Will Barnet, “Self Portrait,” 1981, National Academy Museum
Martin Puryear, “Bower,” 1980, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Photos by Lee Rosenbaum
Two artists who couldn’t be more different—Will Barnet and Martin Puryear—and a highly distinguished visual arts curator, collector, philanthropist and museum founder—Emily Rauh Pulitzer—are among the seven individuals and one organization upon whom President Obama will bestow the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony this Monday. (United Service Organization will get the award “for contributions to lifting the spirits of America’s troops and their families through the arts.”)
Puryear was the subject of an acclaimed 2007 Museum of Modern Art retrospective. Barnet was honored with a 100th-birthday retrospective (scroll down) at the reopening last September of the National Academy Museum in New York.
Princeton University philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, whose lucidly written, incisively argued Cosmopolitanism is an essential text in the debate over the ownership and stewardship of international cultural property, is one of eight to be awarded the National Humanities Medal at the same Monday ceremony, which will be livestreamed here at 1:45 p.m.
The marquee name among the medalists is actor Al Pacino. For the full list of honorees and their individual citations, go here.