Your Invitation to Join Tonight’s MacDowell 2021 Virtual National Benefit
Join MacDowell’s 2021 Virtual National Benefit tonight, Tuesday, December 7, 7:00 pm –10:00 pm (ET). This year’s celebration honors Urban Word with the 2nd annual Marian MacDowell Arts Advocacy Award, presented to Random House Children’s Books author Mahogany L. Browne, Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC, and Poet-in-Residence at Lincoln Center. There will also be conversations with MacDowell Fellows, and a performance by a youth poet from Urban Word.
This virtual Benefit program is free and open to the public. Click here to RSVP.
The theme of the evening is “Met at MacDowell: Creative Collaboration.” Experience and celebrate some of the magic that happens at MacDowell when artists—writers, visual artists, composers, architects, interdisciplinary artists, filmmakers, and theatre artists—engage in artistic exchange to create new works.
MacDowell Fellow and author Cathy Park Hong, whose book, MINOR FEELINGS: An Asian American Reckoning, published by One World, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, will host the event. Author, visual artist, and MacDowell Board of Directors Chair Nell Painter will present the 2021 Award to Mahogany Browne.
There will also be special reading from the recently announced 2022 New York City Youth Poet Laureate Elizabeth Shvarts, and performances and testimonials from MacDowell Fellows, including architect Peter Zuspan (2014), interdisciplinary artist and choreographer Raphael Xavier (2014), poet John Murillo (2017), animation artist Anne Beal (2017), composer Christopher Zuar (2017), and Tony Award winner Nikki M. James singing a composition written by Shaina Taub (2012),
Founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell, his wife, MacDowell is the oldest artists’ residency program in the United States. It nurtures the arts by awarding Fellowships to artists of exceptional talent, providing time, space, and an inspiring environment in which they can do creative work. The sole criterion for acceptance is artistic excellence, which MacDowell defines in a pluralistic and inclusive way.