November 5, 2008 - In November, Mayor Bloomberg will honor seven outstanding members of New York City’s cultural community at the 2008 Mayor’s Awards for Arts & Culture.

This year’s honorees are Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York; The Andrew Mellon Foundation; Arthur Aviles, founder of the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD); arts educator Dr. Sharon Dunn; composer Galt MacDermot, who wrote the 1960s rock musical Hair; and Rush Arts Gallery & Corridor Gallery.

Bronx native, playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon will receive New York’s highest award for outstanding achievement in the arts, the NYC Handel Medallion. This is the first time the Medallion has been awarded during this administration.

The Mayor’s Awards for Arts and Culture were created in 1974 by the Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission to honor individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the cultural life of New York City. The Awards acknowledge and celebrate the role individual artist, art educators, cultural organizations, corporations and philanthropists play in the public-private partnership that sustains our City’s creative vitality and economic well-being. The Bloomberg Administration revived the awards in 2004 and they remain a valued tradition.

The NYC Handel Medallion was established in 1959 by Mayor Robert F. Wagner to honor “outstanding achievement in the fields of art and music.” Named for the composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), the award was first given at the Handel Festival, a series of 32 concerts held in New York City in 1959 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Handel’s death. The NYC Handel Medallion is New York’s highest award for achievement in the arts.

The image used to illustrate the Mayor’s Awards is from the P.S. Art 2008 show, a juried exhibition of student art, organized by Studio in a School, and on view this past summer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show is part of P.S. Arts Week which salutes the outstanding work of our City’s young artists and their teachers. For more information please visit www.nyc.gov/schools/artseducation or call (212) 274-0300.

For more information about cultural events in New York City, visit www.nyc.gov/culture.