President Biden presented the medals to luminaries including Missy Elliott, Spike Lee, and Steven Spielberg yesterday. Three visual artists also received the honour.
Artists Alex Katz, Carrie Mae Weems, and Mark Bradford were awarded National Medals of Arts, the United States Government’s highest award for artists, in a ceremony held at the White House yesterday.
They were among 20 people who received their 2022 or 2023 medals from President Biden at the ceremony.
Born in New York in 1927, painter Alex Katz is best known for flattened portraits that are often layered against colourful backgrounds. ‘I think my painting can be a little shocking in all that it leaves out,’ he has said. Katz was the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim titled Alex Katz: Gathering in 2022.
Carrie Mae Weems was born in Portland in 1953. In her powerful and understated ‘The Kitchen Table Series’ (1990), she presented black-and-white photos of a young Black woman’s life at home: alone, with friends, and with a romantic partner. In 2013 she received a MacArthur ‘genius grant’.
Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford is another ‘genius grant’ winner. Taking inspiration from the end papers at his mother’s hair salon, he often layers paper materials such as fliers, posters, and billboards before picking or sanding them away, creating contemporary urban palimpsests. Bradford is among the most commercially successful living artists. Hauser & Wirth sold his work Not Quite in a Hurry (2024) for U.S. $3.5 million at Art Basel Paris this month.
The art world in focus
Subscribe to our newsletter for news and insights on artists, galleries and exhibitions.
The nomination process for National Medals of Arts is managed by The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which seeks suggestions from individuals and organisations before making its recommendations to the President.
NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson said, ‘The NEA is pleased to join President Biden in congratulating the 2022 and 2023 National Medal of Arts recipients whose curiosity, creativity, hard work, and dedication have inspired and touched so many in our country and around the globe.’
