NEW YORK CITY – Susan Weber Soros, founder and director of the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, has announced the recipients of the seventh annual Iris Foundation Awards for Outstanding Contributions to the Decorative Arts.
This year’s awardees are Helene David-Weill, Simon Jervis and Dr Thomas P. Campbell. A special award from Bard College, the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters, will also be presented by Leon Botstein, president of Bard College. The Kellogg Award, which recognizes significant contributions by an individual to the nation’s artistic and literary heritage, will be given to Henry Luce III, the former chairman and CEO of Henry Luce Foundation. The Iris and Kellogg awards will be presented at a luncheon at the St Regis Hotel in New York City on April 10.
Dr Soros noted that “This year’s awardees have demonstrated their long-term commitment to the decorative arts as both an intellectual pursuit and a lifetime passion.”
David-Weill is the president of the Union Central des Arts Decoratifs. She sits on the board of several important educational institutions that support the arts, including the Parsons School of Design, the New School for Social Research and the Bard Graduate Center. Her involvement in the management and operation of several esteemed arts organizations demonstrates her tireless commitment to the field of the decorative arts.
Jervis studied classics and the history of art at Cambridge. After two years at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery he joined the department of furniture and woodwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1966 as an assistant keeper, rising to become curator of the furniture and woodwork collection in 1989. In 1990, he became director and Marlay Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and in 1995, he was appointed director of historic buildings of the National Trust.
Campbell is associate curator in the European sculpture and decorative arts (ESDA) department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he is responsible for all curatorial aspects of the ESDA textile collection, which consists of approximately 17,000 European textiles from 1500 to 1900. He is also supervising curator of the Antonio Ratti Textile Center, the study and storage facility in which the Metropolitan’s encyclopedic collection of 35,000 textiles is housed.
Henry Luce III was elected chairman and CEO of the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc in 1990, where he had been president and CEO since 1958. He retired in June 2002. The work of the foundation includes the interdisciplinary exploration of higher education; scholarship in American art; increased understanding between Asia and the United States; the study of religion and theology; opportunities for women in science and engineering; and environmental and public policy programs.
