The 2024 Harvard Arts Medal
Prize-winning poet and Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Kevin Young '92 is the recipient of the 2024 Harvard Arts Medal, which will be awarded by Harvard University Interim President Alan Garber at a celebratory ceremony 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 24, 2024, at Lowell Lecture Hall, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge. The ceremony is presented by the Office for the Arts at Harvard, in partnership with the Harvard Department of English. The ceremony is also the official opening of ARTS FIRST (April 24-28), Harvard University’s annual festival showcasing the creativity of students, faculty, staff and university affiliates in the arts. Additional speakers at the event will include Jack Megan, Director of the Office for the Arts; Tracy K. Smith ‘94, Professor of English and of African and African American Studies, the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and Interim Director of Creative Writing; Jorie Graham, Boylston Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric; Brenda Tindal, Chief Campus Curator for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Kuumba Singers of Harvard College; undergraduate poets Taylor Fang '25, Mia Word '24 and Isabella Cho '24; as well as a student musician trio including Lucas Gazianis ‘24, Marc Courtemanche ‘24 and Zeb Jewell-Alibhai ‘27.
Free tickets at the door and at Harvard Box Office.
This event includes ASL interpretation, live captioning and will also be livestreamed at HarvardArts on YouTube.
Prior to joining the Smithsonian, Young previously served as the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. A professor for two decades, he began his career in museums and archives while serving as curator and Candler Professor at Emory University from 2005 to 2016. Young is the author of fifteen books of poetry and prose, most recently Stones, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize; Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015, longlisted for the National Book Award; and Emile and The Field, named one of the best children’s books of 2022 by the New York Times. His nonfiction book Bunk was also longlisted for the National Book Award, a finalist for the National Book Critics Award for criticism, and named on many “best of” lists for 2017. Young is the editor of nine other volumes, most recently the acclaimed anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Society of American Historians, and was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020.
Image by Leah L. Jones, Photographer, National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian Institution
History of the Harvard Arts Medal
The Harvard Arts Medal was established in 1995 to recognize excellence and demonstrated achievement in the arts by a Harvard or Radcliffe alum or faculty member. The medal is given to an individual who has achieved distinction in the arts and who has made a special contribution to the good of the arts, to the public good in relation to the arts, or to education. It is awarded by the Office of Governing Boards and the President of Harvard at the recommendation of a committee of faculty, alumni and administrators, which is convened by the OFA.
Past Recipients
2023 Adrian Margaret Smith Piper AM ’77, PhD ’81
2022 Rubén Blades LL.M. '85
2019 Tracy K. Smith '94
2018 Colson Whitehead '91
2017 John Lithgow ’67 ArD ’05
2016 Frank Gehry GSD '57 ArD '00
2015 Damian Woetzel MPA '07
2014 Margaret Atwood AM '62, Litt.D. '04
2013 Matt Damon '92
2012 Tommy Lee Jones '69
2011 Susan Meiselas EdM ’71
2010 Catherine Lord '70
2009 Fred Ho '79 (awarded Fall 09)
2009 John Ashbery '49 (awarded Spring 09)
2008 Joshua Redman '91
2007 John Adams ’69 MA ‘72
2006 Christopher Durang ‘71
2005 Maxine Kumin ‘46
2004 Yo-Yo Ma ‘76
2003 Mira Nair ‘79
2002 William Christie ‘66
2001 Peter Sellars ‘80
2000 John Harbison ‘60
1999 David Hays ‘52
1998 John Updike ‘54
1997 Bonnie Raitt ‘72
1996 Pete Seeger ‘40
1995 Jack Lemmon ‘47