 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Arnold Lehmann and I'm a remarkable, truly remarkable day like today. It is a distinct pleasure to be director of this great museum. It's also my great honor to welcome you today to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The celebration of that important anniversary is manifest this afternoon in the Sackler Center first awards, honoring those exceptional women who are firsts in their fields. As the founding benefactor of the center and as a trustee of our museum, Elizabeth Sackler conceived this event with the same vision, the same commitment as when she first approached me in 2000 about establishing a permanent home for Judy Chicago's iconic and magnificent The Dinner Party, and Judy is right there. Indeed, continuing this extraordinary collaborative history, Judy Chicago designed the exquisite awards that each of our honorees will receive today. Inspired by the 1,038 extraordinary women included in The Dinner Party, the first award honorees will become a permanent part of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, where their accomplishments will be acknowledged and documented. And in terms of our distinguished honorees, it is thrilling that this afternoon's festivities celebrate the amazing accomplishments of this exceptional group of women. At the same time, we're also very excited to be celebrating the outstanding contributions to our museum and to our cultural heritage by Elizabeth Sackler, who is being honored later this evening at our Brooklyn Artist Ball. As some of us of a certain age used to say, these two events could not be more copacetic. Do I hear a certain age? The Sackler Center galleries will be open all evening so that guests of the ball can have the pleasure of seeing the two remarkable exhibitions currently on view. Rachel Nebone called the exhibition as entitled Regarding Rodin and Newspaper Fictions, the Juna Barnes New York Journalism, 1913 to 1919. If you've never seen the Sackler Center, if you've never seen Rachel Nebone's work previously, I urge you to take a few minutes to visit the galleries on our fourth floor. As I can promise that you won't want to miss a minute or a word of what is about to take place here this afternoon, I ask that you please turn off all your cell phones, pagers, or other sound making devices, heart monitors, and other things like that can stay on. Now it is my enormous pleasure to welcome our dear friend, our great trustee, Elizabeth A. Sackler. As Arnold knows, I'm a loud sound device, so, but you won't turn me off. No one can. Impossible. In five years we have yet to have a fight. That's a record with a guy. Thank you. Thank you everyone at the museum who has nurtured the center and who has loved it and who has been committed to it. And thank you visitors because it's the visitorship that comes to the center that gives us our power, that reminds us how important it is that we exist. And Judy Chicago, where are you, Judy? I love you. And I thank you along with the 1038 other women for a very, very, very important work. And we are forever in your debt. On behalf of the Fifth Anniversary Committee and also from me, I'd like to extend a very hearty congratulations, of course, to the Sackler Center first awardees. And they've made our world a better place. In the words of Clyde Walt Frasier, I guess you know what I've been doing for leading and breeding. Oh, I guess not so many people know what that's about. And I thank them for giving us the opportunity to recognize their very, very major achievements that have been made in our lifetime and will be forever more recognized at the Sackler Center here in this museum. And it has been an extraordinary five years. I think it will be an invigorating additional more to come period of time. And now it is my pleasure, it's a great pleasure to introduce Gloria Steinem, whose excitement and commitment to the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art and our programs is our good housekeeping seal of approval. Two years ago when I told Gloria about my idea for an award ceremony, Gloria, who as we all know is a great organizer, said immediately, I want to join the Fifth Anniversary Committee. And what fun we've had. So please join me in welcoming Gloria, whom I will introduce by saying simply, in the beginning, there was Gloria Steinem. Is this a celebration or what? I am here to tell you how historic this truly is. It's the first celebration of firsts in the first Center for Feminist Art in the world. And of course you just met the first woman who created all of these firsts. And as always, her genius is in not only understanding the importance of the creative work, but the importance of the creators. As with the dinner party, the magic is in the gathering. That was spirits of the past and tonight we have spirits of the present. When Elizabeth Sackler had the opening exhibit of this Center, she not only brought together the work of 105 artists from 80 countries, but she understood the importance of bringing together the artists themselves. And so 65 artists from around the world were able to meet each other. Tonight is a night like that because we are gathering together spirits of the present on the same stage in the same space in a way that has never happened before and will never happen again in exactly the same way. But there will be more spirits who join this group in the future. This campfire, this coven, this gathering of history that we are going to uniquely see tonight and that will uniquely be in each other's presence tonight. So you can tell your friends and great-grandchildren that you were here. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. I'm Soledad O'Brien. And I'm Laura Flanders. Wow, well we are here today to celebrate a group of women, a coven of women, whose achievements have made an indelible mark on the worlds of art and culture, business, academia, justice, and yes, the media. It's fair to say that without their contributions the world would be a very different place today. Each has broken new ground in their field and played a critical role in the advancement of women and girls simply by being first. Being first takes tenacity, ingenuity, dedication, and passion, qualities that these women have in abundance. Being first can also be difficult, dangerous, and frightening. By definition being first means you're alone, and also by definition it means that people are destined to follow in your footsteps. The women we celebrate today have opened doors for those who follow them. They are role models, leaders, and trailblazers. Our first recipient's name is synonymous with the gravitas. Toni Morrison's words and characters have enriched the annals of American literature and the lives of millions of readers for more than 40 years. Her characters, in particular the female ones, are pitch perfect and utterly transformed. Her expansive stories shine a brilliant light on being black in America, and she has an unflinching eye for intimate detail that her works are both something to behold in awe and something to identify with and own. She is our very own beloved Toni Morrison. Please join me in welcoming the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ms. Toni Morrison. Really pleased to receive this recognition from the Sackler Center, and I am doubly delighted to be among this group of firsts. We will now be known forever as the firsties, knowing perfectly well that there will always never ever be something of us, of our group who is last. But I'm here because I am an artist, and it's wonderful to be in this extraordinarily beautiful museum. I was here once back in the dark ages, it was nothing like this. And it's beautiful, and I have to say that any organization, institution, group that does not regard artwork as finger painting in a children's recess or think of the work that artists do as filling in time for people who are deeply disturbed or lonely or just unemployed. That organization is superior and rare. If you read the biographies of some of the best artists in the world, you might burst into tears because we have learned or been taught to value the pain, the misery, the poverty, the lunacy that may surround the art, but does not really inform it. And the fact is that human life has never been without artwork. Whether it's body painting or whether it's Guernica, whether it's dance in tribes or ballet, from shot to Mozart's operas, there are cave paintings, aborigines, sand paintings, cathedrals, folktales, Tolstoy. The range covers the beginning of sensible life of the human race and continues. And we have never been without it, and we still hunger for ways to show who we are and to say what we mean. I remember being very deeply saddened a while back by some political outrage, an event leading to a consequence that was not so anger-making as soiling. It seemed confirmation that this country had given up on itself and was content to let the patients run the asylum. Well, maybe that was not a bad idea since perhaps the patients know the ins and outs of the asylum better than the doctors do. In any case, for some reason that I still can't explain, this particular calamity hurt me where I had never been wounded before in my imagination. And I found myself unable to write. A friend called me during that time, and I mentioned to him the impasse that I was facing, and he shouted on the phone, No, no, no, no, you must not be stopped because this is precisely the time when artists go to work. He reminded me that the good times, the sweet times were not only not essential for art, they might be inimical. Artists composed, wrote, painted in jails in camps underground when their nations were occupied by the enemy. They worked, so rather beautifully chastened, I thanked him profusely, and I have to say I have never had a problem creating sense. I salute and congratulate all of you here tonight, and especially my group and my colleagues of first years. Your commitment and your passion and your willingness to let nothing dissuade you and your willingness to take control of the asylum. Throughout history, artists have been some of the most venerated, and dare I say sometimes feared, members of society. They document, interpret, question, reflect, and explore the ebb and flow of what it means to be human. But it wasn't until the second half of the 20th century that women began to receive the label of greatness for their art. Of course, we know, right, we know there have always been great women artists, don't we know? As long as there have been people and paintbrushes and ink. But it took the advocacy and determination of people like our next three recipients to really land women on the map of great artists through the ages. In 1969 at Vassar College, the then junior faculty member, Linda Knacklin, unveiled an unceremoniously named undergraduate course. It was called Art 364B. Though its name did not say it, it was a landmark. Why? Because it was the first art history class devoted to women. And it lay the foundation for Knacklin's very provocatively named essay, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? The essay became a rallying cry for feminist arts and art historians. To this day, it is cited as a pivotal moment in the advancement of women in the arts. Linda Knacklin has curated many momentous exhibitions of women's and feminist art, including Global Feminisms, which opened at this very institution, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, in 2007. Linda Knacklin, ladies and gentlemen, who wrote the very first treatise of feminist art history, is our lady tonight. Please join me in welcoming her. I'm very excited about this. I'm 81 and a half, but I still feel like jumping up and down. I just want to thank the people who made this wonderful occasion possible. I want to thank the Brooklyn Museum and its head. And of course, the wonderful creator of the Sackler Center, whose achievement we are celebrating at the same time. And I want to celebrate all my — do I call them fellow? — my sisters. My sister women who are receiving this honor today. I mean, this is an exciting moment. I also want to be a little bit more local. I grew up opposite the Brooklyn Museum. And my first experience of art was in this museum when I was, I don't know, I just was beginning to speak when my parents and grandparents began taking me here. Of course, it was convenient and there were lots of places to run, too. That was nice. But this is how I learned about art. In this museum with its objects and its curators and so on. This was a museum that during the Depression, because I grew up in the 30s, was a place of outreach to the neighborhood. It had special programs. It was free. And we would come here very often to see worldwide dancing, performance, craftmaking. It was not just high art that was celebrated here, but all kinds of art that children and grownups could respond to. I was also taken on class trips here from the Brooklyn Ethical Culture School, which was then right down the road. It was progressive school, so I'm sure we behaved horribly. But it was, we learned an enormous amount here. I also enrolled myself in the Brooklyn Museum's extraordinary class for talented children. You brought in your artwork, you showed it to this terrific teacher, and you came every Saturday for the best art lessons you could possibly imagine. I'm just beginning to say what the Brooklyn Museum meant to me. I think nobody can overestimate the remarkable effects that a major museum that cares about reaching its population, the population in its neighborhood and around it. What this can mean in terms of future growth and future progress. I felt that this museum, and in fact all of Brooklyn at that time that I lived in, encouraged rebellion. It did not put down women who were, what shall I say, had ideas and wanted to change the world. I was encouraged at every step. And this was my luck. I mean, you have to be born in a lucky place. And I figure this was a lucky place. I am grateful to it. I am grateful to the great traditions that built a museum like that, encouraged little girls who were kind of ornery and didn't necessarily want to conform, but wanted to learn and wanted to pass on their ideas and their learning. So thank you, Brooklyn. Thank you, Brooklyn Museum. Thank you, Elizabeth Sackler. And thank all you fellow sisters. I know that's not quite the right word, but for this opportunity, thank you. Lucy LePard is one of the original champions of feminist art. Throughout her career, she has documented and defended social and cultural upheaval and change. Her support and activism placed the growing feminist art movement on the map at a time when it was all but ignored. Her insights were a vital conduit between visionary women artists like Eva Hess and an uninterested public and recalcitrant art establishment. Lucy LePard has curated more than 50 major exhibitions and has 21 books under her belt. Her contributions to defining the conceptual art movement of late 1960s and the early 1970s will be the focus of the next exhibition here at the Elizabeth 8th Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which will open this September. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Lucy LePard, the first feminist art critic. Well, this is really quite an amazing event. Linda is a hard act to follow. My only connection to Brooklyn really is, aside from coming to the shows here for years, is that my son has a studio in Brooklyn, so at least I have some. And thank you to everybody at the Sackler Center for Feminist Art and especially to Liz for her vision and persistence. Rumor had it that somebody wanted it called the Center for Women's Art and Liz said it was feminist art. Bravo. And thanks to my fellow New Mexican and pal of over 50 years, Judy Chicago, whose dinner party provided the impetus for all this to happen. It's very exciting to be invited to this particular party. I can't wait to say I'm a firstie. And thanks to Linda Knoklin, who recreated art history in Eve's image and to all the other artists and art historians and art writers who inspired us. I feel kind of awkward about awards because everything I know about art I learned from artists, women and men, feminists, activists, conceptualists, minimalists, public artists, heretics, photographers, D.Y.I. collectives and so forth. Without them I wouldn't be standing here. Collaboration is an extension of the collage aesthetic that's been a staple of feminist art. Brainstorming and working with other women changed my life. In our common search for an inclusive art world or rather a broader world that accepts art as a necessary part of human experience, we've made some strides, but there's still a lot to be done. Artists work between the questions and the answers, finding ways to envision alternative futures. One of the most interesting Occupy signs was I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy. Catherine Marsh just reminded me of that before just a minute ago or so. A lot of us here have said for a long time that post-feminism will arrive only in the post-patriarchy at patriarchy or when all our goals are met. But even in that utopian moment, we'll still be feminists because feminism in just a strategy or a style or anything, it's a way of life. So thank you very much. No one could have imagined what seeds Willamina Cole Holiday's grandmother was sowing when she said to her granddaughter, always be aware and sensitive to beauty. This early teaching laid a foundation for a life's work of gathering and preserving art created by women. After more than 50 years of collecting, Willamina co-founded the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC along with her partner Wallace. It is the only major museum in the world dedicated to telling the story of women in the arts. The impact of this renowned institution has been stunning. It boasts works by more than 800 women artists dating as far back as the 16th century. It has garnered the support of more than 200,000 members since its doors opened in 1987, and more than 1.2 million people have enjoyed its collections and exhibitions. Mrs. Holiday, we congratulate and thank you for giving us this national treasure, the first national museum devoted to women in the arts. I really want to thank Elizabeth Sackler for giving this honor to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and I'm happy to accept it on the museum's behalf because it truly has been the work of thousands. You know, when we started out, it just, I was so naive, it didn't even occur to me that anyone would object to it. There wasn't a single, there wasn't a single woman artist in the text used in every major, every college and university in our country, Janssen's History of Art when we started. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had a show by a woman in 138 years, so it just seemed that we should show the contribution of women to the history of art because we knew women had been painting because of our collection. We worked so hard to put it together. Well, I was mistaken. The feminists said this is some white glove establishment, and the old dowagers said this is some feminist movement. And with this controversy, they did us the biggest favor they could possibly have done because it became a good story, and the newspapers picked it up, and the story went everywhere, it went off on the wires or something. At any rate, it certainly heightened the awareness of the museum. My husband and I walked into the Brown Hotel in London, and the concierge said that was quite a story in the Sunday paper. So I guess, you know, we had to be grateful that we were finally really becoming known. And over the years, it has been so exciting to see the wonderful, wonderful, the inheritance we have in our country of volunteerism and philanthropy. I've had so many people come to me from places in Europe and say, it could only be done in America, and I guess it's right. It didn't even occur to us to go to the government for money. But at any rate, it has been a wonderful, wonderful experience, and Elizabeth Sackler has helped us from the very beginning. Most of all, I think it's wonderful that she's a dear friend. And thank you very, very much. I've chosen to be a Justice of the United States in Greenport. It took a hundred and nine years for that to happen. From the start, it affected the Constitution. That's a long time to wait. But thank goodness it's a very good post office. It was a very good one, but it was quite an responsibility because I didn't do the job well enough. It might take more than a hundred and nine more years to get the next one on the board. So it was a big responsibility, but a long stretch. And the 25 years were critical, I must say. Fascinating work. The United States has taken great strides in opening opportunities and doors for them. And it, of course, is my hope that the same thing is happening in every nation around the world. It's very important. After all, about half the population can be female, so you need to take care of that. It's a wonderful honor to receive the Sackler Award. It's a new award, and I'm one of the first people to receive it, and I'm very honored by that. I was lucky in my life to be the first to do several things, so it's pretty exciting to have the Sackler Award spoken to them, and to have a kinder role in their field. And it's a good thing because we encourage young women across the country, in a variety of fields, to work on it and try to address what they need. Janetta B. Cole was on a fast track from a very early age when the nation set off for college at just 15. She became a renowned anthropologist, dedicating her work to a wide range of issues from labor relations in Liberia to gender inequality in Haiti. But it is as a leader and an inspiration to young black women in America that Dr. Cole has really made her mark. In 1987, she became the first black woman to be president of Spellman College, one of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the United States. During her long tenure as president there, Dr. Cole renewed the school's sense of mission. She was a powerful force behind unprecedented growth in fundraising and top ratings for academic achievement. Since then, Dr. Cole has gone on to teach at Emory University and once again took the reins as the president of a traditionally black women's college when she became the president of Bennett College in 2002. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Janetta B. Cole. My sister's all and the righteous brothers who are here with us. This is no ordinary evening. I am deeply, deeply honored to receive this award. And in response, I would like to share with you three lessons, no four, give me four, that my mom taught me. The first, a woman will be known by the company she keeps. And what extraordinary company I am keeping this evening. A second lesson from Mary Frances Lewis Betch, who was and always will be my she-ro. She said, in response to racism and sexism, my daughter, you're going to have to be twice as good to get half as far. And importantly, my mom believed that I could do that. Third lesson that I carry with me always is this. She said, you know, if you're ever the first to do something, you must vow to never be the last. Work with others to make sure that you are first, but never last. And then the final lesson that my mom taught me that seems so appropriate tonight is this. She said, education is really about coming to understand the world better. But you will not be an educated person unless you also come to understand your responsibility to help to make the world better. And so tonight, as one of the first deeds, I want to simply open my arms with enormous gratitude to my colleague, Arnold Naiman, to an exceptional and stunning, effective woman, Elizabeth Sackler, to the artist every woman ought to wish she could be. Judy Chicago, to my sister friend. Not from the top, not from the middle, but from the bottom of my heart. I thank you all. Next, Faye Waddleton is renowned as a stalwart fighter for women's reproductive rights and women's health. In 1978, she became president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, which, in spite of being under consistent attack, is still the nation's oldest and largest voluntary reproductive health provider. Can we hear it for Planned Parenthood? Faye was a nurse and a midwife during the time when birth control and abortion were illegal in this country. And so she knows firsthand what is at stake in her lifelong mission to ensure access to safe, reproductive health care and birth control for, well, everyone. Her dedication to women's rights continues. In 1995, she co-founded the Center for the Advancement of Women and an organization dedicated to educating policymakers and opinion leaders about issues that impact women's lives. The first woman, the first African American CEO of Planned Parenthood, Faye Waddleton. Thank you. This is really a very, very special and very moving occasion for me. In thinking about this evening, I sort of thought about this incredible place that we have come and have been gathered to be given this recognition for really basically doing the work that we can't do, we can't live without doing. And I thought that really art is really rooted in the imagination of possibilities. And so I want to thank, first of all, Elizabeth Sackler for imagining the possibilities of this evening. Thank you, Judy Chicago, for imagining the possibilities of the women who sit at the dinner table and the imagination to think about the most nourishing thing that women do and that is to feed others. And to thank you to my colleagues and my sisters who have been given this honor this evening. I am also very deeply humbled to be a part of this gathering and also to join the table at which Margaret Sanger's place has resided for the past 30 years. It's really hard to believe that almost a century has passed since the modern birth control movement was started right in the city of New York on the Lower East Side. In 1916, the first birth control clinic was opened after Margaret Sanger had gone to jail a number of times for distributing information, knowledge, education. But Margaret Sanger had an imagination that women truly could be liberated from sexual oppression and enforced reproduction. She had a notion that in so doing women could achieve the power of their humanity. She had a notion that through organizing her efforts, the efforts of many coming together that the world could truly be changed and can we imagine what the world would have been today a century later even though the struggle goes on had it not been for that imagination. I believe that we are called at moments in history at a time in history and so as Margaret Sanger was called at a time in history and she was a nurse also and the daughter of a mother who had experienced 18 pregnancies. And for those of you who may have heard the propaganda that suggested that Margaret Sanger was only interested in birth control so that she could limit the black race My leadership at the head of Planned Parenthood was proof to give voice that women of all races and ethnic backgrounds deserve the power to control their most fundamental rights and most fundamental reproduction. And so when the voice came a knock at the door at a convention of Planned Parenthood and by the way Margaret Sanger did not like the word Planned Parenthood she formed the American Birth Control League because her movement was about birth control it wasn't about Planned Parenthood her movement was that women needed to enjoy their sexuality and that Planned Parenthood was a euphemism and that's how I became the first president of Planned Parenthood because she left the organization very unhappy that the guys took over and for basically 30 or 40 years such was the case and it was led by one man after another no slight intended I can't imagine a woman not being at the head of Planned Parenthood in the future and so the struggle goes on the hope for a future in which women will truly be in control of their lives is one that we can continue to imagine but it must be more than just an imagination let us this day imagine a day when women are valued, trusted and left in peace to make a future possible of infinite possibilities for our daughters and our sons thank you very much how many chills have you all felt so far? really what an evening right? we have heard a lot lately about the vital mission to empower women economically increase their presence at the highest levels of finance and maintain responsible business practices but for Muriel Siebert these have been her highest priorities for decades known as the first woman of finance Siebert began her career earning $65 a week as a research trainee she never looked back and quickly went from industry specialist to partner by 1967 she founded her own brokerage firm and became the first female member of the New York Stock Exchange she soon added another first to her name becoming the first female superintendent of banking for the state of New York under Governor Hugh Kerry ladies and gentlemen Muriel Siebert I came to New York with $500 and I used to the baker from Cleveland, Ohio I had a place to sleep my sister's couch I got a job as a trainee in research and started to do business with some institutions based on the research that I was doing I had been given airlines which is not a very feminine wasn't considered to be feminine at the time but it got me a lot of business but I could not be paid equally and I switched firms a few times and I was getting discouraged because it's very hard when a man that's doing the same work is making twice what you're making so one day I asked Gerald Sein one of my clients Jerry where, what firm can I go to where I'll be paid equally and Jerry said to me don't be ridiculous you won't buy a seat work for yourself and I said don't you be ridiculous and he said I don't think there's a law against it well I went through a few of the hurdles like getting a loan approved Mr. Rockefeller had to approve it one of the other banks had agreed to lonely money against securities which I had accumulated so I was borrowing against listed stocks and in the middle of the process they said we're sorry we decided we cannot make the loan so I asked the person that was head of the trust department at Chase Bank I said Joe, his name was Joe Debe and I said Joe I guess I'm not getting the seat bank pulled out and Joe called somebody from the Chase Bank and Mr. David Rockefeller approved they're blowing me money against securities so I got the seat on the stock exchange that did not take care of though the ladies room they had a ladies room on the floor of the exchange but nobody told me about it for two and a half years that was pretty rough and for the first ten years that I was a member I could say 1,365 men and me there was a two month exception to that statement when a firm put a seat in a woman's name because they were merging and they wanted the seat to stay with the firm but so I did what I had to do and that was it things have changed they have changed for the better we're seeing women whoever thought there would be a woman that was head of the SEC I mean things have just changed and I am honored deeply honored to get this award because in so doing we encourage other people and that's the thing we have to keep doing there's a lot of new businesses there's a lot of new technologies technology women have the ability and it's up to us to give them the encouragement and I'd like to thank you for this wonderful honor I will cherish it invest in women, invest with women clearly our next award is being given posthumously to Wilma Pearl man killer she was the first woman chief of an American Indian nation she was principal chief of the Cherokee nation for a decade when I was in school I really believed in that I really believed in that and I really controlled it and I really made care of the system that supported my life and what I really did as a scientist working among young people was trust how we're thinking about it and to believe in ourselves again and to look to the thousands of solutions to problems it just won't be normal I believe without doubt And people can see that people just like them, people that have no economic resources and use physical resources, put in an incredible asset in their values, that they can change their community, that they can build their own water system, that they can create a job, that they can build houses. My hope is that for all of us, I hope that as father-in-law we've done, that people of self-life, having self-immunity, somewhere on the planet, will say, we don't give you that. If they did that, we give you that. First, for the fact that WOMA is not with us, is that you're going to get to meet Charlie Soap. We need a whole new center to honor those men who are true partners to women, those who deeply know and act on and teach the principle that women and men are linked, but not ranked. My dear friend and wellness true partner, Charlie Soap, could teach that to the world. In any room, he is the person everyone trusts. And that's true within the Cherokee Nation, where he's a leader of crucial community reconstruction projects and of youth programs and of the annual Cherokee National Reunion Powwow that brings people home from all over the world. Wilma married Charlie, a full-blood Cherokee traditionalist and healer and a Cherokee speaker in 1986, and they became a team. And no one but no one could have more deeply fulfilled the promise to love, in sickness and in health. Charlie, we thank you for coming all the way from Oklahoma to be with us, to bring Wilma's spirit with you and to complete this Center for Feminist Art by showing us a glimpse of the true humanity that once existed in Indian Country and can exist again, equality for us all. Charlie Soap. What an exciting evening here. I want to say I'm honored to be here. And I also want to thank the Sacra Center for this award. And as I learn about this group of women first, I know Wilma would be honored to be here in this company. I am proud to accept this award for the family. In the two years since Wilma's left, awards like this remind us that her leadership continues to be an important example. One of Wilma's final act was to ask me to take her place as partner to complete the film. She started as her legacy. We are in the final stages of eating the film, movie, a feature film called Cherokee Word for Water. And we will be back in New York this fall with the premiere of the movie. The film is about a rural Cherokee community which had no running water or indoor plumbing in their homes. To see revive the Godugi concept, the word Godugi means people coming together, working together. The concept for the community people remembering how to work together to solve our own problems. The community built an 18-mile water line and had running water for the first time in serving over 200 people with this project. We worked together for almost 30 years. It was an honor to be her partner. She said the key was that the community learned to trust their own thinking again. She said the same thing was important for women. You need to trust your own thinking. And with this I want to say thank you for this award on behalf of Wilma. Thank you very much. Connie Chung is a household name in this country. Her work as a newscaster and television anchor became a fixture in our living rooms almost as soon as she began her career in the early 1970s. She's reported for all of the major news networks and during the 1970s alongside the legendary Walter Cronkite she covered the events that defined the era including Watergate and the Pivotal Salt between Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev. In 1993 she became the first woman to co-anchor the network's national flagship news, the CBS Evening News. Ladies and gentlemen, Connie Chung. It is such an honor to be here. I can't tell you how thrilling it is to be among these distinguished distinguished women. I actually started in 1969 in Washington, DC and I was a copy person two days a week before I graduated from high school and when I, I mean from college and when I graduated the only job they had open was for newsroom secretary and as much as I didn't want to take it I knew I had my foot in the door and I'd have to take it. So I did that but then a job opened up for a writer for the local anchorman at that station. He would sit in his office and go good evening, good evening, good evening and I thought I really want that job so I went to the news director and I said I said I want to be the writer for him and he said but I still need a newsroom secretary right at that time there was a heavy push to hire women thanks to Gloria Steinem oh Gloria, where did she go? And so I went across the street to the bank where I cashed my check and there was this very, very smart teller that I always went to her name was Tony Taylor and she was very swift and just a lot of fun too smart, I could tell she was smart and she also happened to be African American I knew that would help I went to her and I said Tony you know that big TV station across the street I can make you a star and she said really I said yeah come on over I'll get you a job so she came with me she got the job I became a writer several years later she got all the other African American employees together and filed a class action lawsuit against the station I was glad I was gone by then after about a few months of writing I finagled a way to let them put me on the air and be a reporter so I was a reporter for about a year then I heard that CBS news was trying to hire because there really was quite a lot of pressure from the feminist groups and I was just and thanks to Gloria Steinem really there was such a push it was very vocal and the three networks ABC, CBS and NBC probably had one woman each who was rarely on or maybe a smattering so CBS hired me and three other women in one fell swoop this was 1971 it was me, Michelle Clark African American woman Leslie Stahl a nice Jewish girl with blond hair and Sylvia Chase a Shiksa with blond hair we were hired they took care of their business and that was it and nothing happened again at CBS until the 80s now 40 years later I'm 65 it still hasn't reached any level of parody certainly you see a lot more women in television news but it has not reached the executive suite it's all still male dominated there are many other parts of the industry in television news that is still male dominated so we have so much more work to do and to me the only way to do it is for those of us who came before to reach down and help those who are coming up the ladder I don't think the sister heard works unless we help our sisters so I encourage anyone in any field you're in reach out to the young women protect them from everything that we knew happened to us help them and bring them up you know we're there to help and we're there to be colleagues not to be fighting you know there's only I call it you can only have one Chinese cheerleader on the squad syndrome you know you don't just want one of these and one of those and they're done you have to be able to bring more up so that we represent the population that exists in this country and that is more than more than you can ever imagine because you don't see it on the Hill you don't see it in the House you don't see it in the Senate you don't see it at the White House and you don't see it on the Supreme Court even though you know we've made great progress there so I thank you so much this award means so much to me I thank our daughter Susan Povich who introduced me to this incredible museum this incredible Sackler Center I mean it is marvellously impressive and beyond beyond thankful for this wonderful wonderful award thank you my hero so many heroes up here in 1984 long before smartphones and Google and Facebook in fact before most of us were in the habit of even using ATMs Sandy Lerner was part of a small team who were exploring the potential in connecting computers their goal was modest to connect the computer systems of two departments at Stanford University the results while they were extraordinary infinitely bigger what emerged was the first computer router which for those few maybe out there non-computer nerds among us is the thing that delivers so-called data packages from one place to another in short without this without her there would be no internet knowing they'd created something important they set out to find backers for their invention and this is the part really for all of us to remember no less than 76 venture capitalists later they were still looking on the 77th try they were successful and the company we know today as Cisco Systems was born Sandy's going on to head up a number of successful companies including Urban Decay and Asia Farm ladies and gentlemen co-founder of Cisco Systems one of the creators of the first computer router Sandy Lerner I'm not sure why I'm here so far listening to all of this I think it's because I am the token left brain which makes me a true half-wit and that's alright I first of all I don't want to be blamed for the internet we did something really quite different but it's okay everybody likes it so they give me these things and that's okay I want to talk a little bit about the other thing why I might be here and that is the Chotten House Library and the Center for the Study of Early English Women's Writing there were two founders of the English Royal Academy of Art named them there were also between two and three thousand published women authors in the long 18th century up to including the time of Jane Austen who published somewhere between 10 and 15 thousand books and as Dale Spender said somewhat inelegantly in her wonderful book Mothers of the Novel almost anything that you look at that gets credited to men there were women before which really biologically makes a lot of sense I mean whatever they did we had to do it first and in starting the Center for the Study of Early English Women's Writing and starting to learn about these women and their lives and their lives of deprivation as Jane Austen said very elegantly single women have a dreadful propensity to being poor I am struck time and time and time again about the times that you think that you're first and you find mathematicians in the 13th century and you find physicists in the 18th century you find mathematicians who were doing things that I don't know how to do who lived through so and died in childbirth you find people who were astronomers and women you know for every Marie Curie there's another ten women who really didn't get the award and I would like to do what I wrote on the bell at the Shottenhouse Church and I would like to dedicate my award with my grateful thanks to Elizabeth Sackler and my colleagues my promoter particularly Carol Jenkins for nominating me for this very prestigious award I would like to dedicate it to all of the women who went before because wherever you look if you take the time to look they're there thank you next three recipients are all giants in the performing arts the first of these the amazing conductor Marin Alsop can't actually be with us today she's busy she's the first woman to head a major American orchestra the great joy for me was the moment when my father took me to see the New York Illinois and I was nine years old and I remember the day like it was yesterday that was the day I decided what I wanted to do and I never changed my mind it was a bit of a challenge to figure out a course because I think that women who were in front of their fields often had to find a new path or an original new path what I was worried about was how many women looked for orchestras unfortunately still a rarity even in this day and age but I think that mentorship is an important part of who we are as human beings and part of my mission is to always be a mentor, always be available and try to set a standard for learning and following your passion experience I'm a very good crowd of course but I kind of think that in this section in this year we can still be firsts for women so I long for a time when there are no more firsts and no more of those barriers that we have to try to originate through I can't thank you enough for this incredible privilege of the Sackler Center first award for me being counted among these incredible women who have really changed society is an honor unto itself I only wish I could be there tonight to celebrate all of you well next up Soprano, Jesse Norman she's moved in delighted audiences the world over since her debut performance in 1969 though known for her commanding stage presence of wild and wide repertoire it is her uniquely expressive voice that critics and the public adore and find hard to pigeonhole she's been honored and celebrated by just about every institution possible including in 1997 becoming the youngest ever recipient of the very prestigious Kennedy Center honor she continues to astonish us with her performances which really define world class ladies and gentlemen the great Jesse Norman one's life has value so long as one attributes value to the lives of others by means of love friendship indignation and compassion these are the words of Simone de Beauvoir with these words which I would think all of us in this room have long ago taken to heart as a philosophy as a guide to living I wish to thank everyone of the Sackler Center first awards for including me in this extraordinary group of amazingly accomplished women and altogether wonderful people I am humbled by your generosity please allow me to offer my heartfelt congratulations to all of my sister honorees my my what a group rest assured ladies and gentlemen that I am well aware on whose broad and proud shoulders I stand in my profession and that it is simply my duty my honor and my privilege to hold high the banners imprinted with names that you know so well Lentine Price Marian Anderson Duke Ellington Paul Robeson Ella Fitzgerald the list is far longer than just these five and the responsibility to walk through the doors that they have opened so bravely and with such strength and where they through their undeniable gifts and contributions have thereby turned on the lights in times of discouraging darkness so that those of us lucky enough to follow them might see our way more clearly for this I have more gratitude and pride than is easy to express in my own words so please allow me to use one further quotation as this one makes my feelings this evening rather clearer I think the words of George Bernard Shaw I'm sure in his heart he was a feminist of the opinion that life belongs to the community and as long as I live I shall do for it all that I can life is no brief candle to me but is rather a sort of splendid torch which I'm permitted to hold for a moment and I intend to make it burn as brightly as possible before passing it on to future generations unquote understand well ladies and gentlemen that the ancestors had their own way of saying precisely the same thing and it goes something like this this little light of my shine this little shine this little shine will just have the wonderful people awards would that be all right Susan Strohman is one of America's most prolific and innovative theater directors and choreographers a consummate storyteller her work is truly multidimensional and multidisciplinary in addition to being deeply musical Susan's work is consistently hilarious and spans musical theater ballet opera and film she's won too many awards to list but among them are five Tony's two Lawrence Olivia awards and a record for a stair awards we honor her today as the first woman to be commissioned by the New York City Ballet to choreograph a full length ballet ladies and gentlemen Susan Strohman thank you so much thank you Elizabeth thank you and to the Sackler Center for this recognition and for including me in the company of these extraordinary women I am truly truly honored and I have to thank Peter Martins for giving me the chance to create the ballet double feature for the New York City Ballet they are extraordinary dancers when I create for them I'll say turn three times and then they turn eight times and I'll say I meant that or they'll you know I'll have them leap in the air and I'll say come down on the count of eight and up they go they hover come down on the count of eight at thirteen and I say I meant that so I went to dancing school when I was five I've been in dancing school since I was five and I spend every day still like I'm heading for class trying to learn growing up I was influenced by many choreographers representing all different types of jazz tap ballet and they all inspired me to dream but it was women I admired and inspired me to try like Martha Graham and Agnes DeMille and Ginger Rogers dance has the power to transform sitting in the theater what we see on the stage reflects back to us who we are as a culture sometimes what we see allows us the chance to laugh and to feel the joy and the pleasure of laughing together other moments in the theater challenge us to examine what we believe and if we find ourselves lacking it can give us the courage to act that is what dance can do and that is what art does it connects you to the world it emboldens you to act I know I stand on the shoulders of the women choreographers that came before me I am very lucky to be where I am today to be doing exactly what I want to do I love it so and to have the chance to create and what it is that I want to create I am very very fortunate and this is a step that I know that you have all seen when a dancer leaps up in the air and into the wing and black out the lights go out and it is very exciting for the audience but for the dancer you are wondering am I going to land properly am I going to land on top of someone and am I going to make it for my next entrance so that moment is very thrilling and very scary but it makes you feel so alive and there is a quote from Magnus DeMille she said the artist never entirely knows we guess we may be wrong but we take leap after leap in the dark and we hope for the best supporting the craft of others like you have done tonight it gives the future of women artists the strength to take these leap in the dark and feel like we are alive very alive thank you so much for this honor the University of Pennsylvania first admitted women for classes in 1876 sounds good right it would be another 118 years before a woman would had any Ivy League school as president that woman was Judith Rodin who took office as president in 1994 her decade long tenure at the University of Pennsylvania saw unprecedented growth with record enrollment and research funding and the schools endowment more than doubled since then she's continued to enrich our nation's intellectual and cultural landscape with innovation and women's advancement at the top of her agenda she's forging new ground at the Rockefeller Foundation where she is again president ladies and gentlemen Ivy League University usually when one is last you're supposed to say those were hard acts to follow but this event is really about making 15 easy acts to follow because that's what this is really all about the 16 of us joined together in a sisterhood not only of firsts that's important but that's just the means we're joined together in a sisterhood bringing about the ends that so many before us fought for, Gloria it's a privilege to see you and Liz thanks for all of your wonderful work and to so many of you this is an extraordinary event but it's made extraordinary by the 16 women and all of you who are here in the audience tonight to celebrate the achievements and the accomplishments it's wonderful to be included in the historic fourth wing of Judy Chicago's the dinner party it really is a representation of equality and achievement and feminist expression I'm honored because at the Rockefeller Foundation we will actually be launching our centennial this week so we've been spending a great deal of time thinking about how both to honor achievements of the past while keeping an eye on the future if you want an indication of what has changed you will note that my organization's original mission forged a hundred years ago focused on promoting the well-being of mankind and it's very gratifying that it is now headed by a woman in that spirit I'm also delighted to be part of the Sackler Center's own forward-looking milestone celebration your fifth year anniversary so congratulations to that as the other recipients here can attest it's actually a pretty rare opportunity for many of us to pause and to think about our achievements our milestones, our firsts because frankly we've simply been too busy and although I was the first woman to become president of an Ivy League University I didn't set out to be the first but I can assure you that I left Penn with the goal of achieving that there would always be a next Connie talked about the importance of mentoring the importance of really making sure that the women who follow us have the kinds of opportunities frankly that many of us had to fight so hard to get the women before me pulled the ladder up after them and so we didn't feel that same kind of support that I think all of us are committed to making sure that the women after us have had tonight we do just that it gives us a chance to reflect on women's accomplishments and to appreciate how far we've come I remember my first year at Penn I was always referred to as the new woman president and every time I heard it it sort of graded for a whole host of reasons and it was wonderful to finally be known as the president and to have accomplished so many things that so many other women are now doing leading not only Ivy League universities but my sister president, Jeanetta went before me and has blazed so many trails in education as well I remember when I was offered the Penn presidency how honored and thrilled I was I had spent 22 years at Yale and never really imagined that I would go back home Philadelphia is my home I'm a product of the Philadelphia Public Schools and I went to Penn I'm the first alum to head the university as well as being the first woman and when they offered me the job they offered me a salary and a package and I went home that night and I was so thrilled and honored but the salary really was awful I kept thinking about whether I should feel thrilled or whether I should be honored or whether I should really be angry and so I called the board chair the next morning and I said this really is terrific and of course I'd like to come back and lead Penn but unless you add another X amount of dollars I'm not going to consider it would you have made that same offer to a man so we've heard 16 stories and we will hope to inspire the women next and be the next wing of dinner party guests as we celebrate all of these pioneers though please let us remember how much more work there is to be done Rockefeller is a global foundation there are so many women around the world who have barriers to their dreams women produce 80% of the food in the world they own 10% of the property women are trafficked every day women are left behind and forgotten everywhere in the world so we are incredibly privileged in America but let's remember our sisters elsewhere and make sure that we commit ourselves to their future and their dreams for a greater world thank you and I'd like us all to give a big round of applause to all of these wonderful first congratulations to them thank you very much Laura and I know it's late and I know we've been sitting here but it's been delicious and I hope you've enjoyed it too I have a surprise actually so I'm adding the layers of whipped cream that we've been enjoying if you will for that metaphor a cherry but it's not a cherry it's really a rose so I have a question what do Marilyn Monroe, Shakespeare Abe Lincoln, Dale Chihuly Julia Child Charles Corralt and JFK John F. Kennedy of course to name a few have in common their household names they shaped our world our cultural landscapes all were or are brilliant, vibrant passionate like leaders, lovers of life and others and and they all have roses named after them and not just any rose but roses that reflect their namesake Mr. Lincoln is a single stem deep red rose very tall, grows very lanky Marilyn is soft she's ivory just scent and so on they are hybrids, these roses they are roses that have been crossed pollinated as seedlings as hybrid seedlings for certain characteristics this takes time I have to put on my glasses because now I can't see they are tested for hardiness for constancy in bloom for disease resistant weather the rough storms of winter Cheryl Malone is here maybe you'll have a chance to meet her she's with us here today and she's responsible for developing and testing this rose that you see behind me which is known in the laboratory as CLE number 6 CLE number 6 has now to meet certain standards it must be strong bloom and propagate in multiple climates north south east and west it must entice passers by to stop pay attention and it must throw off pests and disease with subtle grit CLE number 6 must over the coming years be able to increase from a dozen plants which exist now to hundreds to thousands to maybe hundreds of thousands in other words it must meet the high standards of a great organizer and be a worthy reminder with each new bloom of its new name ladies and gentlemen and Gloria my friend our friend Gloria I present to you a gift and to future generations this is a plaque for Gloria that tells her there will be a glorious style of rose this was not part of our meetings alright I'm now going to spend the rest of my life living up to the description of that rose thank you one last thank you thank you all so much for joining us this evening and I want to add my congratulations to this incredible group of wonderful people for those of you joining us the cocktail reception is in the main lobby on the first floor the Sackler Center on the fourth floor is open all night so please stop in take a look thank you and good night