2019 was quite a year for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. As we prepare for the 97th annual Awards and look forward to the original works of young artists and writers submitting to the 2020 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, we wanted to take some time to look back on some of the incredible accomplishments of the Awards’ esteemed alumni in 2019.
Ken Burns ‘71
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ “Country Music: A Film by Ken Burns” aired on PBS and told the remarkable stories of the people and places behind a true American art form. The series premiered in September 2019, and episodes are now streaming on PBS.
Myla Goldberg ’89
Feast Your Eyes, Myla Goldberg’s first novel in nearly a decade, tells a compelling and wholly original story about a female photographer grappling with ambition and motherhood, a balancing act familiar to women of every generation.
Tschabalala Self ‘08
Tschabalala Self at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington, was the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States. The exhibition ran from January 26 through April 28, 2019 and brought together figurative works in painting, drawing, sculpture, and video to examine the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality, focusing particularly on the iconographic significance of the black female body in contemporary culture.
Paul Chan ’92
Artist Paul Chan was one of the co-curators of Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, the first-ever artist-curated exhibition mounted at the Guggenheim in New York City. The exhibition opened in May 2019 and is on view through January 12, 2020.
Richard Linklater ‘78
In August of this year, filmmaker Richard Linklater announced the start of a 20-year project to adapt the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth Broadway musical, Merrily We Roll Along,for the screen. Based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, Merrily We Roll Along moves backwards in time over the course of 20 years, telling the story of a man who abandoned his friends and songwriting career to become a Hollywood producer.
Visit artandwriting.org to learn more about the 2020 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Are you an alum of the program? Tell us what you've been up to by tagging @artandwriting!
1. Ken Burns, Documentary filmmaker by dbking, CC by 2.0 via Wikipedia Commons2. Myla Goldberg by David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia Commons3. English: Photo of American painter Tschabalala Self by Katie McCurdy, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikipedia Commons4. English: Paul Chan by Gavin Kroeber, 2013, CC BY 4.0 via Wikipedia Commons5. Director Richard Linklater after the press conference for "Before Midnight" by Siebbi, CC BY 3.0 via Wikipedia Commons
