40th Annual Awards Dinner
The Aspen Institute is delighted to welcome back friends and supporters to the 40th Annual Awards Dinner on Thursday, November 7th at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
Each year we celebrate the work of the Institute and celebrate those who have demonstrated values-based leadership through their remarkable achievements and contributions to society. This year, we are delighted to present the Henry Crown Leadership Award to Alice L. Walton for her work with the Alice L. Walton Foundation and for testing the limits in which art is integrated in our collective society. We are also proud to present the Arts Leadership Award to filmmaker and Founder of ARRAY, Ava DuVernay, in honor of her artistic achievements in film and using her high-profile platform to advocate for social justice. The evening will also feature a special appearance from the 2024 Harman Eisner Artist in Residence Hank Willis Thomas, and other soon-to-be-announced speakers.
The Annual Awards Dinner is the Aspen Institute’s flagship fundraiser and largest generator of unrestricted funding for the Institute. Through the support of our committed friends and champions, the funds raised from this event ensure that the Aspen Institute can continue to drive actionable change towards a more free, just and equitable society.
If you are unable to join us, please consider making a donation to support the Annual Awards Dinner by clicking the link here.
About our Honorees:
Photo by Ironside Photography / Stephen Ironside.
Philanthropist Alice Walton is deeply committed to the advancement of art and wellness. She founded the Alice L. Walton Foundation to increase access to arts, improve education, enhance health and well-being, and advance economic opportunity. In 2011, she opened Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas to expand access to art in the Heartland. Based on the museum’s success, she formed the Art Bridges Foundation to expand access to American art across the nation. Alice’s transformative experiences in the arts led to an interest in wellness,
and how art, nature, and the spaces around us shape and improve our lives. Alice founded Heartland Whole Health Institute, a non-profit organization that addresses physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being by working with health systems to redesign health care delivery. Construction of the Institute building is currently underway on the Crystal Bridges campus, slated to open in late 2024.
She also founded Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, which will offer a four-year, medical degree-granting program that integrates traditional medical education with the arts, humanities, and whole health principles. Slated to open in fall 2025, the school will be connected to the museum campus, fulfilling her vision of integrating art and wellness.
Photo by Cheryl Sanchez
Ava DuVernay is an Academy Award nominee and winner of the Emmy, BAFTA, Sundance, Image and Peabody Awards. Her feature film directorial work includes the historical drama Selma, which was the first film directed by a Black woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Her criminal justice documentary 13th, made DuVernay the first Black woman in Academy history to be nominated as a feature director. She became the highest grossing Black woman filmmaker in American box office history with her direction of Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time.
DuVernay’s critically-acclaimed limited series When They See Us, for which she wrote, produced and directed all episodes, received sixteen primetime Emmy nominations. Her series Queen Sugar became the longest running Black family drama in television history in its seven seasons.
Winner of the 2012 Sundance Best Director Prize for her micro-budget film Middle Of Nowhere, she was the first Black filmmaker to be awarded the top prize in the festival’s history. With her most recent film, Origin, DuVernay broke ground as the first African-American woman director to compete in the world’s oldest festival in its 90 year history.
DuVernay amplifies the work of people of color and women of all kinds through her narrative change studio, ARRAY, winner of the 2021 Peabody Institutional Award.
She sits on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, representing the directors branch in her second term, as well as holds positions on the boards of the Director’s Guild of America and American Film Institute.
About Our Speaker(s):
Hank Willis Thomas is conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His work has been exhibited globally. Select collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males and For Freedoms. Thomas’s public art practice includes permanent artworks around the country, including The Embrace (2023) in Boston.
Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University, New York, NY (1998) and an M.A./M.F.A. from the CCA, San Francisco, CA (2004). He received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, ME in 2017. Thomas was the 2022 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts honoree from the Office of Art in Embassies, Washington DC.
