People 2002 in review

Art in America, August, 2003

Daniel Libeskind, Berlin- and New York-based architect, was selected to design the World Trade Center redevelopment project.

Robert Farris Thompson, Yale University professor and African art scholar, received the College Art Association's award for lifetime achievement in art writing.

James Cuno, former director of the Harvard University Art Museums and art and architecture history professor, was named head of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

Irit Batsry, Israeli-born video and installation artist, won the $100,000 Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Vincente Todoli, former head of the Museu Serralves de Arte Contemporanea in Porto, Portugal, became director of the Tate Modern in London.

Roberta Smith, New York Times art critic and former senior editor at Art in America, won the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association.

Sharon Patton was named director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. She had been director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio.

Pierre Huyghe, French conceptual artist whose film installations reveal narrative constructs, was awarded the $50,000 Hugo Boss Prize, given by the Guggenheim Museum.

Liza Lou, creator of elaborate beaded installations depicting such scenes as a kitchen or backyard, was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

Neal Benezra was appointed director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He had been deputy director and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Louis Grachos, director of SITE Santa Fe since 1996, was appointed director of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y.

Norman Foster, British architect who redesigned the Berlin Reichstag, was awarded a Praemium Imperiale, worth approximately $42,000, by the Japan Art Association.

Toba Khedoori, L.A.-based artist known for her large-scale, architectural drawings, was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

Dana Gioia, poet, classical music critic and former General Foods executive, was appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Glen Murcutt, Australian architect known for his ecologically sustainable structures, won the $100,000 Pritzker Prize from the Hyatt Foundation.

Sigmar Polke, German artist known for paintings that combine print-derived imagery and abstract elements, won a $42,000 Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association.