Yaddo Announces Artist Medal Recipients
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Yaddo will host its annual Artist Medal celebration on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at The Edison Ballroom in Manhattan, honoring choreographer Sidra Bell, visual artist Jill Viney, and writer Langston Hughes.
Hughes (1902–1967) was a pioneering American poet, novelist, playwright, and social activist, best known as a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance—a cultural movement celebrating African American artistic expression in the 1920s and ‘30s. Hughes was a writer in residence at Yaddo in 1942 and 1943. His work is celebrated for its vibrant, jazz-inflected rhythms and its honest portrayal of Black life in America. A prolific writer, Hughes published numerous volumes of poetry, short stories, plays, essays, and novels, including the Simple stories, which chronicled the everyday lives and struggles of working-class Black Americans.
Bell is a renowned choreographer, dancer, performance artist, and the founder and artistic director of Sidra Bell Dance New York, an internationally recognized company known for progressive dance theater. She first came to Yaddo in 2022. With a career spanning over two decades, Bell has created more than 100 original works for major companies and institutions, including Ailey II, ODC/Dance, The Juilliard School, and New York City Ballet— where she made history as the first Black woman to choreograph for the company.
Viney is a sculptor and visual artist who lives in New York City. Her work, shown in the 2016 Sarah Lawrence College show and catalogue, as well as in New York City by Trans Hudson and Joyce Goldstein galleries, was included in “Fabricated Nature” organized by the Boise Museum of Art. In “Form and Space” at New Jersey’s Hunterdon Museum Viney’s sculpture, “Baja” was singled out in The New York Times by art critic Barry Schwabsky. Viney is a Yaddo artist and member of the board.
The Yaddo Artist Medal, designed by James Siena, honors lives and work that embody artistic brilliance, generosity of spirit, and the enduring force of art.