NEWS RELEASE

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
ELECTS EIGHT NEW MEMBERS

Three archictects, two artists, one playwright, one poet,
and one composer honored

New York, February 15, 2005 -- Architects Maya Lin and James Stewart Polshek, landscape architect Laurie Olin, artists Kiki Smith and Cindy Sherman, playwright Tony Kushner, poet Rosanna Warren, and composer T.J. Anderson have been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Secretary of the Academy Robert Pinsky will induct the eight new members at the Academy's annual Ceremonial in May.

An annual election is held to fill vacancies in the Academy's membership of 250 American artists, architects, writers, and composers. Nominations are first voted on by discipline (Art, including architecture, Literature, Music.) The names of those candidates receiving the highest number of votes are then submitted to the entire membership. The honor of election is considered the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in this country.

Biographies of Newly Elected Members of the Academy

Composer T.J. Anderson was born in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, in 1928. He attended Penn State University, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and the University of Iowa. He studied composition with Darius Milhaud. He taught at Tennessee State University, Morehouse College, and Tufts University, where he is the Austin Fletcher Professor of Music emeritus. His principal works include chamber: String Quartet No. 1, 5 Portraitures of 2 People for piano (4-hands), Variations of a Theme for Alban Berg for violin and piano, Bridging and Branching for flute and double Bass, and Notes from a Friend for flute, B-flat clarinet, viola, and cello; opera: Soldier Boy, Soldier Boy; chamber opera: Walker; vocal: Songs of Illumination (song cycle for soprano, tenor, and piano); and large ensemble: Concerto for 2 violins and chamber orchestra, and Remembrances, chamber concerto.

Playwright Tony Kushner was born in 1956 in New York City. He was educated at Columbia University and New York University. He was the assistant director of the St. Louis Repertory Theater, associate artistic director at New York Theater Workshop, playwright-in-residence at Juilliard School of Drama, and guest artist at New York University Graduate Theater program, Yale University, and Princeton University. He is the author of more than twenty plays, including The Age of Assassins; Last Gasp at the Cataract; Yes, Yes, No, No; The Illusion (adaptation); Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes; Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problem of Virtue and Happiness; A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds (adaptation); Homebody/Kabul; Caroline or Change (musical); and Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy. He has written two books: A Meditation from Angels in America and a picture book (illustrations by Maurice Sendak) for children, Brundibar.

Architect Maya Lin, born in 1959 in Athens, Ohio, was educated at Yale University. She founded her practice, Maya Lin Studio, in 1986. Her sculpture and architecture projects include the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, Washington DC; Women's Table, Yale University; Civil Rights Memorial, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, AL; Asia/Pacific/American Studies Department, New York University; and Aveda Headquarters, New York City. Her landscape projects include Peace Chapel, Pennsylvania Juniata College, 1989; Groundswell, Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus; and Wavefield, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Ms. Lin has had solo exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston Salem, NC; and an exhibition of sculpture, Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA.

Landscape Architect Laurie Olin was born in Alaska, in 1939, and educated at the University of Alaska and University of Washington, Seattle. He has taught landscape architecture and/or regional planning at University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and University of Virginia. He founded Hanna/Olin in 1976, which became Olin Partnership in 1995. Olin's principal landscape design works include Bryant Park, NYC, Refurbishment; Canary Wharf, London, Master Plan; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Landscape Expansion and Renovation; American Academy in Rome, Master Plan for Restoration; Battery Park City, NYC, Open Space Plan and Phase I and II Waterside Esplanade; J. Paul Getty Center, LA, Landscape Design; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Carr's Hill Landscape Master Plan; Art Institute of Chicago, Stanley McCormick Court, Landscape Redesign; and Yale Science Hill, Landscape and Open Space Master Plan, New Haven, CT. He has written two books, Transforming the Commonplace; and Across the Open Field, Essays drawn on the English Landscape.

Architect James Stewart Polshek was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1930, and was educated at Yale University. He established a practice in New York in 1963 and has taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture and Planning since 1972, serving as its dean 1972-1987. His projects include more than 400 cultural, educational, residential, and preservation projects, among them: Carnegie Hall interior, NYC; Barnard College, Sulzberger Hall, NYC; Center for the Arts Theater, Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, CA; Columbia University Law School, Jerome L. Green Hall, NYC; Santa Fe Opera Theater, NM; Bard Center For Studies in Decorative Arts, Academic Building and Library, NYC; American Museum of Natural History, Rose Center for Earth and Space, NYC; Smith College, Brown Fine Arts Center, Northampton, MA; and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, AK.

Artist Cindy Sherman was born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. She attended State University of New York, Buffalo. Her photographs have been in solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Stedlijk Museum, Amsterdam; St. Louis Art Museum; Baltimore Art Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; Dallas Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Studio Guenzani, Milan, Italy, and Skarstedt Fine Art, NYC. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Tate Gallery, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the San Francisco Museum of Art.

Artist Kiki Smith was born in Nuremburg, Germany, in 1954. She studied at Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn Interfaith Hospital to be certified as an emergency medical technician, and studied at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop. She has had solo exhibitions at Joe Fawbush Gallery, NYC; Louisiana Museum of Art, Denmark; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; International Center of Photography, NYC; University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie; PaceWildenstein, NYC; and Fabric Workshop and Museum, NYC. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; and Yale University Art Gallery.

Poet Rosanna Warren was born in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1953, and attended Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities. She began teaching at Boston University in 1982, and is currently the Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English and Foreign Modern Languages. Ms. Warren is the author of four collections of poetry: Snow Day, 1981; Each Leaf Shines Separate, 1984; Stained Glass, 1993; Departure, 2003; one novel: The Joey Story, 1963; and a verse translation of the Euripides' play Suppliant Women. Among her awards are an Ingram Merrill Grant for Poetry, Guggenheim fellowship, Lamont Poetry prize (Academy of American Poets), Lila Wallace Reader's Digest award, the Witter Bynner Poetry prize and the Award of Merit for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.