Alex Katz Honored at White House Ceremony
Long affiliated with Colby, the painter received the nation’s highest honor for artists
The artist Alex Katz, who has been closely associated with the Colby College Museum of Art for many decades and received an honorary degree from the College in 1984, received a National Medal of Arts in a White House ceremony this week.
The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the federal government. It is awarded to individuals and groups for their contributions to the excellence, growth, support, and availability of the arts in the United States.
President Joseph R. Biden presented Katz, 97, with the medal on Monday afternoon.
The National Endowment for the Arts oversees the awards, seeking annual nominations from individuals and organizations across the country. The National Council on the Arts, the NEA’s presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed advisory body, reviews the nominations and provides recommendations to the president, who selects the recipients.
“It was completely unexpected. I’m overwhelmed by the honor—particularly, having the American government taking fine artists so seriously,” Katz said in a statement. “Of the other artists who received it, Robert Rauschenberg is like a hero to me with his relationship to society. He gave a lot back, and I try to work in his footsteps.”
NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, who visited the Colby Museum a year ago, saluted Katz and other recipients for improving people’s lives through their curiosity, creativity, hard work, and dedication. “The arts enrich our lives, helping us to ask questions, imagine new possibilities, and create community,” she said.
Katz and Colby
Katz’s work is defined by a pared-down painting style, and he often works on a grand scale. Colby houses the largest collection of Katz paintings of any museum in the world.
The artist first came to Maine in 1949, when he received a Cooper Union scholarship to study at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He was introduced to Colby in the 1950s and continued his relationship to Maine as a summer resident of Lincolnville.
His relationship with Colby grew with his friendship with Hugh Gourley, who directed the museum for more than 30 years. In 1992 Katz donated more than 400 of his works to the Colby Museum. The Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Works of Alex Katz, which opened in 1996 and presents selections from the Katz Collection, was made possible through the generosity of the late art collector Paul J. Schupf, LL.D. ’06, then a Colby trustee.
The Schupf Wing makes the Colby Museum one of the few in the United States with a wing devoted solely to the work of a single living artist. Schupf also gave a number of major works by Katz, including the large-scale painting Pas de Deux, an iconic painting from 1983, in honor of Gourley.
Colby’s collection now includes nearly 900 Katz works and a trove of archival material related to the Katz Collection, available to students and researchers. Through the Alex Katz Foundation, the artist also has donated nearly 500 works of art by other artist to the Colby Museum, substantially enriching the museum’s collection.
Jacqueline Terrassa, the Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby College Museum of Art, called the recognition “meaningful and well-deserved” and said it was “a privilege for us at Colby to steward the work of this great artist. Alex has been steadfast in his artistic practice decade after decade. He relentlessly experiments and challenges himself with each new series of artworks. He is intellectually and sensorially engaged with the world, which requires him to be attentive to all that surrounds him, from the turn of a collar to social relations to the play of light on foliage. He is also extraordinarily generous, supporting artists and institutions and sustaining the vibrancy of arts communities. He is a great model for our students at Colby and, as this award makes evident, for anyone who cares to make a positive difference.”
Kiko Aebi, Colby’s Katz curator, said she was thrilled that Katz received the award. “Over his more than seven-decade career, he has charted a singular path, producing some of the most iconic images of our time. Whether in his portraits of friends and family or depictions of the Maine landscape, his work attunes us to the very ways we see and interact with the world around us. Additionally, his contributions to theater and dance and numerous projects made in partnership with poets have expanded the notion of artistic collaboration. Few artists have so indelibly shaped the course of art in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
During Monday’s ceremony, Biden awarded medals to two years of recipients. In addition to Katz, other recipients included Ruth Asawa, artist; Randy A. Batista, photographer; Mark Bradford, artist; Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker; Clyde Butcher, landscape photographer; Bruce Cohen, producer; the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum; Melissa “Missy” Elliott, artist and producer; Leonardo “Flaco” Jimenez, musician; Jo Carole Lauder, arts leader; Spike Lee, filmmaker; Eva Longoria, actress, director, and philanthropist; Idina Menzel, actress and singer; Herbert I. Ohta, musician; Queen Latifah, artist and actress; Selena Quintanilla, singer; Bruce Sagan, arts leader; Steven Spielberg, filmmaker; and Carrie Mae Weems, visual artist.
Weems, whose work is represented in the Colby Museum collection, delivered the museum’s 2019 Miles and Katharine Culbertson Prentice Distinguished Lecture.
The latest White House honors are the most recent for Colby-affiliated artists. In March 2023, Presidential Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, Litt.D. ’14 and co-vice chair of the Board of Governors of the Colby Museum of Art, received a National Humanities Medal, also presented by Biden. The award honors people whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities and broadened engagement with history, literature, languages, philosophy, and other humanities subjects.
