JESúS MOROLES AMONG NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS AWARDEES; METLIFE GRANTS ANNOUNCED

The New York Times’ Dave Itzkoff reports that sculptor Jesús Moroles is among the recipients of this year’s National Medal of Arts, awarded yesterday by President Bush at the White House. Moroles lives and works in Rockport, Texas. In 1982, the sculptor received the Awards in the Visual Arts Fellowship, for which his works were included in a two-year traveling museum exhibition that originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Moroles’s most visible work, Lapstrake, 1987, is a sixty-four-ton, twenty-two-foot-tall sculpture in the plaza between the E. F. Hutton and CBS buildings in New York City, located across the street from the Museum of Modern Art. Other recipients of the arts prize were comic-book creator Stan Lee, the actress Olivia de Havilland, the jazz pianist Hank Jones, and the songwriters Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman, of “It’s a Small World (After All)” fame. The National Humanities Medals went to the Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, historians Gabor S. Boritt and Robert Brookhiser, and Myron Magnet, the editor at large of City Journal_, the Manhattan Institute’s quarterly magazine of urban affairs.

In other news, the MetLife Foundation announced yesterday the grant winners of its 2008 Museum and Community Connections program. The grants, totaling one million dollars, were awarded to sixteen museums for exhibitions, artist residencies, and other community programs. Grant winners include the Art Institute of Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Detroit Institute of Arts. The full list of recipients can be found here.