Marylyn Dintenfass, Carmelita Tropicana, Anne del Castillo, and Brookfield Properties to be Honored at 2023 NYFA Hall of Fame Benefit
NYFA’s 2023 Hall of Fame Benefit will be held on April 20 at Capitale in Manhattan.
New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) will celebrate the induction of four honorees into the NYFA Hall of Fame during its annual benefit on Thursday, April 20 at Capitale, 130 Bowery, New York, NY 10013. The event recognizes visual, literary, performing, media, and interdisciplinary artists who have received NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowships and have had a profound impact on the arts through their creative work, and individuals and organizations who have championed the value of the arts in the world around us. The evening’s honorees are:
- Marylyn Dintenfass, Visual Artist
NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Crafts ’87
NYFA Artist Advisory Committee ’87-’89
- Carmelita Tropicana, Writer and Performance Artist
NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Performance Art ’87
NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Playwriting ’91 and ’06
NYFA Board Member
- Anne del Castillo
Commissioner of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME)
- Brookfield Properties, Patron of the Arts
The ticketed event will feature cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction, dinner and an awards presentation, and dessert. Each guest will receive a signed limited-edition Marylyn Dintenfass print as a gift. All proceeds will benefit NYFA’s programming and mission to empower artists at critical stages of their lives. Attire is festive cocktail.
Marc J. Jason, NYFA Board Chair, and J. Wesley McDade, NYFA Vice Board Chair, are the 2023 Hall of Fame Benefit Co-Chairs. Judith K. Brodsky, former NYFA Board Chair; Liz Christensen, NYFA Advisory Council Chair; and Sarah Young O’Donnell, NYFA Board Member, are the 2023 Hall of Fame Benefit Auction Co-Chairs.
On the inductees, arts advocate and NYFA Board Chair Marc J. Jason said: “We are thrilled to honor Marylyn Dintenfass, Carmelita Tropicana, Anne del Castillo, and Brookfield Properties at this year’s Hall of Fame Benefit. Marylyn and Carmelita make our arts ecosystem more vibrant through their creative work; Anne and Brookfield Properties nurture the arts, making our communities stronger by connecting artists with opportunities and the public with art,” he added.
The event recognizes the sustained achievements of artists who received early career support from NYFA, and the vision and commitment of enlightened patrons of the arts. Dintenfass and Tropicana are past recipients of the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, which are individual unrestricted grants made to artists who are living and working in New York State.
Other past NYFA Hall of Fame Inductees include Ida Applebroog, Paul Beatty, Sanford Biggers, James Casebere, Christopher d’Amboise, Phil Gilbert, Anna Deavere Smith, Min Jin Lee, Zhou Long, Christian Marclay, Terry McMillan, Mira Nair, Lynn Nottage, Eric Overmyer, Suzan-Lori Parks, Wendy Perron, Dwight Rhoden, Faith Ringgold, Carolee Schneemann, Andres Serrano, Kay WalkingStick, and Chin Chih Yang.
“If you live in New York, you have likely felt the impact of Anne del Castillo and Brookfield Properties on the arts. Their work helps to fuel the creative lifeblood of this great city, as does the work of our esteemed artist honorees Marylyn Dintenfass and Carmelita Tropicana,” said Michael Royce, Executive Director, NYFA. “We’re excited to come together this April to celebrate them and the arts as a whole, which help to connect and inspire us on a daily basis.”
NYFA is proud to present this year’s honorees and celebrate their impact on the cultural community:
Marylyn Dintenfass is an internationally-known artist whose work is found in major public collections. Among the institutions that have acquired her work are: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her newest sculpture, Almost Like The Blues, was installed at LongHouse Reserve as a part of their 2017 season, alongside works by John Chamberlain, Sol LeWitt, Bryan Hunt, and others. Her 2010 Parallel Park installation at the Lee County Justice Center in Fort Myers, Florida is one of the largest and most noteworthy of the last decade.
Dintenfass has twice been a MacDowell Fellow and has received both the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship and two project grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the Silver Medal at the First International, Mino, Japan, and The Ravenna Prize at the 45th Faenza International in Italy. Books on the artist’s work include the monograph Marylyn Dintenfass Paintings, written by Lilly Wei and published by Hudson Hills Press (2007); and Marylyn Dintenfass Parallel Park, written by Aliza Edelman and published by Hard Press Editions (2011).
Carmelita Tropicana (Alina Troyano) is a lesbian Cuban-American writer and performer living and working in New York City, performing extensively at venues including Performance Space New York (formerly Performance Space 122) and Dixon Place. Her work straddles the worlds of performance art and theater, using irreverent humor and fantasy as subversive tools to shift the lens of cultural stereotypes and rewrite history from multiple perspectives. She consciously challenges historical and narrative authority by embodying hyperbolic feminine and masculine personas, as well as animals, insects, and fantasy creatures.
Tropicana burst on New York’s downtown performing arts scene in the 1980’s, performing at the women’s theater collective WOW Café Theater. Her performances and plays have been presented/produced in theaters, museums, alternative performance spaces, and galleries worldwide. In addition to her three NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowships, Tropicana has received accolades including a United States Artists Fellowship (2021); a CLAGS, Center for Lesbian and Gays Studies Muñoz Award (2021); a Guggenheim Fellowship (2017); a Creative Capital grant (2016); an Anonymous Was A Woman grant (2005); and an Obie Award (1999).
Anne del Castillo is Commissioner of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME). Del Castillo has more than 25 years of experience in film and TV production, public media, and arts and nonprofit administration. Since her appointment in 2019, she has focused on bolstering NYC’s world-class arts, entertainment, and nightlife sectors and advancing an economy that works for all New Yorkers. One of MOME’s signature programs, which del Castillo spearheaded, is the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre, a NYFA-administered program that provides grants to encourage and support the creation of content that reflects the voices and perspectives of all who identify as women.
Del Castillo has led the economic recovery of the city’s creative and nightlife industries throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Under her leadership, television and film production made a strong return by fall 2020, and Broadway safely reopened in 2021. Her efforts during the pandemic earned her recognition in Variety’s “New York Women’s Impact Report,” City & State’s “Power of Diversity,” and Deadline’s “Disruptors,” as well as the New York State Senate Woman of Distinction Award.
Brookfield Properties develops and operates real estate investments on behalf of Brookfield Asset Management—one of the largest alternative asset managers in the world. From office to retail, logistics to multifamily, and hospitality to development, Brookfield Properties works across sectors to bring high-quality, sustainable real estate to life around the globe every day.
Brookfield Properties has been an ardent supporter of the arts and artists, including NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellows Xenobia Bailey, Robin Kang, and Jean Shin, for more than three decades. Through Arts Brookfield, Brookfield’s arts and culture program, Brookfield Properties supports innovation in—and public access to—music, dance, theatre, film, and visual art with free art exhibitions and experiences in and around its properties. The company works with dozens of artists annually to stage hundreds of unique installations and events in New York City. Every year, tens of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors actively attend Brookfield arts programming in New York, and millions more experience its public art exhibitions.
Ticket prices start at $650 and Tables at $6,500; you can purchase tickets here. For more information about NYFA’s Hall of Fame Benefit, please contact Nichole Almanzar at [email protected] or 212.366.6900 x 240.
