Anita F. Hill to Receive 2014 Sackler Center First Award at Brooklyn Museum, 6/5

The 2014 Sackler Center First Award honors Anita F. Hill for Speaking Truth to Power. The awards ceremony takes place at the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday, June 5, from 6 to 9 p.m. This annual award celebrates women who have broken gender barriers and made remarkable contributions in their fields, and will be presented to Hill by Museum Trustee Elizabeth A. Sackler and Gloria Steinem, with First Lady of New York City Chirlane McCray, Honorary Chair of the event.

The evening includes a private cocktail reception followed by the award presentation and a screening of the critically acclaimed documentary ANITA (2013),directed by Academy Award-winner Freida Lee Mock. The film, spanning more than twenty years, begins with Anita Hill's testimony during the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court, where she recounted the sexual harassment she experienced from him while working as his assistant. It follows Hill into the present focusing on her ongoing work as an attorney, academic, and advocate for the rights of women and girls. Hill's charges against Thomas brought the common reality of workplace sexual harassment into the national dialogue for the first time, creating a conversation about sex, race, and politics that remains relevant today.

Tickets at $200 include the cocktail reception, film screening, and award presentation; tickets at $20 include the film screening and award presentation only. To purchase, email firstawards@brooklynmuseum.org or call (718) 501-6423. Proceeds will benefit the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and the Brooklyn-based group Girls for Gender Equity.

Anita F. Hill received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980 and began her career in private practice in Washington, D.C., where she also worked at the U.S. Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1989, she became the first tenured African American at the University of Oklahoma, College of Law. Currently, she is a Senior Adviser to the Provost and Professor of Law, Public Policy, and Women's Studies at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, where she teaches courses on gender, race, social policy, and legal history. She is also counsel for the law firm Cohen, Milstein, Sellers and Toll in Washington, D.C., where she advises on class action workplace and discrimination cases.

Hill is the author of several articles and books, including Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home (Beacon Press, 2011). She has chaired the Human Rights Law Committee of the International Bar Association, been a member of the Board of Governors of the Tufts Medical Center, and sat on the Board of Directors of the National Women's Law Center and the Boston Area Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. The 2014 Sackler Center First Award is the latest in a series of awards, grants, and honorary degrees Hill has received.

In addition to Honorary Event Chair Chirlane McCray, the other members of the First Awards Committee are Dana Ben-Ari, Beverly Ehrlich, Jane Fonda, Marilyn Greenberg, Carol Jenkins, Helen Kornblum, Marjorie Miller-Engel, Robin Morgan, Jennifer Raab, Myrna Ruskin, Marianna Sackler, Lola C. West, and Saundra Williams-Cornwell.

Founded in 2007, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is a nexus for feminist art, theory, and activism. It is the permanent home of The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,its Forum is a venue for public programs and a platform of advocacy for women's issues, and its Feminist Artand Herstory galleries present critically acclaimed exhibitions. On view through September 28 in both galleries is Chicago in L.A.: Judy Chicago's Early Work, 1963-74. Judith Scott-Bound and Unbound will be on view from October 24, 2014 through March 29, 2015. The Council for Feminist Art, a membership group, supports the ongoing educational programming and the continuing success of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

The Sackler Center First Awards were conceived by Elizabeth A. Sackler, Ph.D. A public historian, arts activist, and American Indian advocate, Dr. Sackler is President of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, New York City; founder and President of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation; President of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation; member of the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Museum; and founder of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

Photo by Jack White