebello retired from the Met after 31 years. The curators of the Metropolitan paid homage to Mr. de Montebello by mounting a tribute exhibition in 2008, The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions.

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Following his retirement, Mr. de Montebello became the first scholar in residence at the Prado Museum in Madrid, and he launched a new academic career as the first Fiske Kimball Professor in the History and Culture of Museums at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Mr.de Montebello is the television co-host with Paula Zahn of the Emmy Award winning WNET/PBS weekly series NYCArts.

In 2008 Mr. de Montebello was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and in 2012 he was elected Honorary Trustee of the Prado Museum in Madrid. In 2012 he was elected to the French Académie des Beaux Arts.

Mr. de Montebello was born in Paris and after the baccalauréat he attended Harvard College and the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. With the exception of four years as director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, he has spent his entire career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, first as curator in the Department of European Paintings, later as Chief Curator and, from 1977 until 2008, as its Director.

In 2003 President G.W. Bush awarded Mr. de Montebello the National Medal of the Arts and in 2009, President Barack Obama awarded him the National Medal of the Humanities. Mr. de Montebello is only the fourth person to have received both these awards.

Mr. de Montebello has an honorary degree from Harvard University. In 1996, Philippe de Montebello was declared a Living Landmark by New York City’s Landmarks Commission.

Historian, Robert Storr

Mr. Storr received a BA from Swarthmore College in 1972 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978. He was curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1990 to 2002, where he organized exhibitions on Elizabeth Murray, Gerhard Richter, Max Beckmann, Tony Smith, and Robert Ryman, in addition to coordinating the Projects series from 1990 to 2000. In 2002 he was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Mr. Storr has also taught at the CUNY graduate center and the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies as well as the Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, New York Studio School, and Harvard University, and has been a frequent lecturer in this country and abroad. He has been a contributing editor at Art in America since 1981 and writes frequently for Artforum, Parkett, Art Press (Paris), and Frieze (London). He has written numerous catalogs, articles, and books, including Philip Guston (Abbeville, 1986), Chuck Close (with Lisa Lyons, Rizzoli, 1987), and the forthcoming Intimate Geometries: The Work and Life of Louise Bourgeois. Among his many honors he has received a Penny McCall Foundation Grant for painting, a Norton Family Foundation Curator Grant, and honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maine College of Art, as well as awards from the American Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, a special AICA award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism, an ICI Agnes Gund Curatorial Award, and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In 2000 the French Ministry of Culture presented him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He is currently Consulting Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position. Mr. Storr was appointed professor of painting/printmaking and dean of the School of Art in 2006.

Patrons, John and Beverly Watling

Beverly and John Watling have lived in Greenwich since 1962, and have been longtime members of the Bruce Museum. In 2001 John joined the Museum’s Development Committee, and first joined the Board of the Bruce Museum in 2002. He serves on the Museum’s Development and Audit Committees, is a former member of the Executive Committee and has spearheaded two highly successful fundraising efforts for the Museum: he offered

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Press Release a matching gift challenge to Robert Bruce Circle members for the Great Estates (2001) exhibition which led to the development of the highly successful Committee of Honor program for the underwriting of exhibitions.

John joined White Weld in 1963 and retired in 2001 from Merrill Lynch where he held the title of First Vice- President. He is a graduate of Yale and received an MBA from the University of Michigan. He has served on the vestry of Saint Barnabas and Christ Church and as a trustee of the Taft School. He is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the American Friends of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Beverly is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College where she studied art and sculpture. She was also a Trustee of Greenwich Academy. For more than 40 years she has been a member of Green Fingers Garden Club. She has been a competitive flower arranger and a Garden Club of America flower show judge. She is a past president of Green Fingers and was Chair of the Preview of Spring, a Garden Club of America Major Show. In addition, she was on the Board of the Garden Education Center and on the Altar Guild at Christ Church Greenwich.

John and Beverly’s philanthropic philosophy is to give to non-profits where they are actively involved—focusing on organizations that are meaningful to them, whether their alma maters, church, or community institutions such as the Bruce Museum.

Beverly and John have two children. Jennifer, a writer, lives in Tucson and Jonathan is a resident in orthopedics at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York.

Collectors, Lisa and Steven Tananbaum

Since their second date to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lisa and Steven Tananbaum have enjoyed a shared passion for art. While in London more than a dozen years ago, they started collecting with the acquisition of a Damien Hirst butterfly painting. Lisa and Steven share a passion for owning a beautiful piece chosen by them in unison; seeing it each day in their home brings them great satisfaction. Over time, their enthusiastic interest in collecting has grown.

The Tananbaum collection includes paintings, sculpture and photography by varied modern and contemporary artists. They enjoy collecting an artist in depth – studying an artist while trying to choose pieces which show the breadth of an artist’s oeuvre along the arc of his/her career. With living artists in their collection, this is an exciting challenge; they often meet with the artist, visit their studio, and commission works.

Lisa and Steven find this process meaningful, and share these experiences with their children, Tyler and Teddy. The Tananbaum collection includes established artists such as Brice Marden, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Willem de Kooning and Gerhard Richter. They also collect more current artists, such as Jenny Saville, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami and Andreas Gursky.

Lisa and Steven have enjoyed their involvement in supporting many museums, and serving on various committees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and the Guggenheim. Steven has served on the Board of Trustees of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. In addition, Lisa and Steven are active in education and economic affairs. Lisa served as a past chair of the Northwestern University Leadership Council and she is currently involved with New York City’s WIN Council of Northwestern. Lisa is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Contemporary Art for the University of Pennsylvania. Steven is a Trustee of Vassar College and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Art Consultant, Amy Cappellazzo

Amy Cappellazzo is a founder and principal of Art Agency Partners. She previously served as a market leader in the field of contemporary art for more than twelve years at Christie’s, where she held the post of Chairman of Post-War & Contemporary Development. While at Christie’s Cappellazzo was a steward for the sale of some of the most important collections of our time and she continues to act as a fiduciary for numerous families,

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Press Release foundations and trusts. Additionally, she served as a pioneer in private sales at Christie’s as well as in online auctions, the latter through a partnership she fostered with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

During a period when the contemporary art market exploded from what was largely a European and American epicenter to a fully global stage, Cappellazzo directed groundbreaking initiatives at Christie’s that led to record results, with more than $650 million realized in a single evening sale. Prior to her tenure at Christie’s, Cappellazzo was an art advisor, a curator and a key figure in the establishment of Art Basel in Miami Beach. Cappellazzo received her BA in Fine Arts/Art History from New York University, where she was a Presidential Trustee Scholar. She holds a master’s degree in Urban Design from the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute, where she focused on the role of public art in shaping cities. She is a noted Bloomberg expert, speaking internationally on the global art market, and has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York University, The Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, UCLA, Stanford University and the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. In 2012, she was appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo to serve on the board of the New York State Council on the Arts.

Art Dealer, Stuart P. Feld

Stuart P. Feld began his formal training as an art historian at Princeton University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Department of Art and Archaeology in 1957. The following year he began graduate work at Harvard University, where he was one of the first graduate students to specialize in the various arts of the United States—painting, architecture, and the decorative arts. After receiving his Master’s Degree in 1958, Mr. Feld worked as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, and also continued his studies at the university as an intern in the Department of Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and as Assistant to the Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

In 1961 Mr. Feld became one of the first Fellows at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, working in the Department of Post-Renaissance Western European Decorative Arts and The American Wing. In 1962 he was appointed to the curatorial staff of the Department of American Paintings and Sculpture, where he became Associate Curator in charge of the Department of American Painting and Sculpture in 1967. While at the Metropolitan, he co-authored, with Albert Ten Eyck Gardner, the first definitive catalogue of early American paintings in the Metropolitan’s collection, as well as publishing innumerable articles on American painting, architecture, and the decorative arts.

In 1967 Mr. Feld joined the firm of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, where he established its pre-eminence in the field of American art of the past. During 15 years as a partner in the firm, and as exclusive owner since 1982, Mr. Feld has organized dozens of exhibitions at Hirschl & Adler and has written many catalogues that have set the pattern for much of the collecting that has gone on in the American field. In 1991, Mr. Feld organized Neo-Classicism in America, Inspiration and Innovation 1810-1840, the gallery’s first survey exhibition of American Neo-Classical fine and decorative arts, which was documented by a fully-illustrated catalogue. In 1999, Mr. Feld wrote Boston in the Age of Neo-Classicism, 1810-1840. In collaboration with his daughter, Elizabeth, Mr. Feld organized the exhibit Of the Newest Fashion: Masterpieces of American Neo-Classical Decorative Arts in 2001; In Pointed Style, The Gothic Revival in America, 1800-1860 in 2006; and The World of Duncan Phyfe–The Arts of New York, 1800- 1847 in 2011, all of which were accompanied by scholarly catalogs on their respective subjects. At present, Mr. Feld is working with Kathleen Burnside on the definitive catalogue raisonné of the work of the American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam.

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