Lena Dunham & Laurie Simmons to be Honored at Brooklyn Museum Women in the Arts Fundraising Luncheon, 11/14

Award-winning photographer and conceptual artist Laurie Simmons and her daughter, Lena Dunham, best known for writing, directing, producing, and acting in the HBO program Girls, will be honored at the eleventh annual Women in the Arts luncheon on Thursday, November 14, 2013. This is the first time the benefit will jointly honor two recipients--a mother-daughter pair. Proceeds from the event will benefit the many educational and artistic programs offered by the Brooklyn Museum and its Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

The program will begin at 11 a.m. in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium with an introduction by Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman, followed by a conversation between Simmons, Dunham, and Catherine Morris, Curator of the Sackler Center. The program will conclude with the presentation of the 2013 Women in the Arts Award to Laurie Simmons and Lena Dunham. A reception and luncheon will follow in the glass-floored, skylit Beaux Arts Court, which houses the Museum's collection of European paintings.

Tables are available for purchase now at The Following levels: $2,500 (Donor), includes ten tickets for the program and preferred luncheon seating for ten guests; $5,000 (Sponsor), includes ten tickets and priority seating for the program as well as prime luncheon seating for ten guests; and $10,000 (Benefactor), includes twelve tickets, special reserved seating for the program, and VIP luncheon seating for 12 guests. Based on availability, tickets for Women in the Arts 2013 will be offered at $250, $500, and $1,000, starting September 10, 2013. To purchase tables and tickets and for further information, contact inga.glodowsky@brooklynmuseum.org or (718) 501-6436.

An internationally recognized artist, Laurie Simmons is best known for her photographs of meticulously staged scenes using dolls, ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, and people to create images with intensely psychological subtexts. Her work is included in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Walker Art Center, and the Hara Museum, Tokyo. In 2006 she produced and directed her first film, The Music of Regret, starring Meryl Streep and Adam Guettel, which has been screened internationally at museums and film festivals. Her work has been the subject of several recent solo exhibitions at Salon 94, New York; Wilkinson Gallery, London; The Gothenburg Museum, Sweden; and Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, among other venues. Simmons lives and works in New York City and Cornwall, Connecticut, with her husband, the painter Carroll Dunham.

A 2008 graduate of Oberlin College, Lena Dunham was born in New York in 1986 and raised in Brooklyn, where she attended Saint Ann's School. Her Golden Globe award-winning, Emmy-nominated series Girls, now entering its third season, follows the lives of four twenty-something women in Brooklyn. While at Oberlin, Dunham began writing shorts and feature films. In 2009 she created the web series Delusional Downtown Divas, which gained a cult following. She was commissioned to make ten additional episodes for the Guggenheim's first annual Art Awards. Also in 2009, Dunham releasedCreative Nonfiction, her first feature film. She went on to write, direct, and star in Tiny Furniture (2010), which premiered at the 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival and received two Spirit Award nominations. Dunham has also created several short films, among them Dealing, which premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival. She is also the recipient of a Webby Award for her performance in a campaign spot for President Obama. She recently signed a contract with Random House for a collection of essays,Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's Learned, which will contain Dunham's advice on life, love, and sex.

Previous Women in the Arts honorees include Yoko Ono, Shirin Neshat, Kara Walker, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz, Maya Lin, the Guerilla Girls, Dr. Elizabeth A. Sackler, and Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell.

Photo Courtesy of HBO

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