Arts World Financial Center Hosts Wisdom: Portraits by Andrew Zuckerman 4/29-5/23

In celebration of "Older American Month", honoring the nation's seniors, Arts World Financial Center will host the U.S. premiere exhibit of "Wisdom: Portraits by Andrew Zuckerman," an extraordinary collection of photographs and interviews that capture The Combined wisdom of legendary leaders including Nelson Mandela, Ted Kennedy, Willie Nelson, Billie Jean King, Clint Eastwood, Madeline Albright, Chuck Close, and others.

From April 29 to May 23, fifty large-format portraits will be displayed under the spectacular glass-vaulted ceiling of the World Financial Center's Winter Garden. Visitors can walk amongst the giant photographs and view quotes in which the subjects, all of them over the age of 65, share lessons learned from a lifetime of work in such diverse fields as politics, sports, science, art, film, architecture, music, and more.

"We're honored to be presenting the U.S. premiere of an exhibit that promises to inspire so many people on so many levels," said Debra Simon, Artistic Director of Arts World Financial Center. "From tourists to art aficionados to business people on their lunch breaks, the thousands who pass through here each day will be moved by the images and insights of the people who have shaped our world."

Arts World Financial Center, the East Coast's largest presenter of free, year-round visual and performing arts, commissioned the award winning New York-based architectural team of LevenBetts to design the exhibition specifically for the Winter Garden for its U.S. debut.

The free exhibit is part of a project conceived and created by award-winning photographer and filmmaker Andrew Zuckerman, who was inspired by the idea that one of the greatest gifts a generation can give to the next is the wisdom gained from experience. The project was produced in cooperation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is also one of the subjects in the exhibit.

Zuckerman met with his subjects in the summer of 2007, traveling with his creative team to four continents and logging a total of 65,000 air miles to interview and photograph fifty luminaries from all walks of life. All of the portraits are shot against the same blank white backdrop.

"At this stage in their lives, these people's faces reveal the details of a long journey that's completely unique, and I wanted to let each face tell its own story in the cleanest and clearest way," said Zuckerman. "Through images and words, this exhibit captures the accumulated wisdom of trailblazers in their respective fields who have had a direct hand in the unfolding of history over the past three quarters of a century."

Visitors to the exhibit will be able to purchase the corresponding book (Abrams; Hardcover; 2008), which contains over 100 full-color portraits and interviews, and includes a 60-minute DVD of the filmed interviews. Four smaller books and films will also be available, each representing a different theme: Ideas; Life; Love; and Peace.

Five percent of the revenue from book sales is distributed evenly among charities nominated by project participants.  

About Andrew Zuckerman
Andrew Zuckerman was born in Washington DC in 1977 and spent his teenage years shooting local bands for small magazines. He moved to New York to attend SVA before opening his own studio where he has created award- winning still life and portrait photography. In 2006 he co- founded LN&W, which has produced the critically acclaimed films "High Falls", that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and the feature documentary "Still Bill" slated for wide release in fall 2010.

His driving mission as a photographer has been to push the medium to its most contemporary application: he embraces each successive advance in technology. Ultimately, his goal is to allow an object, an environment, or a living creature to be seen and experienced for exactly what it is, as stripped from artistic imposition as possible. With this in mind, he has embarked on a project to document animals and humans in a series of books and films, which began in 2005 with a series of animal images that were first published in 2007's Creature, a collection of over 300 animals. This was followed by Wisdom in 2008, portraits and interviews with extraordinary individuals over the age of sixty-five and Bird, in 2009, which covered over ninety species of birds. Music, which features musicians of all ages, will be published in fall 2010.

The Wisdom portraits were first exhibited at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney in 2008.

About Arts World Financial Center
Now in its 22nd season, Arts World Financial Center <www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com> is the East Coast's largest presenter of free, year-round performing and visual arts. Other season highlights include Weather Beacon, artist Eric Guzman's kinetic sculpture that merges public wi-fi, movement and light into a flashing weather forecast; and More Or Less I Am, Compagnia de' Colombari's new music-theatre adaptation of Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself."