- Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty (b. April 13 1909, Jackson, Mississippi - d. July 23 2001, Jackson, Mississippi) was an award-winning author and photographer who wrote about the American South. Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, … - Harry Belafonte
Harold George Belafonete, Jr. (born March 1, 1927 in New York, New York, United States) is a musician, actor and social activist of Jamaican ancestry. One of the most successful Jamaican musicians in history, he was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style in the 1950s. Belafonte is perhaps best known for singing the "Banana Boat Song", with its signature lyric "Day-O". - Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (born May 3, 1919), almost universally known as Pete Seeger, is a folk singer, political activist, and author. As a member of the Weavers, he had a string of hits, including a 1949 recording of Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" that topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. He was formerly a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America and a major contributor to folk and pioneer of protest music in the 1950s and the 1960s. - Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax (January 31, 1915 - July 19, 2002) was an important American folklorist and musicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, the West Indies, Italy, and Spain. - George Jones
George Glenn Jones (born September 12, 1931), is an American country music artist known for his distinctive voice and phrasing that frequently evoke the raw emotions caused by grief, unhappy love, and emotional hardship. He has had more songs than any other singer on the country charts - 167 as of November, 2005. He has also had the most Top 40 Hits - 143 - and is second to Eddy Arnold with the most Top 10 Hits - 78. Over the past twenty years, … - Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran Kelly, better known as Gene Kelly, was an American dancer, actor, singer, director, producer, and choreographer. Kelly was a major exponent of 20th century filmed dance, known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen. Although he is probably best known today for his performance in "Singin' in the Rain", … - Yo-Yo Ma
Yo-Yo Ma (b. October 7, 1955) is a French-born American cellist of world renown and the winner of multiple Grammy Awards. - Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud (born Mesa, Arizona,November 23, 1920) is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. His last name is pronounced "Tee-bo." He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, however, his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. He has also been seen, due to his true to life representations, … - Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE (May 29 1903 - July 27 2003), was an English-born American entertainer who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, on radio and television, in movies, and in performing tours for U.S. Military personnel, well known for his good natured humor and career longevity. - Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash was an influential American country and rock and roll singer and songwriter. Cash was the husband of country singer and songwriter June Carter Cash. Cash was known for his deep, distinctive voice, the "boom-chick-a-boom" or "freight train" sound of his Tennessee Three backing band, his dark clothing, and demeanor, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black." He started all his concerts with the simple introduction "Hello, … - Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. (born May 15, 1930 in Augusta, Georgia) is a contemporary U.S. artist in painting and printmaking. - Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. (born December 11, 1908) is an American composer of classical music. Elliott Carter was born in New York, New York. He was encouraged as a young musician by Charles Ives and studied English and music at Harvard University and Longy School of Music, where his professors included Walter Piston and where he sang with the Harvard Glee Club. He then went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, … - Martha Graham
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 - April 1, 1991) was an American dancer and choreographer. She is regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. - Dorothy Delay
Dorothy DeLay was an American violin instructor at the Juilliard School. Born in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, her pedagogy is considered revolutionary, and she is generally regarded as the most influential American violin teacher of the late 20th century. - Al Hirschfeld
Albert Hirschfeld was a Jewish American caricaturist, best known for his simple black and white satirical portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he moved with his family to New York City, where he received his art training. In 1924 he traveled to Paris and London, where he studied painting, drawing and sculpture. When he returned to the United States, a friend showed one of his drawings to an editor at the "New York Herald Tribune", … - Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American R&B, Pop and Gospel singer, songwriter, and pianist. She has been called for many years "The Queen Of Soul", but many also call her "Lady Soul," as well as the more affectionate "Sister Ree." She is renowned for her soul recordings but is also adept at jazz, rock, blues, pop, gospel, and even opera. She is generally regarded as one of the greatest vocalists ever, … - George Segal
George Segal (born February 13, 1934 in Great Neck, Long Island, New York) is an American film and stage actor. He was educated at the George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown, Pennsylvania. A 1955 graduate of Columbia University, the amiable, wavy-haired leading man is equally at home in drama and comedy, although he is more often seen in the latter. - Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler (born December 12, 1928) is an American post-painterly abstraction artist. Born in New York City, she was influenced by Jackson Pollock with whom she also was involved in the 1946-1960 Abstract Art Movement. She was the youngest daughter of a justice on the New York State Supreme Court. She studied at the Dalton School under Rufino Tamayo and also at Bennington College in Vermont. She later married fellow artist Robert Motherwell. - Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Shaw received 14 Grammy awards, four ASCAP awards for service to contemporary music, the first Guggenheim Fellowship ever awarded to a conductor, the Alice M. Ditson Conductor's Award for Service to American Music; the George Peabody Medal for outstanding contributions to music in America, … - Erich Kunzel
Erich Kunzel, Jr. (b. March 21 1935, New York City) is an American conductor. A timpanist and music arranger at his high school in Greenwich, Connecticut, he received his first music degree from Dartmouth College. He also studied at Harvard and Brown University. From 1960 to 1965 he conducted the Rhode Island Philharmonic. From 1965 to 1977 he was principal conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. - Lincoln Kirstein
Lincoln Edward Kirstein (May 4, 1907 - January 5, 1996) was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, and cultural figure in New York City, famous less for his own artistic achievement than for his social influence. - Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand (born April 24, 1942) is an Academy Award-winning American singer, theatre and film actress, composer, liberal political activist, film producer and director. She has won Oscars for Best Actress and Best Original Song as well as multiple Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, Golden Globe Awards. Streisand has ranked as the best selling female album artist of all-time in the United States, according to the RIAA, for over thirty years. - Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois (born December 25, 1911, Paris) is an artist and sculptor, whose work has been strongly influenced by the surrealists, abstract expressionism and minimalism. Her work is deeply involved in the investigation of her own psyche and relation to objects through strong intuition. She constantly evaluates her past and creates work that is based out of this nostalgia and torture. She is one of the most prominent sculptors of the 20th century. - Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is a Grammy-winning and Academy Award-nominated American country singer, songwriter, composer, author, actress and philanthropist. - Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear (born July 27 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American television writer and producer who produced such popular sitcoms as "All in the Family", "Sanford and Son", "One Day at a Time", "Good Times" and "Maude". - Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 - June 15, 1996), also known as "Lady Ella" and the "First Lady of Song", is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th Century. With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, near faultless phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. - Robert Wise
Robert Wise (September 10, 1914 - September 14, 2005) was an American sound effects editor, film editor, and Academy Award-winning American film producer and director. Among his many famous films are "The Sand Pebbles", "The Sound of Music", "West Side Story", "The Hindenburg", "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "Run Silent, Run Deep", "The Andromeda Strain", "The Set-Up", … - Agnes de Mille
Agnes George de Mille (September 18, 1905 - October 7 1993) was an American dancer and choreographer. She was born in Harlem into a well-connected family of theater professionals (her uncle was Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille; Agnes de Mille was also the granddaughter of economist Henry George). Agnes originally wanted to be an actress and always had a love for acting, but she was told that she was 'not pretty enough'. It was then that she turned to dance. - Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins (October 11, 1918 - July 29, 1998) was an American choreographer whose work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater. Among the numerous stage productions he worked on were "On The Town", "High Button Shoes", "The King And I", "The Pajama Game", "Bells Are Ringing", "West Side Story", "Gypsy: A Musical Fable" and "Fiddler on the Roof". - Lewis Manilow
Lewis Manilow (born August 1927, Chicago, Illinois) is an American attorney, real estate developer, and arts patron. He is known as one of the founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and as a principal backer and longtime honorary president of Chicago's Goodman Theatre. He was also the developer of the town of University Park, Illinois, where he was instrumental in the creation of the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park, … - Suzanne Farrell
Suzanne Farrell (born August 16, 1945) one of the most noted ballerinas of the 20th century, and was an important dancer for the legendary choreographer George Balanchine. She was born Roberta Sue Ficker in Cincinnati, and received her early training at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. In 1959, she was selected to study at Balanchine's School of American Ballet with a Ford Foundation scholarship; she started there in 1960, … - Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 - January 26, 1990) was an American historian of technology and science. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a tremendously broad career as a writer that also included a period as an influential literary critic. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes. Mumford was also a contemporary and friend of Fred Osborne, Edmund N. Bacon, and Vannevar Bush. - Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow, born Solomon Bellows, (Lachine, Quebec, Canada, June 10, 1915 - April 5, 2005 in Brookline, Massachusetts) was an acclaimed Canadian-born American writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1988. Bellow is best known for writing novels that investigate isolation, spiritual dissociation, and the possibilities of human awakening. Bellow drew inspiration from Chicago, his adopted city, … - Brooke Astor
Brooke Astor (born March 30, 1902) is an American socialite and philanthropist who was the chairwoman of the Vincent Astor Foundation, which had been established by her third husband. She also is a novelist and has written two volumes of memoirs. - Edward Albee
Edward G. (Woody) Connette, Pro-bono Legal Counsel - Robert Redford
Robert Redford (born Charles Robert Redford, Jr. on August 18 1936), is a American motion picture actor, director, producer, businessman, model, environmentalist, and philanthropist. One of Hollywood's biggest superstars, Redford's appeal has lasted several decades. - Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Milton Ernest Rauschenberg (b. October 22 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas) is an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is perhaps most famous for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. While the Combines are both painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg has also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, … - Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi (August 18, 1899 - February 14, 1994) was an architect, a leader of the Modern Architecture movement, and responsible for the design of over one thousand buildings. He was a principal at the Portland, Oregon office of the Chicago architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. His designs include: * the Bank of America Center in San Francisco, * the Juilliard School within the Lincoln Center, * the Equitable Building in Portland, Oregon, … - Agnes Martin
Agnes Martin (March 22, 1912 - December 16, 2004) was a Canadian-American painter, often referred to as a minimalist, although she considered herself an abstract expressionist. She was born in Macklin, Saskatchewan and moved to the United States in 1931, becoming a citizen in 1950. She is most closely associated with Taos, New Mexico, although she also lived in New York City for a time. The bulk of her work is composed of square grids. - Harry Callahan
Harry Morey Callahan was an American photographer who is considered one of the great innovators of modern American photography. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and started photographing in 1938 as an autodidact. By 1946, he was appointed by László Moholy-Nagy to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Callahan retired in 1977, at which time he was teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design. Callahan left almost no written records--no diaries, letters, …
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