2022 CFA Distinguished Alumni Awards

2022 CFA

Distinguished Alumni Awards

Valerie Coleman Michelle Hurd Alexi Worth

2022 Award Recipients

Valerie Coleman (CFA’95, BUTI’89)

School of Music Honoree

Michelle Hurd (CFA’88) School of Theatre Honoree Alexi Worth (CFA’93) School of Visual Arts Honoree

The Distinguished Alumni Awards are the most prestigious awards conferred by the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. Since 1986, awards have been presented to individuals who have distinguished themselves with outstanding achievements in their careers, communities, and in service to the arts.

September 29, 2022

Boston University Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre Luo Yan Lobby 820 Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline

Schedule of Events

5:00pm • Welcome Reception 5:30pm • Awards Presentation

Welcome from CFA Dean Harvey Young

Welcome to the College of Fine Arts Distinguished Alumni Awards! We are thrilled to recognize the career achievements of three important and influential CFA alumni: Valerie Coleman, Michelle Hurd, and Alexi Worth.

Valerie Coleman composes new works that are informed by experiences long neglected by the classical music industry and, in the process, has redefined and expanded the possibilities of orchestral and symphonic sound. Easily recognizable for the many characters she has portrayed (from an underworld demon to an intergalactic first officer), Michelle Hurd provides crucial leadership and a voice for screen actors in the midst of today’s most pressing challenges. One of the most respected critics and painters in the world of contemporary art, Alexi Worth experiments with form, embraces a mix of methods in his own practice, and compels viewers to question what and how they see.

Today, we gather as a community to celebrate alumni whose impact on the professional worlds of the fine and performing arts as well as society-at-large has been profound. We assemble to honor Terriers who lead by example.

Harvey Young Dean, BU College of Fine Arts

Valerie Coleman

Flutist & Composer

Valerie Coleman is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own unique path as a composer, GRAMMY®-nominated flutist, and entrepreneur.

Highlighted as one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” by The Washington Post, she was named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year, an honor bestowed to an individual who has made a significant contribution to classical music as a performer, composer, or educator.

Coleman was named to the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works dual commissioning program in 2021/22. This season sees performances of her works by orchestras around the United States including the Minnesota Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Yale Symphony Orchestra, Vermont Symphony, and The Louisville Orchestra.

Former flutist of the Imani Winds, Coleman is the creator and founder of this acclaimed ensemble whose 24-year legacy is documented and featured in a dedicated exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Along with composer-harpist Hannah Lash, and composer-violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama, she co-founded and currently performs as flutist of the performercomposer trio Umama Womama.

As a performer, Coleman has appeared at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center and with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, New Haven Symphony, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Banff, Spoleto USA, and Bravo! Vail. As a guest flutist, she has participated in the MidAtlantic Flute Fair, New Jersey Flute Fair, South Carolina Flute Society Festival, Colorado Flute Fair, Mid-South Flute Fair, and the National Women’s Music Festival.

Coleman’s work as a recording artist includes an extensive discography. With Imani Winds, she has appeared on Sony

Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, Naxos, Cedille Records, and eOne, and as a guest flutist on albums with Wayne Shorter Quartet, Steve Coleman and the Council of Balance, Chick Corea, Brubeck Brothers, Edward Simon, Bruce Adolphe, and Mohammed Fairouz. Her compositions and performances are regularly broadcast on NPR, WNYC, WQXR, Minnesota Public Radio, Sirius XM, Radio France, Australian Broadcast Company, and Radio New Zealand.

Committed to arts education, entrepreneurship, and chamber music advocacy, Coleman created the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival in 2011, a summer mentorship program in New York City welcoming young leaders from over 100 international institutions. She has held flute and chamber music masterclasses at institutions in 49 states and over five continents, including The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College of Music, New England Conservatory, Oberlin College, Eastman School of Music, Yale University, Carnegie Mellon, Interlochen Arts Academy, Beijing Conservatory, Brazil’s Campo do Jordão Festival, and Australia’s Musica Viva.

Coleman joined the Mannes School of Music Flute and Composition faculty in Fall 2021 as the Clara Mannes Fellow for Music Leadership. Prior to that she served on the faculty at The Frost School of Music at the University of Miami as Assistant Professor of Performance, Chamber Music and Entrepreneurship. In 2021/22, she led a yearlong residency at The Juilliard School in their Music Advancement Program through American Composers Forum.

Coleman’s compositions are published by Theodore Presser and her own company, VColeman Music. She studied composition with Martin Amlin and Randy Wolfe and flute with Julius Baker, Judith Mendenhall, Doriot Dwyer, Leone Buyse, and Alan Weiss. She and her family are based in New York City.

Michelle Hurd

Actor & Activist

Instantly recognizable for her signature locks and admired for her compelling interpretations of stage and screen characters, Michelle Hurd is one of the great actors of our generation.

Michelle Hurd currently stars opposite Patrick Stewart in Paramount+’s Star Trek: Picard.

Hurd recently completed work on AMC’s Isle of the Dead, an upcoming The Walking Dead spinoff. In addition to her explosive performance as “Shepherd” on NBC’s hit drama Blindspot, Hurd recurred on FOX’s action crime series Lethal Weapon. Hurd is known for her roles in Starz’s hit horror comedy Ash Vs. Evil Dead, the Marvel Universe series Daredevil and Jessica Jones (“DA Samantha Reyes”), and the A&E summer series, The Glades (“Colleen Manus”). Other television credits include: Pose, Hawaii Five-0, Devious Maids, 90210, Witches of East End, How To Get Away With Murder, Bosch, Mysteries of Laura, Pretty Little Liars, Raising Hope, The Good Wife, Law & Order: SVU (“Det. Jeffries”), Gossip Girl, ER, Bones, According To Jim, Law & Order, Smith, Skin, Leap Years, Charmed, The O.C., Kevin Hill, The Practice, and Another World.

Hurd recently completed production on the films Somewhere in Montana, starring opposite Graham McTavish, and The Plus One alongside Cedric the Entertainer.

Other film credits include Bad Hair, Being Frank opposite Jim Gaffigan, Be Afraid, We Don’t Belong Here (alongside Catherine Keener and Maya Rudolph), Search Engines, Within The Dark, Girl Most Likely (with Kristen Wiig), Random Hearts, Personals, Double Parked, Wolf, and King of New York.

Theater credits include: The Dog in the Manger (Shakespeare Theatre Company), AMI (MCC), Getting Away with Murder (Broadway), The Violet Hour (Off-Broadway), Looking for the Pony (Off-Broadway), and 900 Oneonta (Off-Broadway).

Hurd is SAG-AFTRA’s National Vice President of Los Angeles and Chair of the SAG-AFTRA National Sexual Harassment Prevention Committee. For her commitment to union work, she received the SAG-AFTRA President’s Award for Union Service in 2021.

Hurd is a proud alumnus of NYC’s premiere artist community at Westbeth. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Boston University College of Fine Arts in 1988.

@realmichellehurd

Alexi Worth

Visual Artist & Guggenheim Fellow

As an artist, curator, and critic, Alexi Belsey Worth is one of the most influential people in contemporary art. Alexi Belsey Worth was born in New York City. He attended Yale University and the Skowhegan School of Art before entering BU’s MFA program in the era of the “two Johns,” that is, the period when the program was dominated by two powerfully contrasting (but equally illuminating) personalities, John Moore and John Walker.

After BU, Worth lived for several years in the Boston area, working in a studio in the Castignetti building in the North End, since demolished as part of the Big Dig.

He taught at the University of New Hampshire Durham, before moving to Brooklyn, where he still lives, with his wife, the architect Erika Belsey Worth, and their two sons.

In addition to his painting, Worth has taught at several MFA programs, including UPenn, Yale, Pratt, and the New York Academy of Art. He has also written extensively about art for publications including Artforum, ARTnews, Art in America, and the New Yorker.

Alexi Worth is a Guggenheim Award-winning painter whose work explores what it means, in our digitally supersaturated environment, for pictures to be “mindmade and handmade.” In his own distinctively precise and compressed style, Worth offers puzzling, reinvented versions of ordinary things: most recently wineglasses, hands, and leaves. With subtly unusual surfaces and viewpoints, Worth’s art differs from much recent figuration in its modesty and simplicity, suggesting an effort to return the contemplative power of abstraction to figurative art. Worth has been exhibiting in New York since 2001. Selected exhibitions include Nearness at DC Moore Gallery, NY; Flat Earth Conspiracy at George Adams Gallery, NY; A Fairly Secret Army at Wild Palms Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany; Feast for the Eyes at the Nassau County Museum of Art, NY; and Open Windows, curated by Carroll Dunham at the Addison Gallery in Andover, MA. He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Also known as a critic, Worth has written about a wide range of artists, including El Anatsui, Carroll Dunham, Jasper Johns, and Jackie Saccoccio. Born and raised in New York, Worth has for many years worked in Brooklyn, NY.

Past CFA Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients

2019 Brooke Karzen (CFA’84)

2019 Morris Robinson (CFA’01)

2019 Joe Wardwell (CFA’99)

2018 Sedrick Huckaby (BUTI’95, CFA’97)

2018 Kelly Kaduce (CFA’99)

2018 Katy Rubin (CFA’07)

2017 Missy Mazzoli (BUTI’98, CFA’02)

2017 Kim Raver (CFA’91)

2017 Brian McLean (CFA’99)

2016 Peter Paige (CFA’91)

2016 Joel Christian Gill (CFA’04)

2016 Beth Morrison (BUTI’89, CFA’94)

2014 Phyllis Elhady Hoffman (CFA’61,’67)

2014 Peter Del Vecho (CFA’80)

2014 Frank Ginsberg (CFA’65)

2010 Salvatore Rabbio (CFA’56)

2010 Gael Towey (CFA’75)

2010 Bob Avian (CFA’59)

2009 Cliffton Peacock (CFA’75,’77)

2009 Albert Sherman (CFA’75,’76)

2008 Robin Bartlett (CFA’73)

2008 Edward Avedisian (CFA’59,’61)

2008 Carol Keller (CFA’80)

2007 Andrew Raftery (CFA’84)

2007 Jess Goldstein (CFA’72)

2007 Amy Lynn Barber (CFA’71)

2006 Ted Atkatz (BUTI’89, CFA’93)

2006 Bruce Herman (CFA’77,’79)

2006 Brad Oscar (CFA’86)

2005 Sandra Nicolucci (CFA’68,’69, Wheelock’77)

2005 Rick Heinrichs (CFA’76)

2005 David Kneuss (CFA’70)

2004 Sylvia Alimena (CFA’82)

2004 Michael Chiklis (CFA’85)

2004 Jon Imber (CFA’77)

2003 Ronald Feldman (CFA’76)

2003 Paula Plum (CFA’75)

2003 Ivan Schwartz (CFA’73)

2003 H.C. Robbins Landon (CFA’47, Hon.’69)

2002 Ikuko Mizuno (CFA’69)

2002 David Garrison (CFA’74)

2002 Caren Canier (BUTI’73, CFA’76)

2001 Pat Steir (CFA’60)

2001 Michelle Hurd (CFA’88)

2001 Eugene Izotov (CFA’95)

2000 Mary Ellen Doyle (CFA’62)

Past CFA Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients

2000 Luoyong Wang (CFA’89)

2000 Lan Shui (CFA’90)

1999 Stewart Lane (CFA’73)

1999 Robert Guillemin (CFA’62,’67)

1999 Lauren Flanigan (CFA’81)

1998 Geena Davis (CFA’79, Hon.’99)

1998 Arnold Glimcher (CFA’61)

1998 Anthony Tommasini (CFA’82)

1997 Zheng-Rong Wang (CFA’89,’92)

1997 Robert Freeman (CFA’71,’81)

1997 Michael Murray (CFA’55)

1996 Wynn Thomas (CFA’75)

1996 Jane Aaron (CFA’69)

1996 Dominique LaBelle (CFA’89)

1995 Klaus George Roy (CFA’47)

1995 Martin Sherman (CFA’60)

1995 Ira Yoffe (CFA’78)

1994 William Schwann (CFA’37)

1994 Olympia Dukakis (SAR’53, CFA’57, Hon.’00)

1994 Brice Marden (CFA’61, Hon.’07)

1993 Wilbur Fullbright (GRS’60)

1993 Penelope Jencks (CFA’58)

1993 Jason Alexander (CFA’81,Hon.’95)

1992 Robert Holmes (CFA’54,GRS’55,’60)

1992 Mary Ann Donahue (CFA’57,’58)

1992 Lorraine Shemesh (CFA’71)

1991 Anthony Newman (CFA’67)

1991 Sidney Hurwitz (CFA’59)

1991 Craig Lucas (CFA’73)

1990 Charles Fowler (CFA’64)

1990 Rick Meyerowitz (CFA’65)

1990 Israel Hicks (CFA’67)

1989 Dino Anagnost (CFA’65)

1989 Paul S. Kahn (CFA’67)

1989 Douglas C. Wager (CFA’74)

1988 Joseph Paratore (CFA’70)

1988 Anthony Paratore (CFA’66)

1988 Peter Donnelly (CFA’60)

1988 Ben Frank Moss (CFA’63)

1987 Walter Charles (CFA’68)

1987 Richard Yarde (CFA’62,’64)

1987 Alfre Woodard (CFA’74, Hon.’04)

1986 Samuel Adler (CFA’48)

1986 Phyllis Berman (CFA’73,’75)

1986 David Mitchell (CFA’60)

Other CFA Award Recipients

2015 Uzo Aduba (CFA’05) »

2015 Greg Hildreth (CFA’05) »

2015 David Delmar (CFA’06) »

2010 Saul Cohen •

2009 Marian Morash (CFA’59) ‡

2009 Judith Harris (CFA’74) •

2007 Ronna Kress (CFA’81,’84) ‡

2006 Judith Flynn •

2005 Fred Bronstein (CFA’78) ‡

2004 Mary Ann Milano (CFA’66) •

2003 Luo Yan (CFA’90) •

2002 Russell Morash (CFA’57) ‡

2001 Tony McLean (CFA’79) ‡

2000 Anne-Marie Soullière •

1999 Janice Miller (CFA’66) •

1998 Esther Kahn (Wheelock’55, Hon.’86, BUTI’93) •

1997 Nina Tassler (CFA’79, Hon.’16) ‡

1995 Sid Bennett (DGE’52, COM’54,CFA’55) ‡

1994 Marvin Schofer (CFA’56) ‡

1994 David Hays (CFA’55) °

1993 Rita Simo (CFA’75) °

1992 Jane Schwartz (CFA’70, MED’88) °

1991 Stephen Mindich (CFA’65, COM’67) °

1990 Paul Michael Glaser (CFA’67) °

» Inspiring Young Alumni Award

Profession

Alumni Weekend 2022

Calling all Terriers...

Boston University School of Music Celebrates

of

Music was one of many BU “firsts…” Boston University was among the first colleges to be coeducational. Almost a century before the Ivy League, BU was a leader in smashing the barriers of gender discrimination. And 150 years ago, Boston University established a school of music. The new school was unlike all others in the United States. It was the first to center the study of music as worthy of a degree. Over the next century and a half, scores of universities and colleges would follow BU’s lead and, by doing so, would help establish a rich, dynamic culture of music in this country and beyond.

BU College of Fine Arts alumni are arts leaders, educators, music critics, and more. The impact of BU School of Music has been profound. This year, with pride we mark 150 years of music-makers, educators, and game-changers at Boston University School of Music.

BU Bands Centennial Celebration

October 21 - 23, 2022

BU Men’s Hockey Pre-Game Reception

Friday October 21 • 5:00 - 6:45pm • Friends & Family Lounge, Agganis Arena

Kick-off your weekend with a pre-game reception at the exclusive Friends & Family Lounge at Agganis Arena with BU Bands community members! Hear from BU Athletics, and take part in an energizing pep rally hosted by the BU Pep Band.

BU Men’s Hockey Game

Friday October 21 • 7:00pm • Agganis Arena

Discounted group-rate tickets available. Featuring in-game spotlights around the BU Bands 100th Anniversary, the full BU Pep Band, an Athletic Bands-wide performance onice with special guests, and a “4th Period” Pep Band showcase following the game.

“100 Years of Bands at BU” Concert & Reception

Saturday, October 22 • 2:00pm-6:30pm • Metcalf Hall at George Sherman Union

The marquee event of the weekend! Listen and watch the live mega-showcase of the Athletic, Concert, and Jazz ensembles of the Boston University Bands program. Also featured is the BU College of Fine Arts’ Wind Ensemble.

BU Bands 100th Anniversary Celebration Dinner

Saturday, October 22 • 7:00pm • Ziskind Lounge at George Sherman Union

Join the BU Bands community in a formal dinner, honoring the past, present, and a look to the future for the program. Hear from special guest speakers, see some of the physical memorabilia from the bands program, and enjoy a plated dinner with the programs’ closest friends.

BU Bands Celebration Brunch

Sunday, October 23 • 10:30am-1:00pm

BU Band Room BAB140, 300W Babcock Street

Wind down from the weekend with a casual brunch with the BU Bands community at the current Boston University Band Room.

More details