DDCF Names The 2018 Doris Duke Artist Award Winners

In a short film released today by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the foundation's president and CEO, Edward P. Henry, was joined by several previous Doris Duke Artist Award winners in announcing the 2018 recipients of the $275,000 award. The new awardees include Dee Dee Bridgewater, Regina Carter and Stefon Harris for their continuing contributions to jazz; Michelle Dorrance and Okwui Okpokwasili for contemporary dance; and Muriel Miguel and Rosalba Rolón for theater. Each 2018 Doris Duke Artist is receiving $250,000 in flexible funding, along with up to an additional $25,000 to encourage contributions to retirement savings.

"For us, it's pretty simple: Like our programs in medical research, child well-being and the environment, we recognize that the arts also are critically important to our communities. And at the heart of the arts is the individual artist. This award frees artists to be artists by providing them with the financial security to take risks and to make great work," said Henry before announcing the names of the awardees.

Nine previously honored Doris Duke Artists, Ping Chong, Steve Coleman, John Collins, Dave Douglas, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Eiko Otake, Zeena Parkins, Elizabeth Streb and Yosvany Terry, accompanied Henry in congratulating the 2018 Doris Duke Artists-offering messages of appreciation for their creative talents and of belief in their ongoing capability to make extraordinary work.

"This is not a prize for you for what you have done," said Otake to the 2018 Doris Duke Artists. "This is an investment for what you will do."

The foundation designed the Doris Duke Artist Awards to invest in exemplary individual artists in contemporary dance, jazz, theater and related interdisciplinary work who have demonstrated their artistic vitality and ongoing commitment to their field. As Otake noted, the award is not a lifetime achievement award. Rather, it is a deep investment in the creative potential of dedicated artists. The foundation aims to empower Doris Duke Artists through the freedom of unrestricted support to take creative risks, explore new ideas, and pay for important professional and personal needs not typically funded by the project-related grants that dominate arts funding.

While the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation initially conceived the Doris Duke Artists Awards as part of a larger $50 million special initiative that finished in 2017, recognition of the program's importance in helping artists thrive spurred the foundation to cement a place for the largely unrestricted awards in its core strategy to support the arts. With the 2018 class, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation will have awarded approximately $29.625 million to 108 noteworthy artists through the Doris Duke Artist Awards since May 2012. Going forward, the foundation will continue to award up to seven Doris Duke Artist Awards on an annual basis.

To read more about the Doris Duke Artist Awards and the 2018 Doris Duke Artists, visit www.dorisdukeartistawards.org.

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) is to improve the quality of people's lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke's properties. The Arts Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation focuses its support on contemporary dance, jazz and theater artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them. In 2015, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded the foundation with a 2014 National Medal of Arts, presented by President Barack Obama, in special recognition of DDCF's support of creative expression across the United States and "bold commitment" to artistic risk, which has helped artists, musicians, dancers and actors share their talents and enriched the cultural life of the nation. For more information, please visit www.ddcf.org.