Photo Flash: Inside The 2019 Herb Alpert Awards

The Herb Alpert Foundation and California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) has awarded the 25th Annual Herb Alpert Award in the Arts to five exceptional mid-career artists at a celebration hosted by the Herb Alpert Foundation in New York City on Monday, May 13.

The awards recognize risk-takers working in Dance, Film/Video, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts who are using their talent, vision, and labor to make something that matters within and potentially beyond their field. The outstanding candidate in each genre receives an unrestricted prize of $75,000.

"We are gratified to celebrate with CalArts the shared vision of 25 years of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts." said Herb Alpert Foundation President Rona Sebastian. "Under the exemplary direction of Director Irene Borger, this program has reached far and wide into the arts community and is appreciated for its high level of compassion, sensitivity, and respect for individual artists. This unique grant opportunity has become an important milestone for mid-career artists to be recognized by their peers, and often is a defining moment leading toward the next level of their careers."

CalArts President Ravi Rajan added, "Artists need space and time to create models of what's possible in the world. CalArts was founded to focus on incubating artists, and for the past 25 years it has been amazing to partner with Lani Hall and Herb Alpert to do just that. I can't imagine the arts without them."

"Herb Alpert had a hunch that a prize to artists-artists who took risks-could make a difference to artists, certainly, and maybe even in the world. He said: 'what if?' - the core of creativity. The artists the Herb Alpert Award honors and supports not only 'think outside the box,' they think: What Box?" notes Irene Borger, Director, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.

The Dance panel has selected choreographer Pam Tanowitz for her unwavering commitment to her uncompromising artistic vision, rigorous sense of craft and composition, and for beginning again with each new work. They value her musicality, wit and poetry, her investigation - and disruption - of traditional forms, and her generous, humane and fully collaborative practice.

Photo Credit: Shawn Connell Studios