National Academy of Design: Class of 2023

The National Academy of Design is delighted to announce the election of eight artists and architects as National Academicians. Elected by current National Academy membership in recognition of their contributions to contemporary American art and architecture, the class of 2023 Academicians includes:

Alice Adams (Visual Arts), Sanford Biggers (Visual Arts), Willie Cole (Visual Arts), Torkwase Dyson (Visual Arts), Richard Gluckman (Architecture), Carlos Jiménez (Architecture), Mel Kendrick (Visual Arts), Sarah Oppenheimer (Visual Arts)

The National Academy is the leading honorary society for artists and architects in the United States. New members are exploring the frontiers of art and architecture, which include forays into experimental uses of traditional mediums and conceptual approaches that question the boundaries of architecture and art as discrete and preconceived disciplines.

The induction of new members follows the opening of the National Academy of Design’s new home in the Chelsea arts district in New York City at 519 West 26th Street. The new space will function as a place of experimentation for the National Academy, a space for inclusive and accessible programming that will showcase Academicians alongside other artists and architects who are working within the current cultural landscape.

The annual nomination and election of National Academicians dates back to the National Academy’s founding as America’s first artist-led arts organization in 1825. New Academicians are nominated and elected by the current members of the National Academy, a community of 431 artists and architects across the country; more than 2,400 artists and architects have been elected since 1825.

Induction Event:
An Induction Ceremony celebrating the Class of 2023 National Academicians will take place on Tuesday, October 24 from 6 to 9 PM in New York City. The Induction Ceremony is by invitation only; a video program documenting the practices of the eight new Academicians will be live-streamed to the public during that event. (Link TBA)

Induction Exhibition:
A special exhibition featuring recent work of the 2023 National Academicians is anticipated to open in early February 2024 in the galleries of the National Academy of Design, 519 West 26th Street, 2nd floor. Details will be announced in the coming months.

Chandeliers on Park Avenue!

It is a process that takes plenty of time and patience. Artist Willie Cole created a chandelier out of 3,000 recycled water bottles, each with an image of the Buddha printed on a plastic sheet inside.

"I had a dream about a chandelier that had a Buddha in every bottle, so my first chandelier was a Buddha chandelier, and it's actually my favorite," Cole said.

"The struggle between beauty and ugliness is embedded in my chandeliers: trash as treasure as teacher," he said in a press release. 

In addition to addressing the global issue of single-use plastic bottles, Cole also wanted to underscore the need for fresh drinking water while acknowledging the damage caused to the environment by its disposal.

Read all about it on timeout.com and ny1.com!

The New York Times: Willie Cole’s Ecological Interventions Turn Trash Into Art

The artist invited the community in Newark to reimagine objects that would otherwise be destined for a landfill — to look at them in a fresh, imaginative way.

Willie Cole in his artist-in-residence studio at Express Newark, where he has been assembling chandeliers made from thousands of used plastic bottles. Photo by Rachel Vanni

NEWARK — The artist Willie Cole has created two colossal new sculptures and generated a provocative group exhibition stemming from an unusual open call asking artists to transform objects destined for landfill into something imaginative and new.

The resulting works are in two exhibitions on view at Express Newark, the center for socially engaged art and design affiliated with Rutgers University — Newark, where Cole, 68, is an artist in residence. They speak to his longtime practice of using ready-made objects as raw materials, and his preoccupation with environmental crises.

Cole’s own show, “Spirit Catcher and Lumen-less Lantern,” consists of two chandelier-like works, each assembled from more than 3,000 used plastic water bottles collected in Newark, where Cole grew up in the 1960s.

The forms, woven together with metal wire on-site during his residency, with help from Rutgers students and Newark neighbors, speak to Cole’s frustration with the results of the city’s yearslong water crisis: In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency deemed the city’s water unsafe to drink, and Newark began replacing about 23,000 lines of aging lead pipes. Cole was impelled to address the crisis through his artworks, and specifically the next problem: what to do with the thousands of single-use plastic water bottles distributed by the city, which contribute to the cycle of toxicity and pollution.

Read the entire NYT article here.