The American abstract painter Jack Whitten and the conceptual choreographer Ralph Lemon are among the 12 recipients who will be awarded the 2015 National Medal of Arts (NEA) by president Barack Obama in a ceremony to be held at the White House in Washington, DC on 22 September. The award recognises artists across a range of disciplines that have “helped to define our nation’s cultural legacy through the artistic legacy of their creative traditions”, the NEA chairman Jane Chu said in a press release.
The Alabama-born and New York-based Whitten, the only visual artist to be recognised this year, started creating his Slab series of paintings by dragging a squeegee through thick layers of paint on canvas in the 1960s and 70s. The African American artist did not get the same level of institution recognition as his contemporaries until recently, with the Whitney Museum included his work Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1974) in their opening show downtown America is Hard to See last year.
Lemon, who was born in Minneapolis and is based in Brooklyn, is also nominated for the 2016 The Hugo Boss Prize to be awarded next month at the Guggenheim Museum. His often multimedia performances have been shown in a number of museums including the Hayward Gallery, London, The Kitchen, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Studio Museum Harlem and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Other recipients of the award include Mel Brooks, Sandra Cisneros, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Centre, Morgan Freeman, Philip Glass, Santiago Jiménez, Moises Kaufman, Ralph Lemon, Audra McDonald, Luis Valdez and Berry Gordy. The event will be live streamed and held in conjunction with the 2015 National Humanities Award.