The Olana Partnership
Frederic Church Award Gala
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
The Rainbow Room in New York City
The Frederic Church Award
Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), a visionary and renaissance man, is considered one of the greatest 19th century landscape artists in America. In 2000, the centenary of Church’s death, The Olana Partnership established the Frederic Church Award to honor individuals who, through their vision, commitment and grasp of creative trends, make extraordinary contributions to American culture.
Honorees
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
Patricia Phelps de Cisneros was born in Venezuela and is the co-founder, with her husband Gustavo Cisneros, of the Fundación Cisneros, based in New York and Caracas. The Fundación Cisneros supports Latin American educational and cultural initiatives and fosters awareness of the region’s heritage and contributions to the arts. Within the Fundación, the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros comprises five major areas of Latin American material culture, organizes exhibitions, loans, gives grants, and publishes books and a website.
The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros reflects Patty and Gustavo’s commitment to building cultural bridges, and they have engaged in numerous partnerships with cultural and educational institutions and organizations. One such collaboration with Olana in 2017 resulted in OVERLOOK, a show of landscape works curated from the Olana and Cisneros collections by artist Teresita Fernández, who also created new work for the show. The installation of Jesús Rafael Soto’s iconic outdoor sculpture, Penetrable, was included in OVERLOOK and will stay on view in Olana’s landscape through late 2018.
Patty is a trustee at MoMA, where she founded the Latin American and Caribbean Fund and where she and her husband endowed the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America; she is a founding trustee of the Fundación Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid; and is on the visiting committee for the Harvard Art Museums, among other organizations. Her international distinctions include Italy’s Leone d’Oro di San Marco; the Gran Cruz de la Orden Civil de Alfonso X, the Medalla de Oro Mérito en las Bellas Artes from Spain, and the Légion d’honneur from France.
David Schuyler, Ph.D.
David Schuyler is Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor of the Humanities and American Studies at Franklin & Marshall College, where he has taught since 1979. A native of Newburgh, New York, Schuyler received the Ph. D. in history from Columbia University, where his dissertation was awarded the Richard B. Morris Prize.
Professor Schuyler’s new book is Embattled River: The Hudson and Modern Environmentalism, which features Frederic Church’s Olana and more contemporary efforts to protect Olana’s integral viewshed. As a longstanding member of Olana’s National Advisory Committee, David has advised on numerous initiatives, provided necessary scholarship about Olana’s preservation story, and has been a driving force in the interpretation of Frederic Church’s Olana as a complete work of art.
Professor Schuyler’s previous books include Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820-1909 and Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing 1815-1852. He was co-editor of four volumes of The Frederick Law Olmsted Papers, the most recent of which is The Last Great Projects, 1890-1895, as well as more than thirty articles in books and professional journals. Schuyler is a past president of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History and a trustee of the New York Academy of History. He is a commissioner of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
Schuyler is the of recipient several awards and distinctions including the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for distinguished teaching (1994), the Bradley R. Dewey Award for scholarship at Franklin & Marshall (2003), the Lawrence C. Gerckens Award of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History for distinguished teaching (2003), the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize of the New York State Historical Association (2011), the Ruth Emery Award of the Victorian Society in America for the best book in American regional history (2013), and the New York Academy of History’s Governor Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York History (2014).
Images from the 2017 Frederic Church Award Gala
Photos by Beth Schneck Photography
The Olana Partnership’s mission is to inspire the public by preserving and interpreting Frederic Church’s Olana in Hudson, NY. To purchase a table or tickets to the 2018 Gala contact 518-828-1872, ext. 103 or email.