NATIONAL ACADEMY ELECTS 19 RENOWNED
ARTISTS AND ARCHITECTS AS
NATIONAL ACADEMICIANS
Distinguished 2015 Group to be Inducted October 27
NEW YORK, NY (July 16, 2015) ─The National Academy has elected 19 visual artists
and architects as National Academicians, joining the ranks of the more than 2,000
distinguished individuals who have been so honored since the institution’s founding in
1825.
Elected annually by their peers, the artists and architects who become National
Academicians represent the pinnacle of success in their respective fields, with a volume
of work that embodies their singular contributions to the fine arts in America. This year’s
renowned group includes:
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Dawoud Bey, artist
Katherine Bradford, artist
James Carpenter, architect
Nick Cave, artist
Brad Cloepfil, architect
James Cutler, architect
Suzan Frecon, artist
Sharon Horvath, artist
David Humphrey, artist
Ralph Johnson, architect
Jonathan Lasker, artist
Mary Lucier, artist
Mary Miss, artist
John Newman, artist
Signe Nielsen, architect
David Salle, artist
Andres Serrano, artist
Elena Sisto, artist
Kyle Staver, artist
This select roster will be formally inducted into the National Academy at a ceremony on
Tuesday, October 27, 2015 at 7 p.m. at the institution’s Fifth Ave. home.
“Each year’s new inductees remind all of us affiliated with the National Academy of the
rich legacy and storied history of our institution,” said Bruce Fowle, president of the
National Academy. “The 2015 inductees are emblematic of the distinct vision and
extraordinary talent that has been synonymous with the National Academy since its
founding. Moreover, the election of these artists and architects is in recognition of their
immense influence and impact on the American cultural conversation, as well as of the
profound contributions each will continue to make in the years to come.”
Election as a National Academician is the culmination of a thorough, substantive
process. Candidates are nominated by a current Academician, who presents an indepth proposal in support of the nominee. After weeks of study, deliberation and
discussion among Academicians, votes are cast at the institution’s Annual Meeting, held
each spring.
“The wide range of work and styles from these newly elected Academicians is indicative
of the diverse mix of genres, skills and creative visions embraced by the 418 current
National Academicians,” Fowle said. “This creative mosaic is an enduring strength of
the Academy, as well as an imperative handed down by our founders and their stated
mission to ‘promote the fine arts in America through exhibition and instruction.’”
The honor roll of National Academicians includes such cultural luminaries as Thomas
Eakins, Winslow Homer (who studied at the National Academy School), John Singer
Sargent, Cecilia Beaux and George Bellows, as well as later seminal artists and
architects including Louise Bourgeois, Eric Fischl, Frank Gehry, Jasper Johns, I.M. Pei,
Robert Rauschenberg and Cindy Sherman.
Below are brief bios of the new 2015 National Academicians:
Dawoud Bey (b. 1953)
Bey began his career as a photographer in 1975 with a series of photographs, “Harlem,
USA,” that were later exhibited in his first one-person exhibition at the Studio Museum in
Harlem in 1979. He has since had numerous exhibitions worldwide, at such institutions
as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Barbican Centre in London, the Cleveland Museum
of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High
Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Whitney
Museum of American Art among many others. The Walker Art Center organized a midcareer survey of his work, “Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975-1995,” that traveled to
institutions throughout the United States and Europe. Class Pictures: Photographs by
Dawoud Bey was published by Aperture in 2007. A traveling exhibition of this work
toured museums throughout the country from 2007-2011. In 2012 the Renaissance
Society at the University of Chicago organized “Dawoud Bey: Picturing People,” a
survey exhibition of his work from 1981-2012. He recently completed a project with the
Birmingham Museum of Art that commemorates the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist
Church 50 years ago entitled “Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project.”
Katherine Bradford (b. 1942)
Katherine Bradford received her BA from Bryn Mawr College and holds an MFA from
SUNY Purchase. She has had a solo show almost every year since 1978, most recently
at Edward Thorp Gallery, NY; Aucocisco Galleries, Portland, ME; John Davis Gallery,
Hudson, NY; Samson Projects, Boston, MA; University of Maine Museum; and Sarah
Bowen Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a
Pollock-Krasner grant, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY.
Her work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the
Brooklyn Museum; the New York Public Library; Wooster Art Museum; Portland
Museum (ME); Bowdoin College Museum; Smith College Museum in Massachusetts;
Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania; the University of Delaware and a number of major
corporations. She is on the graduate MFA faculty at the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and has taught at the Fashion Institute of Technology and at
the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Bradford lives and works in
New York City, and is represented by the Edward Thorp Gallery, NY.
James Carpenter (b. 1951)
Carpenter studied architecture and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design. He
worked from 1972 through 1982 as a consultant with Corning Glass Works in New York
where he was involved in the development of new glass materials, including photo
responsive glasses and various glass ceramics. Since 1978, he has been working to
develop independent and integrated building structures that have progressively
synthesized art and architecture. The studio of James Carpenter Design Associates Inc.
is a collaborative environment encouraging an exchange of ideas between architects,
materials and structural engineers, environmental engineers and fabricators. He is a
recipient of numerous awards.
Nick Cave (b. 1959)
Nick Cave works between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of
media, including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. Cave is well
known for his Soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the scale of his body. Soundsuits
camouflage the body, masking and creating a second skin that conceals race, gender,
and class, forcing the viewer to look without judgment. A solo exhibition of Cave’s work
was recently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (2014). Other recent
solo exhibitions include Nick Cave: Sojourn at the Denver Art Museum; Nick Cave: The
World is My Skin, Trapholt Museum, Denmark; Freeport 006: Nick Cave, Peabody
Essex Museum, Salem, MA; and Fantastic 2012, Lille 3000, Tri Postal, Lille. Cave will
have a solo exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016.
Cave has received several prestigious awards including: the Joan Mitchell Foundation
Award (2008), Artadia Award (2006), the Joyce Award (2006), Creative Capital Grants
(2002, 2004 and 2005), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2001). Cave,
who received his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, is Professor and Chairman of
the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Brad Cloepfil (b. 1956)
Brad Cloepfil studied architecture at the University of Oregon and went on to earn an advanced degree
from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture. After more than a decade of work and
teaching in Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York and Switzerland, Cloepfil founded Allied Works
Architecture in his native Portland, Oregon in 1994. The New York City office followed in 2003. His body
of work is as informed by the land and the history of place as it is by formal training, and it is one that cuts
a clear line through much of the infatuation with rhetoric and formal novelty surrounding the practice of
architecture today. This approach to design combines a research-intensive focus on the specific
character of each project with an understanding of the profoundly affecting possibilities of building.
James Cutler (b. 1949)
James Cutler, FAIA, is known for superbly wrought wood structures, including buildings
on the Gates family compound in Medina, Washington (1997). Anderson Cutler
Architects (formerly James Cutler Architects), is located on Bainbridge Island, off the
Seattle coast. A native of Pennsylvania's anthracite country, Cutler studied with Louis
Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania. Cutler Anderson Architects has designed over
300 residential, commercial and cultural projects around the world, and is recognized for
their work with numerous honors and awards, including over 40 national and regional
design awards.
Suzan Frecon (b. 1941)
For the past four decades, Suzan Frecon has become known for abstract oil paintings
and watercolors that are at once reductive and expressive. Composed with subtle,
interacting arrangements of color, which the artist applies with meticulous attention to
the physical qualities of her medium, they appear to blur the distinction between matter
and transcendence. Color assumes a physical property and almost appears material; as
the artist has stated, “The reality and the spiritual of my paintings are the same.” Frecon
was born in 1941 in Mexico, Pennsylvania. Following a degree in fine arts from the
Pennsylvania State University in 1963, she spent three years at the École Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Since 2008, her work has been represented by
David Zwirner. Previous shows at the gallery in New York include Suzan Frecon: recent
painting (2010) and Suzan Frecon: paper (2013), a large-scale presentation of her
works on paper from the past decade, which was presented concurrently with an
exhibition of watercolors at Lawrence Markey in San Antonio, Texas. Frecon has
exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. In 2008, her work was the
subject of a major solo exhibition, form, color, illumination: Suzan Frecon painting, at
The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, which traveled to Kunstmuseum Bern in
Switzerland. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions such as the 2000
and 2010 Whitney Biennial.
Sharon Horvath (b. 1958)
Sharon Horvath earned a BFA from the Cooper Union and an MFA from the Tyler
School of Art. Since 1987, she has exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and
internationally. Recent exhibitions have taken place at Lori Bookstein Gallery, NY; Tibor
de Nagy Gallery, NY; Jason McCoy, NY; New York Academy of Art, NY; Rice Pollock
Gallery, Boston; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; The Drawing Room
Gallery, East Hampton, NY; and Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston. Horvath is the
recipient of awards and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters;
Anonymous Was a Woman; Pollock-Krasner Foundation; American Academy of Rome;
Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts;
National Endowment for the Arts, and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She
currently is Associate Professor at SUNY Purchase.
David Humphrey (b. 1955)
Humphrey received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MA in
liberal studies from New York University. He creates canvases in which a cavalcade of
surreal, kitsch images and exuberant, Play Doh-like hues provide a humorous and
sometimes biting narrative of middle-class malaise. A dedicated collector of amateur
paintings that he finds online, in thrift and antique stores and at flea markets and yard
sales, Humphrey loosely paraphrases anonymous efforts with his own renditions of
landscapes, still-lifes and portraits in which elements of the original artworks have been
mutated and exaggerated to yield intensely layered images in terms of color, shape,
ideas and discourse. Humphrey’s work is in the permanent collections of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Carnegie Institute and the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two New York
Foundation Grants and the Rome Prize. Humphrey was appointed senior critic at Yale
School of Art in 2007.
Ralph Johnson
Ralph Johnson is the Global Design Director of Perkins+Will. His career with the firm
began in 1976 and in the past 10 years his projects have been honored with more than
70 national and international design awards. He was elected to the College of Fellows
of the American Institute of Architects in 1995 and holds a BA of Architecture from the
University of Illinois and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate
School of Design. Johnson’s work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the
Paris Biennale and the São Paulo Biennale. Monographs on his works were published
by Rizzoli in 1995, L’Arca in 1998 and Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers in 2013. He has
lectured at numerous universities and was a visiting critic at the University of Illinois, the
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Jonathan Lasker (b. 1948)
Jonathan Lasker studied at the School of Visual Arts, NY and California Institute of the
Arts. He has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout North America and Europe
including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis;
Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts; and the Birmingham Museum of Art. A
major survey exhibition of his work was held at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Recent shows include Klædefabrik, Odense, Denmark; Pori
Art Museum, Finland; and the Portland Art Museum, Oregon. Lasker’s paintings are
included in many private and public collections including Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo, NY; The British Library, London; Corcoran Gallery of Art and Hirshhorn
Museum of Art, Washington, D.C.; Eli Broad Foundation and Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum Ludwig,
Cologne, Germany; and Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. He has lectured
extensively in the United States and Europe, and received grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts. He is represented by Cheim and Read, NY, LA; Louver
Gallery, CA and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London and lives and works in New York.
Mary Lucier (b. 1944)
Lucier is well known for her contributions to the form of multi-monitor, multi-channel
video installation. Reinvestigating the American pastoral myth in what she terms “an
ironic dialogue between past and present, mundane and poetic, real and ideal.” Lucier
questions collective memory and identity through an art historical vocabulary. Lucier
received a BA from Brandeis University. Among her many awards are a Guggenheim
Fellowship and an American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Grant, as well as
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the
Arts. She has been artist-in-residence at the Capp Street Project, San Francisco, and
the Television Laboratory at WNET/Thirteen, NY; and has taught at New York
University, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Minnesota
College of Art and Design and the School of Visual Arts, New York. In 2007 she was
awarded the Skowhegan Medal for Video.
Mary Miss (b. 1944)
Mary Miss earned her BA from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1966 and
her MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Art Institute in 1968. She has
reshaped the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, landscape design and
installation art by articulating a vision of the public sphere where it is possible for an
artist to address the issues of our time. Miss has developed the "City as Living Lab," a
framework for making issues of sustainability tangible through collaboration and the
arts, with Marda Kirn of EcoArts Connections. Trained as a sculptor, her work creates
situations emphasizing a site’s history, its ecology, or aspects of the environment that
have gone unnoticed. A recipient of multiple awards, Mary Miss has been the subject of
exhibitions at the Harvard University Art Museum, Brown University Gallery, The
Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Architectural Association in London,
Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and the Des Moines Art Center.
John Newman (b. 1952)
Newman earned his MFA at the Yale School of Art in 1975, and his BA at Oberlin
College in 1973. He was selected to participate in the Whitney Museum of American
Art’s Independent Study Program in 1972. Newman’s massive, large-scale works that
gained him renown in the 1980s contrast sharply with his more recent tabletop
sculptures, which deliver their impact not through size but through unusual, varied
shapes and pairings of materials. His shift in scale was inspired from his travels in Asia
and Africa, where he found that small objects were often revered as the most sacred.
He has had over 40 solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions in galleries and
museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, and his work is represented
in many public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Tate
Gallery in London and the Albertina in Vienna. Newman has received grants and
awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rome Prize, the Pollack-Krasner
Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as
well as many other organizations.
Signe Nielsen
Designers are public intellectuals, turning ideas into realities. For Signe Nielsen that
public role is paramount. “The urban arena is the setting where we can create places
that are truly restorative to both people and the environment,” she says. Nielsen has led
more than 400 projects, nationally and globally, which have won almost every possible
design award. But her sense of design’s public mission extends far beyond these
interventions. In addition to her hands-on project leadership, she is the co-author of
several books on sustainable and green design for the NYC Department of Design and
Construction. Nielsen has taught at Pratt Institute for more than two decades and has
also lectured and juried competitions at institutions around the world, including Harvard
University and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. As president of the Public Design
Commission of the City of New York, Nielsen is a strong and effective advocate for a
beautiful, inspiring and diverse urban fabric.
David Salle (b. 1952)
In 1970, David Salle began his studies at the newly founded California Institute of the
Arts, where he worked with John Baldessari. After earning a BFA in 1973 and an MFA
in 1975, both from CalArts, Salle moved to New York. Like many artists of his
generation, he largely drew inspiration for his rich visual vocabulary from existing
pictures. Based on models from art history, advertisements, design and everyday
culture, Salle creates an assemblage with manifold cultural references. Since the mid80s, his paintings have included allusions to the works of the Baroque painters
Velázquez and Bernini, to the Post-Impressionist Cézanne, to Giacometti and Magritte,
and to American post-war art. Solo shows of Salle’s art have been organized by the
Museum am Ostwall Dortmund (1986–87), Institute of Contemporary Art at the
University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (1986–88), Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam
(1999), and Waddington Galleries in London (2003), among others. He has participated
in major international expositions including Documenta 7 (1982), Venice Biennale (1982
and 1993), Whitney Biennial (1983, 1985 and 1991), Paris Biennale (1985) and
Carnegie International (1985).
Andres Serrano (b. 1950)
Raised in a devoutly Catholic neighborhood where religion played a significant part of
his growing up, Serrano frequently employs sacred icons and other symbolic elements
in his tableaux-like photographs. From religious iconography, human subjects, dead
animals to more precise elements such as blood, urine, milk, semen and later
excrement, the artist seeks to convey a sense of dignity to his subjects and to reconcile
the sacred and the profane through what Germano Celant termed as “the synthesis of
the opposite,” so that “the lower part is in dialogue with the upper part, the human with
the divine, the earthbound with the celestial.”
Elena Sisto (b. 1952)
Elena Sisto received her BA from Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design,
and studied at the New York Studio School. She has had recent solo exhibitions at the
Katzen Museum of Art, American University, Washington, DC; Littlejohn Contemporary
Gallery, New York; Harrisburg Community College, Rose Lehrman Art Center,
Harrisburg, PA; and Maier Museum, Randolph-Macon College, Lynchburg, VA. She has
been included in group shows at the University of Virginia; Bucheon Gallery, San
Francisco; Pera Museum, Istanbul; Sue Scott Gallery, NY; Hunterdown Museum,
Clinton, NJ; National Academy Museum, NY; and Andrea Meislin Gallery, NY. Sisto has
received awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National
Academy, Peter S. Reed Foundation and Hand Hollow Foundation, and has been
awarded fellowships from Yaddo and Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA. She
teaches at the School of Visual Arts, NY and has taught at the Yale Norfolk Program
and Columbia University School of Fine Arts. She is represented by Lori Bookstein
Gallery and lives and works in New York.
Kyle Staver
A student of art history, Staver’s works are inspired by, and in conversation with
masters, including Titian, Rembrandt and Picasso. The artist uses scumbling and
glazing to achieve an active painting surface, giving the work depth and space. The
surfaces are punctuated by dabs of saturated color which play off of large swaths of
darker tones underneath. Staver is from Minnesota and received her MFA from Yale
School of Art. She is the recipient of several significant grants including the Art Prize
(2013), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2003 and the Benjamin Altman
Figure Prize from the National Academy Museum in 1996 and again in 1998. She has
exhibited her work in numerous solo exhibitions including at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in
New York, the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design and Hackett-Friedman Gallery in
San Francisco.
About the National Academy
Founded in 1825, the National Academy is the only institution of its kind that integrates
a museum, art school and association of artists and architects dedicated to creating and
preserving a living history of American art and architecture. To learn more, please visit
www.nationalacademy.org.
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