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Award For Excellence in the Arts: 2005 Burton
Silverman |
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The Newington
Cropsey Cultural Studies Center honored realist painter Burton Silverman
as recipient of its seventh annual Award for Excellence in the Arts. The award,
consisting of $5,000 and a bronze statuette depicting the Archangel Michael by
NCF Director Barbara Newington, was presented at a
dinner on February 25, 2005, at the Lotos Club in New York City. |
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Born in Brooklyn, New York, in
1928, Silverman has long been a champion and an exponent of realism, in the
American tradition of Thomas Eakins and Edward
Hopper. His portraits—unflinchingly observed yet tempered by compassion—have
appeared on the cover of Time magazine and in The New Yorker. He
has furthered the contemporary realism revival not only through the excellence
of his own work but also through slide lectures at museums and art schools
across the country. Generations of young artists have been influenced by his
teaching, first at the School of Visual Arts in the mid-1960s and since 1971 in
studio classes. His portraits and scenes of urban life combine the convincing
spontaneity of a snapshot with careful composition, psychological insight and
painterly facture. Describing his commitment to the painter's craft and a
humanistic vision of society, Silverman has written: "I am stuck with my passion
for the objective world, for the constantly shifting shades of meaning in the
events of my life, to the states of being of the people I paint, and to the
persistent need to get it right."
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The Newington Cropsey Foundation Cultural Studies Center Award
for Excellence in the Arts recognizes artists and scholars whose work furthers
our understanding of how the arts foster personal growth, civic responsibility
and cultural renewal. We especially encourage those who seek to recover and
maintain the vital links between the canonical masterpieces of the past and
contemporary artistic practice. In previous years recipients have come from a
wide range of disciplines: sculptor Frederick Hart, painter Frank Mason, scholar
of religion and the arts Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, musician Rev. Dr. Victoria
R. Sirota, architectural historian Henry Hope Reed and art historian William H.
Gerdts. |
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